Communicating a message, whether it is a promotion for your products and services, a contest or just articles on your website, on Twitter can result in great responses. However, the message needs to be delivered correctly so that audience – your followers – can pick it up quickly. To run a successful Twitter account and gain a lot of great benefits from the social network, here are a few things you need to do.

Construct the Right Message

Twitter is 80% noise and 20% useful information. This is just how the social network is developed. Most of the time, you will see users sharing their daily activities, jokes and links to random sites. These are what we call noises. In order for your message to be received, you need to separate yourself from the noise.

A good Twitter message, or a Tweet, is one that can grab followers’ attention. You need to have:

• A catchy line that users will read when scrolling through the timeline
• A link to more information on the message
• A picture to help separate the message from other Tweets on the users’ timeline

By combining these three elements, you can reach a high number of followers every time.

Ignite Engagement

Twitter is not the place to do one-way sharing of content. It is a place where users – including yourself – can share, interact and communicate in real-time. Sharing the message and not engaging to responses is just bad practice.

In fact, you should always design your message to arouse engagement. Let users reply, retweet and reshare your message. Have them involved in a conversation or an activity.

A good example of getting engagement is the campaign for The Godzilla 2014 movie. It uses a transparent image of the Godzilla’s tail in the clouds. When seen on Twitter’s timeline – with a white background – the tail is simply invisible. When users started to zoom in – showing the picture against a black background – however, the tail was visible. It instantly went viral and millions of users were talking about it. This is the kind of response you need to ignite.

Tweet Regularly

Just like posting new articles on your blog or website, tweets must also be sent regularly. Not tweeting for a day or two will make users think the account is no longer active; you may lose a lot of followers this way.

Instead of posting sporadically, keep tweeting at least once every two hours. Don’t forget to reply to users publicly (with the user’s Twitter handle on the back of the Tweet) and answer questions to increase your level of engagement.

Interact and Be Personal

The Twitter account may be about your brand, but the person running it is still human. Address users who interact with you on Twitter personally. Answer questions whenever you can and ask questions so users can get involved with sharing valuable content. Don’t forget to incorporate links to a blog post when you need to share something in details. One last thing: don’t hesitate to apologize when you make mistakes.