WHY IS TWITTER SO IMPORTANT?

1. It helps extend your online brand almost instantly.
2. You are communicating to a group of people who choose to listen to your message.
3. You are communicating directly with fans on a regular basis!
4. It’s personal but you control your message.
5. It’s highly Googleable so it increases your search engine optimization.
6. It’s one of the easiest of all the social networking sites to maintain.

SET UP
- For a step by step guide on how to set up a twitter account, check out this video on Youtube - Youtube twitter video

THE GOLDEN TWITTER RULES

1. Always add a good description of yourself in the “Bio” section. This will be what people will read first to work out whether they want to follow you or not. Make sure it is consistent with your branding.
2. Always add your website URL or myspace URL to the twitter page so followers can link through to your site and find out more information about you.
3. Search key words at http://search.twitter.com in order to find people who are interested in the same topics as you.
4. Avoid direct “auto-tweet” messages. They are impersonal and spam-like.
5. Aim to tweet about 3 to 4 times per day to ensure visibility but not over saturation. You want your followers to want to read your tweets, but not be sick of hearing from you!
6. Offer insights into life as a band, beyond your music.
7. Do not plug your new CD/gig dates etc on EVERY tweet. This is boring and too spam-like. Make your tweets personal, interesting and informal. By portraying your personality, people will enjoy reading your tweets, recommend you to others, and be inspired to check out your music.
8. Re-tweet others. If you read an interesting tweet then be friendly and re-tweet this person. This will help to extend your community.
9. Do NOT protect your updates so no-one else can see your tweets other than followers. People will not follow you unless they know what you tweet about.
10. Set twitter up on your mobile so you can tweet while on the road. There are numerous applications for both Blackberry and iphones. I use Twitterberry for Blackberry.
11. Insert the twitter widgets on your social networking sites to encourage new followers. You can get twitter widgets in the ‘Goodies” tab at the bottom of your twitter page.
12. If you feel overwhelmed by the amount of social networking and blogging updates you have to do, then use ping.fm or hellotxt.com which will instantly post a message to all your social networking sites at the same time.
13. Increase your visibility on Twitter by entering your info on this site http://wefollow.com
14. Reply to fans’ messages using @username replies. It shows you value their input.
15. Educate yourself about the use of hashtags (#) on twitter. Hashtags are a great way of creating groups on twitter and tracking conversations about certain topics. They can also increase your search engine optimization. Two great Hashtag trends are #FF (Follow Friday) whereby the twitter community recommend people to follow on a Friday. The second is is #MusicMonday whereby the twitter community recommend music they like on a Monday (yes I am stating the blindingly obvious!).

USEFUL TWITTER TOOLS FOR MUSICIANS
There are numerous twitter tools available to help musicians (and non-musicians!). Here’s a handful:

1. gonze.com/playtwitter – Enables you to embed an MP3 in with your tweets.
2. twiturm.com – Similar to the above.
3. Tweetree – Allows you to follow peoples @replies and DM/RT more easily.
4. Tweetdeck – Allows you to sort who you are following into categories eg. friends, media, fans. This is one of the most effective organizational tools for twitter.
5. http://twitterfox.net – Allows you to twitter on your desktop without accessing your twitter page each time.
6. Twitpic – Allows you to share your photos on twitter.
7. thetwittertoolbar.com - Increases your functionality.

Download a PDF document of this article HERE!