These tips were tweeted on Friday, August 14th, 2009

(By Shara Lawrence-Weiss, owner of Mommy Perks)

Tip 1: Twitter is not a race. Don’t try to get the most followers FAST. Slow & steady…you want quality over quantity.

Tip 2: Use a personal pic as your avatar. Study showed that personal pics get 4x the # of clicks (over a logo).

Tip 3: Don’t pay to get followers. Join mrtweet.com, wefollow.com and twitteradder.com

Tip 4: To find out who is following you that you are not following back and vice versa: friendorfollow.com

Tip 5: Build your following steadily. This will ensure a more loyal base. When you do things too quickly, chances are…they won’t last.

Tip 6: Find out more about #hashtags here: www.hashtags.org Use hashtags to draw attention from a targeted audience. #Parenting, #moms, etc

Tip 7: Don’t put too many #hashtags in a tweet. It’s annoying & hard to read.

Tip 8: Great Mashable article on hashtags: “Get the most out of #hashtags”

Tip 9: If you see a great tweet, re-tweet it (”RT”). This is a compliment to the person tweeting. Also THANK others if they RT you. Polite.

Tip 10: Tuesday is the #1 tweet day. Friday is catching up (my opinion). Lots of MOMS on twitter on Tuesday so it’s a target audience.

Tip 11: Shorten your long links: tinyurl.com or budurl.com

Tip 12: If you want to re-tweet others but need to shorten the tweet, you will have to abbreviate. I will give examples…

• Examples: you = U, to = 2, thank you = TY, you’re welcome = YW, by the way = BTW, etc. I will give a link next for more info, also…

Tip 13: 50 Twitter Abbreviations: Great article with a list of words you can abbreviate!!

Tip 14: You can also give credit to someone by putting “via @mommyperks” in parenthesis at the end of a re-tweet.

Tip 15: To organize your page, some folks like tweetdeck.com and others like seesmic.com

Tip 16: Compare tweetdeck and seesmic

Tip 17: In depth comparison between tweetdeck and seesmic

Tip 18: Have fun with twitter. Explore, learn & be ‘okay’ if you need some time to figure it all out. That’s life!!! All about learning.

Tip 19: Don’t get wrapped up in following celebrities. Focus on what YOU can do for others & not what you think others can do for you.

Last tip: Tip 20: If you need help at any time, give me a holler Educators are always willing to teach & offer support. It’s our nature.

Additional information:

BingNote submitted a question after the tips had been tweeted: “If someone RT’d you, but is not following you, how do you send them a direct message to thank them?”

Answer:

• Simply send a tweet using their twitter name. For instance: “Thank you @mommyperks for the great article on parenting!” The person will see that note in their “@” folder even if they are not following you.