Twitter

• Tweets are limited just to 140 characters, which is why some people call it a "microblogging" tool. You have to keep your messages brief and to the point.
• Tweet on a regular basis – Twitter users expect regular tweets from the accounts which they follow (aim for at least 4 a day).
• Have a number of people responsible for updating the twitter account so if anyone is away from the office, the account is still updated/managed on a daily basis.
• Write content in the University voice.  Please avoid using ‘I’ in any tweets – the accounts should be set up for subject areas or schools.
• Tailor and focus content to key dates, events, news and seasons.
• If you have long links to add to your tweet, use link shortening tools such as 'bit.ly' or 'ow.ly' -these are websites which shorten links which is great because you have a 140 character limit with your tweets. Furthermore, if you use these sites, you can access the number of clicks on your link along with other useful stats.
• Follow any students you recognise on twitter (you can search for students via the twitter search option on your twitter account, or Google 'twitter advanced search' for a comprehensive search tool.  Following people is a great way to gain followers for your account.
• Follow any staff you recognise - they will hopefully follow you back and then retweet your tweets to their followers (their followers may well be students, your target audience).
• Use hash tags to book mark your tweets - simply add # to the start of a key word, if you have two words, have it as one as the hash will only book mark one word.  The hash tag allows users to search for key terms
• Follow the main University accounts (http://www.hud.ac.uk/aboutus/socialmedia/)
• Use #hash tags, links, images and film content in tweet updates.
• Promptly reply to followers/twitter users who mention you in their tweets or who have sent you public or private messages on twitter - people expect you to engage with who they follow on twitter.
• Ask questions via the twitter account - Twitter is a great tool for getting opinions.
• Install a Twitter follow button to your website
• Install a Twitter widget to your web-pages
• Include a range of different content within tweets - images, podcasts (try the audioboo app), film content.
• Make sure you interact with other tweeters (hopefully as a result of this, they will follow you).
• Choose a Twitter name strategically - make sure your twitter name is relevant to your blog or website and is easy to remember as it is the part of the SEO title for the tweets appearing in Google search engine. 

Boost your Twitter profile Page Rank by:

• Optimising your twitter bio (which is also your meta description). Make sure you include keywords.
• Remember to add the url of any blog or website.
• Use target keywords in the profile info and use keywords in tweets.
• Create inbound links to the Twitter profile (signpost to the Twitter profile via with an anchor text link on email signatures, on any academic articles, links within the research profile, throughout your webpages, on your blog sites,  on LinkedIn profiles etc).
• Place a Twitter profile link in footer or sidebar, which is accessible via every page.
• Follow related theme profiles only - search engines increases your twitter profile link juice when you are able to get followers from good PR twitter profiles. Make sure that you add only those twitter users that are related to your blog content or share tweets on similar interest. This will increase number of retweets and thereby traffic, and eventually followers.
• As Twitter doesn’t allow you to tweet for more than 140 characters. Instead of automatically shortening the links on twitter.com, use URL shortening service like bit.ly or ow.ly. This will free up character space for key words.
• Optimise tweets - the most important part of your tweet for keyword consideration is the first 27 characters.
• Use a re-tweet strategy - an indexed tweet provides 27 characters or so for title post excluding 'Twitter / Your Username: Make sure your tweet's character limits allow for optimal retweets. It is important to keep the tweet under 125 characters, allowing your followers to add "RT @yourname" in front of the tweet.
• In order to get more traffic and relevance to your tweet make sure that you retweets, other blog articles and encourage others twitter users to share (retweet) your Twitter content.
• Tweet and retweet relevant content on a regular basis.