The Top 15 Missed Opportunities on Twitter

An effective Twitter marketing strategy requires numerous elements of what you should be doing. If you aren't, you're missing out on using Twitter effectively.

- Having your real name in the name field (in settings) with a space between first and last names so your name is searchable on Twitter.

- Including the link to any article or post you reference in a tweet. (You can use a shortened URL application to track the clicks of your shortened link.)

- Rather than a company logo uploading a good headshot of yourself.

- Using your one hot link on Twitter to go to an information page rather than a sales page.

- Including targeted bio information that could authentically encourage people to follow you.

- Engaging in conversation on Twitter by replying to people rather than your only Twitter activity being sending your blog feeds automatically into your Twitter account.

- Retweeting interesting information from others instead of only tweeting your own links.

- Updating several times a day and several days a week.

- Thanking people for retweeting your links - and including the retweeted links.

- Thanking people for responding with information to the questions you tweet.

- Using tweetbeep.com to track your name and your company name on Twitter. (Your username mentions can be seen in your reply tab.)

- Participating in tweetchats on subjects of interest to your brand, book or business.

- Using search functions to find people with similar interests and then following them.

- Sharing interesting information links (from outside Twitter) with your Twitter followers.

- Sending DM Twitter tips to people when you spot a missed opportunity with which you can help them. (Never do this in a public tweet. Thus the person must be following you in order for you to DM that person regardless of whether you are following the person.)

Use this article as a checklist to see how many of these opportunities you are taking advantage of now. And if you find any elements that you aren't doing, fix these omissions as soon as possible.

Extra tip: If you spend too much time looking for good articles whose links you can tweet, implement a system to make this less time-consuming.

Do a search on Google for blogs in an area related to your interest. The concept related is important; you don't want to link to blog posts of direct competitors. Blogs posts of colleagues are a much better choice.

Then sign up for email notification or the RSS feed of these five to 10 blogs. Each time there's a new blog post, read it quickly to see if it is worthwhile. If so, tweet a link to it.

Voila! Your followers will appreciate the information, and the bloggers will appreciate your support. It's a win-win opportunity.

About The Author Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is an Internet business consultant. Her new FREE report is "Twitter, Facebook and Your Website: A Beginning Blueprint for Harnessing the Power of 3 for Your Business" - claim your report now from www.millermosaicllc.com/power-of-3/