Twitter has quickly become the main focus of my attention. Not only does it account for the majority of where my traffic comes from, I’ve also directly profited from the platform in more ways than one. I’ll admit that I completely missed the ball on how to properly use Twitter when I first created my account.

I quickly found amazing tools to help me automate the process of increasing followers and by default, traffic to my site.

In order to gain the most from Twitter you will need to follow a few simple rules.

A Few Simple Rules

You should never Tweet a post without some sort of media. Visuals are key on any platform in order for your post to stick out from the billions of other tweets.

Know what hashtags are worth including within your post by doing Five minutes worth of research into what is popular and relevant to your audience. Don’t use stupid hashtags…

Post at relevant times. Each platform has active and effective times to post for ultimate exposure. You can do a quick data mine of your past tweets to see what the optimal times to tweet are.

Automating The Whole Thing

Social media, no matter who you are, takes a lot of time to keep up with. Luckily there are plenty of startups taking up the challenge of making it all easier for the rest of us.

Plain and simple, if you aren’t pre-scheduling your posts on ANY platform, you are losing the social media race. There are no excuses! Get setup with Buffer and link all of your social accounts. Buffer is your mainframe, your social headquarters, your control center.

From your Buffer account you are able to create a schedule for each of your accounts and place any status/post in the que. You can also choose which accounts you want the status to be published on.

make sure you download Buffer’s Chrome Extension!!

The next question you may or may not have considered is what times are best for publishing your tweets on Twitter…..

I remember stumbling upon a post that showed exactly how to find the best times to post on Twitter and it was incredibly long and a waste of time. To keep it short, check out Followerwonk. It will research your past posts and compile the data to tell you what the best times to post are.

(The Article Explaining How To Use Followerwonk with Buffer – http://tnw.co/1o846zM)

Now you have the best times to post and a tool to help you schedule your post for the entire week in under Five minutes. What are you going to share?

Sharing is caring, especially when it is new, relevant and exciting. I will be the first to tell you not to scour the internet finding cool shit to publish. Instead, use BuzzSumo to search for your topic and find amazing content that you can quickly add to your Buffer que.

Tweets With Amazing Images

A recent discovery of mine, Twibble allows you to add your blogs feed and pull images within the post or featured image to be shared as a tweet. Twibble will scan your site as often as you post and automatically share your new posts with any hashtags you want and at the times we discovered using Followerwonk.

To increase the use of Twibble, find leaders and influencers in your niche/industry and add their sites feed to your account. Whenever they post, your account will be the first to let the world know.

Sharing great content is key.

Managing Your Twitter Growth

Our goal should be to provide as much value to our followers as possible while also decreasing the amount of time required of us to do so. I want to break this down as easily as possible so you can manage your growth with ease.

Daily

Every day you should be adding new followers using tools like the Chrome Extension Followr that will auto favorite tweets containing specific keywords or hashtags. You can also do this in bulk using Good Audience.

On top of adding new followers, we need to unfollow people who have not followed us back (how rude!). Just Unfollow will scan your account and create a list of people who don’t follow you back and allow you to unfollow them.

Your daily shouldn’t take more than Five minutes to complete and may only require your attention every few days.

Monthly

Use Followerwonk to determine influencers in your niche/industry and connect with them. You can also compare two influencers’ followers. So people who follow both accounts who, theoretically interested in your topic.

Take all of these followers and begin following them. As time goes on, you will build a HUGE audience of people interested in your content, product or service.

Twitter is paving the way and can no longer be left on the side in your marketing efforts. With the huge jumps in mobile purchases and Twitter driving most of that traffic, you cannot afford to not use the platform. Create a simple to follow schedule, automate most of it and drive a crap ton of traffic to your site!

Tweet: The Ultimate Step by Step Twitter Growth Guide http://ctt.ec/e9_k7+ via @Dillon_Carter