That is the question! There are a lot of factors you need to take into consideration before you even ask yourself if you should tweet or not. Factors like topics, replies and the frequency, all must be thought about and I will show you what you need to consider before sending that post out to anyone.
Topical Tweeting
Topic is something all Twitter users have to scratch their brain a little bit from time to time, but once you have this sorted; you will never find difficulty with it again. One thing I would suggest to anyone and everyone who wants to tweet well and as a result of that, gain followers, is to follow, but more importantly listen to the most influential people and brands that are relevant to your niche. Study their activities and ask yourself whether you think what they are doing is successful. A way to measure how successful a tweet was is generally by how many times it was re-tweeted, but also how many replies it received. A re-tweet tends to mean that the tweet was informative so the follower wishes to inform his crowd of the news or other informative piece of information; however, a reply tends to be a question where an audience has been asked to participate. There are exceptions sometimes but this is the general rule of thumb.
How To Find Relevant Information
Now once you have studied your competition, you have to find what would be most useful for you to use. I must stress that you should not copy any other profiles as that gives no incentive to follow you as it isnt actually you, it is simply someone elses thoughts and thoughts and opinions. Try and stay as unique as possible with your tweets and how you tackle your whole social media campaign. One way to keep up to date with what is happening in your niche is to sign up to Google Alerts for keywords that are relevant. I myself am signed up to receive SEO, Google, social media, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube alerts because these topics are relevant to me and my followers. Once signed up to alerts, dont just tweet anything and everything that comes up in mailbox. Quality not quantity is a very key point in Twitter. One epic tweet a day is better than 500 poor spammy posts, so bear that in mind. When reading your Google Alerts, think about what you have found interesting, if you liked something, chances are your followers will find it interesting too.
Avoiding Irrelevant Posts
Bacon and Eggs for breakfast, yummy - this kind of post needs to be thought about carefully, as well all similar random tweets. You need to ask yourself if your followers actually care about what you had for breakfast. I would advise twitter profiles that are for a company and not an individual to stay away from food topics as it isnt relevant but personal profiles are much more suited. Also where you are and what you are doing. This can be a great tweet but again it needs to be interesting, I think I have stressed that you cannot be boring if you want to succeed on Twitter, but if you have just met a celebrity, or had lunch with a very influential person in your niche, then you should definitely let your followers know.
Depending on what niche you are in and the type of person or company you are will definitely change what you tweet about, but make sure you give each tweet some thought about if it is interesting or not, because that is what is going to affect your followers and the decision they make whether they click that follow button or not.
Getting Everyone Involved
It is all well and good tweeting facts and offers to your followers, but really what makes a great profile is getting your fans opinions and getting them involved with what you and they have to say. The easiest way to accomplish this is by asking questions and opinions. This does not necessarily have to be about your company or product, it could be for advice, for example Where is a nice sushi place in London? Just an example, but one thing you should think about is if you care or not. If you genuinely couldnt care less about what your followers have to say on a subject, then dont even ask them. Ask what youre interested in knowing, one of the most important things to be on Twitter and any social network, and of course in the real world, is to be yourself.
Frequent Tweeting
It is important to stay active on Twitter. If you dont tweet enough then your followers could get bored of you. The more active you stay, the more visible you are to users who are not following you and the more interesting you seem to those who are following you. It is important to put quality in front of quantity. Because if you are tweeting constantly about nonsense then you run the risk of looking spammy and actually annoying your followers by filling up their timeline. I personally tweet on average about twenty times a day. That may be too much for some people but you have to find your own balance and that will take some experimentation.
When Should I Tweet?
There are a lot of different theories on when is best to tweet, because followers can and usually are scattered all over the world. I suggest you first find out where your followers are by using this tool, http://www.mapmyfollowers.com/. Using this tool will show you where the majority of your followers are from and then you will know when the best time to tweet is. For myself, my followers are divided by the UK and the US. The numbers are very close in regards to how many on either side I have. So as a result of this I need to entertain my American friends as well as my native UK residents. To combat this, I schedule tweets for times that I would be unavailable to tweet, like 8 PM or later, but these scheduled tweets do not have to be unique, you could have tweeted them earlier that day. Whenever I tweet a link or news story, I schedule it for 12 hours later to account for people on the other side of the world. This method means I am active 24 hours a day even when I am not even at my computer. If you are not sure how to schedule your tweets, there are a tonne of social media management suites, one of which is Tweetdeck, which I have written a review for, - this and other management suites allow you to schedule updates for later, which is an amazing advantage for many. A general rule of thumb is that prime time is at 4PM UK time, because everyone in the UK is about to leave work and everyone in the US has just started. 4PM is the best time to make the maximum amount of impressions.
Conclusion
So the next time you tweet, make sure you take all of these factors into consideration. To get this right, it does take practice, but you will eventually get the hang of it and understand your audience more and more as time goes on. Twitter requires patience for followers to grow and for your profile and techniques to develop, but once enough time has passed, then you will see the benefits.