Twitter is being used more and more in business, as a way to communicate, engage with customers and even find new prospective customers. And it’s important to remember that Twitter isn’t just an outlet for shooting off random thoughts (although if you want to, why not?). It’s actually a relatively quick and easy kind of content marketing …. technically it is blogging, or more accurately micro blogging. Bearing that in mind a little thought over what you tweet can improve your results considerably.

Here are a few tips that might help you when writing your tweets:

* Make it timely. Tweets should ideally be things that have just happened, or even better that are happening right now.

* Keep it as short as possible. Yes, tweets are restricted to 140 characters but that doesn’t mean you have to use them all. One line tweets are easy to read at a glance.

* Think of a tweet as a headline. Your tweet is just an introduction to a story – not a story in its entirety. (The story comes in the link to something else on your blog or website.)

* Keep it personal. The most interesting tweets are those that seem to have been written just for you. Write as if you’re speaking to someone you know.

* Start with a question, or a statement that ends in an exclamation mark. An old copywriting technique maybe, but it works well for tweets.

Here are some ‘power words’ that work well with that technique: How, what, why, where, are, if, is.

* Add media. Tweets that include media will , generally, always get more impressions, more likes and more retweets. If your tweet is really good there’s even a chance of going viral.

Even just adding a quick pic from your phone should get your tweet more exposure. It doesn’t even need to be of that good quality and often it works better if it isn’t. Just make sure it’s interesting and relevant, not just something you’ve done for the sake of it.

Lastly remember Twitter is still fairly new, when used as a way of communicating for business at least. So feel free to ignore whatever rules anyone might tell you (including me) and try your own ideas. Search for users who have large numbers of followers – preferably in the thousands – and copy their style. Chances are they know what they’re doing!