Your Twitter Plan for 2012

What are your Twitter resolutions for 2012?

Twitter. Image: Flickr user Danilo Ramos.

If you're like most businesses, you have a feed, but you're not sure if it's really worth the time and effort. The more I use Twitter, the more useful I find it, and I encourage you to give it another try this year. Why?

1) Tablet users. 39% of tablet users use their tablet for social networking every day, and 87% use their tablets for shopping purposes. Because the tablet browsing experience is so much more comfortable than the smartphone browsing experience, tablet users can easily read your tweets and follow your links while they are shopping.

2) Thought leaders. Twitter is full of bloggers, journalists, influencers, and other thought leaders. People who are looking for trends, story ideas, and the next big thing are on Twitter. Provide them some inspiration and see your traffic rise. Don't be afraid to connect to influencers on Twitter - just follow them and reply to their tweets with a related thought.

3) Idea followers. Not everyone can be a thought leader all the time. Twitter is also full of people who are looking for news, interesting content, and practical advice, as well as good material to share with their own followers. Provide retweetable content and you'll find yourself with a solid following in no time.

Best way to get started on Twitter?

1) Follow and follow some more. If a Twitter feed looks interesting to you, follow it. What are you interested in? Where do you get your news? Which blogs do you read? Start there. Twitter will also suggest feeds for you to follow. Most people follow back.

2) Retweet and retweet some more. If you want people to share your content, you need to share theirs. Twitter is a reciprocal culture.

3) Be interesting! Here's some great advice from Forbes on how to be more interesting every day.

Need help encapsulating yourself in 140 characters or less? Let me know. I can help!