Twitter has been around for quite a long time now. Over the years many different techniques of using it for various purposes have seen the daylight. Some of them work till this day and some simply faded into the past.

However, the fact still remains … Twitter is great for expanding your reach online, no matter if you’re running an online business, or just want to build your personal brand.

In this post, I’m not going to give you a magic-bullet solution or anything, just a set of usable tips that will help you to extend your reach and build some new connections.

1. Follow first

Chances are that you won’t attract a big stream of new followers if you don’t follow people first. Therefore, the best way around is to browse Twitter by keywords and find interesting profiles in your range of interests (or the niche you’re in).

If you follow such people and if they notice that you have something in common, they will probably follow you back.

Task: follow 10 new people a day.

2. Join conversations

Twitter is all about talking to other people, not spamming them via direct messages. So start by searching for some relevant #hashtags or simple keywords.

For instance, if you’re in the guitar playing niche, you can do a search for “guitar playing” and join every conversation you find.

Task: join 2 conversations every day.

3. Start new conversations

The idea is quite the same, but this time you’re the person starting the conversations. To make it work, it’s good to have a nice following beforehand, but this is not a must.

You can start by asking a thought-provoking question and adding some relevant #hashtags to it. Remember that you’re not the only one searching with #hashtags…

Task: start 1 conversation every day.

4. @mention people

@mentions are one of the native functionalities of Twitter, and one of the best ones at the same time. Whenever you @mention someone they see it in their Mentions menu. The person doesn’t even have to follow you to be able to see this (unlike with direct messages).

You can use @mentions to ask someone a question directly, or to answer their question. It’s good to start by creating a separate list of people you want to reach out to. That way you won’t overlook any interesting tweets.

Task: @mention 5 people every day.

5. Tweet your content

This one is obvious, but I’m including it on this list only to tell you not to go overboard with this.

There are people on Twitter who tweet up to 30 times a day about their content (links to their sites). This might work if you’re TechCrunch, but if you’re just a one-person blog/brand this will seem unnatural.

You’re way better off tweeting about your content 2-3 times a day among many other tweets.

However, when you do tweet make sure to provide a link and preferably some #hashtags as well.

Task: tweet about your content 2-3 times every day.

6. Re-tweet

Re-tweets are the second native functionality of Twitter. But this one was invented by users themselves. In its beginnings a re-tweet was indicated by “RT @person” standing before the actual tweet.

People still like their updates being re-tweeted. This is an indication that someone enjoys a given tweet enough to share it with their followers.

If you re-tweet someone a lot, they will surely notice this and maybe reach out to you directly.

No matter what effect you’re going for, re-tweeting in general improves the experience everyone gets from Twitter.

Also, apart from re-tweeting links to other people’s content you can also re-tweet normal tweets, to give them better exposure.

Task: re-tweet 10+ tweets every day.

What’s your experience with Twitter? Do you have any questions you’d like to have answered?

Karol K. is a Twitter enthusiast, blogger, and writer. To find him, tune in to ThemeFuse.com – the place where you can find some great WordPress themes.