These days it seems like every time we turn around someone is telling us how to manage our Twitter account(s). Whether they're talking about managing a business, a community or even a personal account, I sort of feel like I'm always being told what to do. Sadly, as my mother knows very well, I usually don't take well to being told what to do. This is especially true when it comes to social media... I mean do we really think there's only one way to get the job done? I'm thinking... no.

Personally, it just doesn't make sense to give a presentation or write a post about Twitter and talk in absolutes. What works for me, may not work for you at all. So please, just know that if you're not doing it the way XYZ Company is doing it, that doesn't mean you're doing it wrong. In fact, you're probably doing it right, and by "right" I mean right for you.

At SES New York a couple weeks ago there were quite a few sessions about social media and even specifically on Twitter. Now, there was a mix of some advice I wouldn't always agree with but there was also some great information. I live-tweeted the event, so I've thrown in some of my favorite advice from the conference.

How Do you Engage?

I'm a huge fan of engaging on Twitter and feel strongly that this is how we've gained a large following on Twitter. However, not everyone agrees. When it comes to the SEOmoz account, I reach out to people all the time even if it's just a *high five* or a #woohoo type of response. You'll find that if you complain about us in some way, you may very well get a response. [Sometimes you won't, that might depend if curse words were involved ;) ].

But, this is how we engage. Remember that there simply isn't just one way to engage with your followers on Twitter and don't let anyone tell you there is.

In some instances "engaging" with your followers may simply be tweeting relevant content. Take a look at the Search Engine Land account, they don't reply to people, retweet or anything of the sort. They focus on publishing great content and tweeting about it. The account has almost 37,000 followers so people obviously find value in this type of account. Remember that engagement doesn't necessarily mean respond to every tweet, it could mean just understanding what your audience wants.

"Engagement" is such a general word, and to be honest I feel like it's way overused [although this alone could probably be a separate post]. My point here is simple, test, try, play, and take a step out of the norm... and remember that a Twitter response may not be the best response.

For example, when I was at SES NY I complained on Twitter that the wifi I had paid for at the Hilton NY wasn't working. The next day I got an email from the Rooms Division Manager. What the what?! That's right, the social media person alerted someone about my complaint, looked up my account and saw that I was actually a diamond member and 1. shouldn't have had to pay for the wifi and 2. wanted to fix the problem ASAP. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. This blew me away, and I manage social media all day long!

Believe me, I'll be giving that a shot one of these days. :) How can you engage with your users outside of the proverbial Twitter box?

What Should You Tweet?

"Don't be promotional"

"Always retweet power users"

"Never talk about politics or religion"

"Tweet every post 3 times"

"The ratio of tweets to replies should be 3 to 1"

Meh. This is some of the advice I've seen and read about what you should be tweeting about on Twitter. Well from my perspective if you listen to this advice you are simply limiting yourself. With Twitter, the sky's the limit! Again it all boils down to your particular audience and what they like or don't like.

With social becoming an essential piece to an overal marketing strategy and specifically beneficial for SEO, it's definitely important to think about what you're tweeting. But don't confine yourself to a little box.

At the SEOmoz account you'll find a little bit of everything. We have silly tweets, informational tweets, we tweet about every one of our blog & YOUmoz posts and we retweet posts when it makes sense for our community. This works for us. Often times we'll tweet the same post twice, but use different text each time to see which one does better. We may even give "promoted tweets" a gander and see how that works. But you know us... we love to test!

If you're not sure what your followers want... ask! People love to give their opinion, and asking them to fill out a poll or just simply asking them what they'd like to see from your account will go a long way.

Whatever you do, don't limit yourself. Try testing out different types of tweets and see what kind of a response you get. The idea here is just to get your brain thinking about all the different types of content you can tweet.

When Is the Right Time to Tweet?

Look, I understand that there are certain times of day when people are more active and other times when people tend to retweet more. It's definitely important to test these out and to check out Dan Zarrella's findings to get a good idea of where to get started. But your community is different than my community, don't base your Twitter strategy on what works for SEOmoz or any other company. You have to determine this for yourself and figure out when you should tweet that works best for your followers/community.

Here at SEOmoz we have a very international following, so I set up tweets to go out while I'm sleeping in Pacific time, because our Londoners are just getting to work. Obviously I'm not responding and engaging at that particular time, but those tweets about posts, upcoming webinars, etc. get lots of retweets at that time. If you're a local restaurant that is open only for breakfast and lunch, the times you should be tweeting is going to be extremely different than ours.

Break.the.rules. Seriously people, don't be so scared by Twitter. Sure, there are ways you can screw things up but think of all the great tweets that go out every single day that don't end up as the topic of someone's blog post? Thousands? Millions? A lot. :)

Please...

Bloggers and speakers I'm begging you to remind people when you're talking about Twitter that there is more than one way to manage a Twitter account.

Now that I've beat it into your brain that there isn't just one way to manage Twitter, I'd really love to hear how you manage your account or how you've seen others manage their account that you liked. Go ahead, throw it all into the comments below. :) I'd also love to hear actionable stories about how you've used certain tools to increase your followers, engagement, etc.