My first article with the Open Mic reflected how I used Twitter to grow my freelance business. I decided to follow a monthly plan in which each month is dedicated to a certain tool I will use to market myself. However, I did not share my tricks of tweeting and it was not until Mariann Makrai inspired me to do so. Before I started to use Twitter for freelancing, I read a lot about the topic. Yet, I decided to use these tips and experiment my own style with my account, followers, and tweets. So, here are the most useful tricks I used and tested;

1. Make up your mind about the platform/s to market your business. So, you need to decide which platform is for your business and which is the personal one. For me, Facebook is so personal while Twitter and LinkedIn are for business.

2. Marketing yourself with Twitter should not limit you. You could be interested in more than one topic besides your freelancing. For example, I am primary a freelance translator on Twitter, but I am also a language learner, a yogi, and an origami lover. Don’t assume that you cannot tweet about others topic besides your business, but you need to prioritize your topics and tweet the most according to that. This would help you to be recognized as freelancer more than the other interests.

3. Another way to help you stand out as a freelancer is the header. Your header is a free wall for marketing yourself. Use it smartly. If you are not into designing, that’s fine because you can use websites such as www.canva.com to create headers or posts for all social media websites. I like this website because I do not have to worry about the size of each header or banner. Of course, there are free templates and features besides the premium ones. I will use Simon Akhrameev account as an example of how to use your header.

Simon’s Twitter account

4. List the topic/s you would like to tweet about and get 2 or 3 popular hashtags for each. These hashtags need to be used every time you tweet as they help your content to be seen by more people. To decide on the hashtags, check them out first and see how many tweets do you have for each one.

5. Try to connect with people who write in these hashtags/topics. Follow accounts about your preferred topics and be active. Reply to others, share links with them, and support them with a retweet.

6. Yet, don’t be the retweet type of user. The retweet will not make your name/picture visible enough in the timeline. Try to go further and add your comments to the tweets. Adding a comment will make you more visible and noticed. For example, when I read an article on Twitter, I retweet it and add a comment saying my opinion about it.

7. Set several times for your tweeting, for example, four times a day about one or more topics. Remember that people check Twitter several times and tweeting once will make you less noticed. You can also check the most active times on Twitter and time your tweets accordingly.

8. Using pictures is a good trick to make your tweets stand out in the timeline. By using them you can tag others (who are probably interested in the subject matter) in these pictures. For example, tag learning languages account when you share a resource about the subject.

9. Check what other influencers in your field/s are tweeting about and what are the trending topics/questions. Ask yourself what can I bring to that conversation? It is important to be aware of the fuss around you and to present a valuable resource/answer or even an opinion.

10. The poll feature is great as you can use it when you have created more impressions on Twitter and gained more followers. You can communicate with your followers and ask them what they want you to share or why they are following you.

11. Use the pin feature to make your best tweet of the week/month at the top. This tweet will be seen or read for every profile click you will receive. This pinned tweet could also be a picture with the services you provide and a link to your website or an email address. I shared an article I translated, and it hardly been noticed. But since I have pinned that tweet, I received 2 replies, 10 retweets, 66 likes, and two people sent me a direct message about that article.

The tweet that I have been for almost 2 months

12. Use the analytic feature of Twitter to show you the most trending tweets. By the end of every month, check the analyses and create reflection time and take notes. According to these notes, plan your tweets for the next week/month. To know the best tweets with the most impressions, go to https://ads.twitter.com > Analytics > Tweet Activity > Top Tweets.

My top tweets for the last 28 days

13. Schedule your tweets ahead of time if you would like to waste less time on Twitter. There is a lot of websites which schedule your tweets according to the date and time. Some of the free accounts on these websites allow you to schedule up to 10 tweets. This is good enough to schedule your tweets for the week or the weekdays.

14. Reuse your tweets. If you invest with your Twitter account, it is time to reuse your hard work by retweeting the most valuable old tweets again (2 weeks old maybe). If you have 5 or more tweets about the same topic, it is time to create a Moment. Moments are still a mystery for me and I am still working on my skills to use them.

15. Send “thanks” direct messages for your new followers. I found this very useful to break the ice and encourage more engagement. These thanks messages will turn into a conversation as people know that you are reachable.

16. Writing an article on the Open Mic help me gain more followers and mentions on Twitter. The Open Mic shared the article on Twitter beside so many individuals (@DKornyukhov – @lltranslations – @jo_parisi) and accounts (@SavvyNewcomer – @JensenLoc – @atanet – @sdltrados). I started to get notifications about who liked or retweeted my article and some of these followed me. If you have not published an article with The Open Mic yet, please consider the idea. You do not have to be an expert or with 10 years of experience. You can write about your tools, methods, or personal experiences.

Using Twitter is a lot of WORK and that’s the first bad news. The second is that Twitter will consume YOUR TIME. However, you can spend one hour a week to plan your tweets ahead and schedule them. Make sure to check your Twitter daily for half an hour to like/retweets others’ replies, thank new followers, answer the direct messages, and reply to others. Remember, a little planning for your Twitter will go a LONG way.