It's amazing how something that people understand so little can explode into a world-wide phenomenon so quickly. Yes, I'm talking about Twitter. The ever popular microblogging site that started on March 21, 2006 has quickly grown to one of the most talked about websites in the world, closely behind Google and Facebook.
To put things in perspective, let's take a look at some of the stats that have made Twitter part of history:
It took 3 years, 2 months, and 1 day for Twitter to reach 1 billion tweets
50 million- The average number of tweets people sent per day in March 2010
456 Tweets per second (TPS) back in 2011
200 Million tweets per day (June 2011)
Super Bowl TPS Peak Stats:
2008: 27 Tweets per Second
2011: 4.064 Tweets per Second
2012: 12,333 Tweets per Second during the last 3 minutes
And that's only the beginning. It turns out that the 140-character limit microblogging site has a wide popularity amongst Internet browsers.
If you don't understand the concept of tweeting or saying "I'm eating a doughnut" to your followers, don't worry: you aren't alone.
However, if you are one of the 7.6 million+ users, there are some best practices when using Twitter.
1. Change your Profile Picture. This may seem like common sense, and one of the steps that should be taken care of when your account is created, but if you stick with the default profile photo (one of the below), new people won't take your account seriously.
Twitter Default Profile Pictures
Profile pictures should be square in shape and less than 700kb. If your photo is not square, Twitter will try its best to make it square, but the results can't be guaranteed.
Best option: Make it a photo of yourself or your company logo. Some studies say to show a person on a company's Twitter account, and the studies are well rounded, but that discussion can go either way depending on how the Twitter account is received to the audience. Personally, I like company logos so I know I'm dealing with the right account instead of some odd person who claims to have the username.
2. Give a good description. Below your account name and next to your profile photo is your description. This lets others know a little more about you instead of just being some anonymous person. This should be within 160 characters (20 more than a tweet) and can use the "@" operator to connect yourself with your company, organization, band, group, etc.
3. [Re]Tweet often, but not too often. This may seem a little less like common sense, but hear us out: some people tweet every 30 seconds while some people tweet once in a blue moon. If you post something on Twitter, give it some time to breathe and don't send 20 tweets following it or else your original tweet will get lost in the sea of tweets (ever heard of the Fail Whale? Makes sense now, huh?). Keep in mind that people browse Twitter like billboards: they scan for important information and disregard the rest. (Take a look at our Design page for more information about How We Design vs How We Read)
Let's say you post a tweet about a great restaurant. Great! Your friends and followers are reading this and getting more information about it. However, if you post 20+ tweets about articles you've read, Facebook updates, Foursquare checkins, photos you've taken, and more, your restaurant tweet will be buried under all of the newer ones and never be read.
Based on personal experience, people never read tweets more than 6 hours old, especially if they are following a ton of people (companies, bands, organizations, schools, clubs, celebrities, shows, stations, publishers, inspirational people, friends, colleagues, teachers, you get the point). Those people are tweeting at least 1 time an hour, and with a large number of followers, only a fraction of those tweets are going to be read.
I know one person who has an automatic publishing software for Twitter and posts an interesting tidbit of information with a link every 5 minutes (that's 20 tweets an hour!). Sure, his information is great, but I only have a chance to read 4, maybe 5 tweets during the time I have to check my Twitter account. And I manage 4 of them!
FYI: A Retweet is something you can do to "quote" another person's tweet. It's like echoing that person's tweet to your followers. You can sometimes add a comment to the retweet based on the software you use. When you retweet someone's tweet, they are usually notified and a tally is kept knowing how many times a certain tweet was retweeted (this is a great marketing technique for a contest, to spread the word, or if something is really great).
4. Follow relevant users, and follow back. Let's say you are just starting out on Twitter and Twitter asks you to find a few users to follow. Great! You pick a few from your favorite TV show, your favorite artist, your company, a few friends, and more. Looking good.
Now you start tweeting about your favorite restaurant. Based on the terms you put in, a few people find you and follow you. Hey, you have followers! Now you have a choice. You can either say "Yay! I have followers" or follow up on that lead to see if that account is a spam account (yes, these exist - about 4% of tweets and accounts are spam).
Usually, if an account is spam, they won't follow these best practices. In addition, they may be mass-following users based on a specific term, which means that they are following 10,000+ and have followers in the single digits (if any at all). If this is true for your followers, chances are they are a spam account. You can report a user for spam by following the link in the email Twitter sent you, or you can click on the little person icon on their account and say "Report @_______ for spam" (either way will block the user from your account and increment the amount of reports for that user). If a user/account gets enough spam reports, Twitter will ban them for good.
5. Don't be spammy in your tweets. To continue on with the "spam" topic, a lot of users just send out repetitive tweets or non-relevant tweets.
This is a good (or should I say "bad") example: "@Shadowdev more than this mp3 http://t.co/A0QJpVJE "
This tweet is obviously spam. This has a few bad traits:
This user has nothing to do with our field, our skills, our clients, or anything that has to do with us
Just like a spam email, the grammar is incorrect. Logically, this is spam (thank you Spock)
I have no idea where the URL goes. URL shortners (in this case, t.co) are good for shortening long web page addresses, but in this case, I have no idea where it will take me
The user that posted this also had a bunch of other tweets around the one that mentions us saying the same thing (in this format: "@[User] [random string of 4 words] [t.co link]" or "Hey @[User]! check out [t.co link]")
In short: when tweeting, make sure the tweets are relevant and actually talk about something instead of just being random words and/or links.
6. Add a Follow" button to website/blog/email/etc. Twitter makes it easy to put a "Follow" button on your website whether through something like WordPress, Joomla, Blogger, or even if you code it yourself like we do. Visit https://twitter.com/about/resources/buttons to find out how to put a "Follow" button on your website so fellow Twitter users can follow you with one click (instead of having to click on your username and click "Follow" after everything is loaded).
In addition, you can also put a "Live Stream" of your tweets or a topic's tweets (also known as "Hashtags") on your site. Visit https://twitter.com/about/resources/widgets to learn more about integrating a live stream box. This will automatically update with the latest tweets you post or that show up about the topic. This is best for gatherings, groups, events, etc, to see what the latest buzz is (a lot of conferences use this technique to show virtual attendees what the latest discussions are for topics).
Summary: By following these best practices, you should have a beneficial Twitter experience and shouldn't get your account banned. Just don't be spammy. Nobody likes spam unless its on a sandwich. And if you still don't understand what the Twitter craze is, you are still not alone.
Sources:
https://twitter.com/about
http://blog.twitter.com/2012/02/post-bowl-twitter-analysis.html
http://blog.twitter.com/2012/02/and-first-ad-scrimmage-winner-is.html
http://blog.twitter.com/2011/06/200-million-tweets-per-day.html
http://blog.twitter.com/2011/03/numbers.html
alexa.com/siteinfo/twitter.com#
pearanalytics.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Twitter-Study-August-2009.pdf
