8 Types of Tweets

Today, a third sample from my e-book:

The eight types of Tweets

Personal: this is where you answer the question “what am I doing right now?” These types of tweets are important, because they help your followers to get to know the ‘real’ you.

Link tweets (direct business): Because space is limited to 140 characters, many people use Twitter to drive traffic to websites or blogs. Every time I publish a blog post, I drop the URL with a teaser into Twitter. 47% of the traffic to my blog comes from Twitter in that way. Note that, because you only have 140 characters, you need to use a link-shortening program for your links. These are readily available at sites like www.tinyurl.com or www.snipurl.com.

Link tweets (tangential business): I also post links to interesting websites or blog posts (usually from blogs I subscribe to through Google Reader) that I think people who follow me might be interested in (because I was!). Some of these blogs may also link back to my own blog.

Re-Tweets: ReTweeting is great because each time something is re-tweeted, it reaches a different audience. In the world of Twitter, the retweet is the highest form of compliment.

@Replies and Conversations: There is some controversy on Twitter about how conversations seem to be taking over, but I still do it all the time. This allows you to respond to something someone has said in their tweet, and begin a relationship with them.

Help! or Ask Tweets: Asking people for help from a good restaurant for lunch to technical questions to questions about your product or service is a great way to create relationships.