Twitter is a great platform and used well can generate traffic to your website and create engagement with your followers.
Film stars, pop stars, and world leaders are all on twitter, statistics show 83% of the world’s leaders have a twitter account, that is a total of 139 world leaders out of 167 countries having accounts in either their personal name or through an official government site.
Some of those leaders include the British Government @Number10gov, New Zealand Prime Minister John Key @johnkeypm, Barack Obama has a personal account @BarackObama and the official President's account @POTUS and although it hasn't been endorsed by Twitter, Vladimir Putin has an official English twitter account @PutinRF_Eng.
And wannabe President of the United States Donald Trump has a twitter account. With over 10 million followers, Donald totally defies all the rules when it comes to using twitter effectively, I always suggest following six basic guidelines to make the most of Twitter; Hashtags, Links, Images, Structure, character spaces and overall creating positive messaging.
1. Hashtags
Tweets with 1-2 hashtags get 21% higher average engagement (source RocketPost).
2. Links within the tweets
Links placed just before the halfway point (in characters) of tweets tended to have higher clickthrough rates than links placed elsewhere. (source Hubspot)
3. Images
Tweets with images receive 18% more click throughs, 89% more likes, and 150% more retweets. (source Brandwatch.com) Visual content is more than 40X more likely to get shared on social media than other types of content (Source Hubspot)
4. Structure
Tweets that include photos AND links receive 150% more engagement. (source SimplyMeasured)
5.Character spaces
Tweets shorter than 100 characters get a 17% higher engagement rate (source Buddy Media)
6.Keep away from Negative Messaging
Tweets sent from a phone were 25 per cent more negative than those sent from computers or laptops, as well as more egocentric (source Daily Mail). Researchers claim that expressions of negative emotions on Twitter are associated with higher heart disease risk (source The Telegraph)
Millions of Followers, how does he do it?
And why does Donald have so many followers and a high engagement rate? Apart from already being a hugely controversial public figure, there are three simple reasons; One, he is totally unpredictable, Two he is very controversial and thirdly PR nightmares seem to wash straight over him. These three factors play a huge part Donald has so many followers, even though he completely defies the 'rules' of engagement on twitter...everyone is waiting to see what he'll say next.
