We are humans. We want it and we want it now! For you, that may be the new One Direction album, a trip to Florida or – in my case – a ground beef taco, Mexican-style, corn tortilla, with a lime, and salsa with a straw. Mmmmmm – please and thank you.

No, this post is not about my obsession with Mexican finger food. This post is about us people wanting everything in front of us very quickly and conveniently, and how social media, Twitter specifically, plays a role in that. Information is definitely something that we want and desire (whether you know it or not). By 2015, Americans are expected to consume media for more than 1.7 trillion hours, or an average of 15.5 hours per person per day, and that’s not counting workplace time. Goodness!

Social media is a large part of our lives and, more importantly, our business. It’s a quick way to get a variety of information. Twitter is a great social media platform for getting information to your audience – and quickly. With that being said, if you don’t know how to use it effectively, your message can get lost… and we don’t want that. I’ve compiled a few quick tips for sweet tweet success. Follow these tips and continue your path toward a successful Twitter strategy.

Short and sweet

Although Twitter limits you to a 140 character count, you don’t want to overload your message with excessive content. Our attention span has lowered to 8 seconds, compared to 12 seconds in 2000 – and that is quite the challenge to overcome. This is why it’s so important to create a message that is short, quick to the point, and relevant. Also, tweets with less than 100 characters get 17% more engagement, proving the short-and-sweet method to be most successful.

Timing is everything

Due to Twitter’s quick, real-time news feed, your target audience will only see your tweet for a short period of time. In fact, the average lifespan of a Tweet being viewed within their scrolling news feed is 18 minutes. Also, a recent Bitly study showed that the average shelf life of a post with a link, before it drops off the radar of your viewers, is about 3 hours.

Keep this in mind as you schedule posts ahead of time, using platforms such as Hootsuite. Timing is everything with a platform such as Twitter. Make sure you check your analytics to see when your audience is the most active and schedule posts around those peak times. If you are unsure how to look at these analytics, there is a tool called Tweriod that watches the peaks and valleys of your follower’s activity and spits those analytics out for you – no work on your end.

Buffer Social created an infographic regarding post times and how different audiences engage. There are two different audience interactions – B2B (Business to Business) or B2C (Business to Consumer). According to their study, posts with a business audience in mind get 14% more engagement on the weekends. Tweets to those within the consumer audience had a close call as to whether the weekday or weekend was best for posting on Twitter.

Picture perfect

When in doubt, post an image with your tweet. Here at Pathfinders, we encourage our clients to post an image or graphic with every tweet. Tweets with images get 2 times the engagement rate of those without. That alone should encourage the use of imagery. Imagery complements the fact that our attention spans are 8 seconds when viewing social media posts. If you can’t catch someone’s eye in 8 seconds, consider your post lost.

Track your success

Interested in knowing how your posts are doing? With the help of a Bitly tracking tool, you can analyze the interaction of all Bitly links posted within your tweets. This will give you a good idea of who is actually clicking on the content you post. Shorten your URL link at Bitly.com and once, you post your tweet, link included, you can check back its progress by entering the shortened Bitly link into the web address bar. Add a “+” to the end, click enter, and voila!.. a new webpage opens with the link’s analytics.

Don’t get broken up with

Treat Twitter the same as a relationship. Don’t do all the talking. If you don’t listen and interact, you will get broken up with. Not literally, but figuratively in the social media world. If you’re not looking at what others are posting, you won’t build relationships with your audience or build your brand to its fullest recognition potential.

I hope these sweet tweet treats help you and your business’s social media plan. If there are too many items to think about, start with one item at a time and build your brand using these Twitter strategies. Need help getting started on these items or have a question? Tell us about it in the comment section below and see how we can assist you in your social media journey, or in the Twitter-bird-world, assist you in your flight. Happy tweeting!