Twitter/X has been called many things – from a waste of time to an online cocktail party. No matter your personal feelings about the platform, the fact remains that it’s an excellent way to target and connect with potential buyers.

Here are the Twitter/X (sorry it will remain “Twitter” for me for eternity) basics that you need to make the most of the platform – and avoid any snafus.

Character Length

If you ever had to come up with a Haiku poem in English class, you know how tough it can be to get your point across with a small number of words. The 280 word character limit can be challenging, and even more so when you factor in leaving space for retweets. Unless you upgrade, you are limited to 280 words.

In order to make the most of your updates, and make it easier for followers to spread the word about your brand, you need to be concise. This will also make your tweets more engaging because Twitter audience is not used to long-form content. With this limit you have to boil down your message to the essentials. Using X threads is a good way to publish long updates without going PRO.

Good

Are you a Twitter/X Newbie? Here are 5 Mistakes that Can Get You Blocked, Ignored or Unfollowed.

Better

Although the first update is under 280 characters, the second update gets to the point in fewer characters and uses a headline style that is clickable and interesting.

If you’re sharing your own post, you can make Twitter/X sharing easier by creating a clickable headline to start with. Writing a descriptive, enticing title for your blog posts will make it simple for you – and others – to share your posts on Twitter with impact. Since most followers aren’t going to take the time to re-title your post or craft something of their own, you can boost your Twitter sharing capabilities by starting with a great title.

If you’re sharing someone else’s post, review their title and see if it will make a clickable update. You can always create your own title or summary of the post by borrowing from one of the subheadings or pull out quotes.

ReTweeting

Retweets or RTs can increase your influence, spread your message and gain you more followers. In short, they’re valuable.

What can you do to increase the likelihood of retweets? In addition to creating shareable tweets and developing your relationship with your followers, you can try asking for retweets directly. But as with many social media tips this one is firmly in the “Your Mileage May Vary” category.

Asking for a retweet may work for your brand, or it may not. There’s a bit of a debate going on about asking for retweets. While the statistics show that adding Please RT or other requests to your Twitter updates can improve your chances for actually being retweeted, many social media experts consider it to be a cardinal sin of social. Your best bet is to run some tests and see how the results turn out for you.

Hashtags

Mind your hashtags! Although these Twitter specific features are helpful for categorizing and labeling your updates, don’t go overboard. Your brand probably has a handful of hashtags that are relevant and specific to your ideal followers. Make sure you find them and use them regularly.

Where should you find them? There are a few different ways to approach your hashtag hunt. First you could try following hashtags that your competitors and followers are using to see their relevance and importance. Try creating a dedicated stream in your favorite social media tracking tool to monitor its use and then jump on the bandwagon.

In addition, you can use one of the many hashtag directories – like Hashtag.org or Twubs.com to find relevant hashtags that will open up your posts to more ideal followers.

Keywords

Twitter updates can’t optimize your site, but using keywords is still important in social media. Many Twitter users follow conversations by using keyword searches. If you want to catch the attention of a specific group or engage a particular type of follower in your conversation, try using keywords in your updates.

Just like with hashtags, it can be helpful to keep a short list of keywords at the ready to integrate into your blog post titles and Twitter updates. Align your Twitter strategy with your ecommerce SEO strategy for better results and findability.

Final words…

Double check your spelling and grammar before you hit send. Even though Twitter is a fast paced social medium it doesn’t mean that basic English skills are thrown out the window. Give a quick read before you share and you’ll make a better impression for your brand.