Twitter, as we all know, is a very popular and growing social media site. It only started in 2006 but it is very popular now (You should really try it out if you haven’t!).

So if you are an active twitter user, here are 10 ways to improve your twitter, most of which you hadn’t done.

1. Block auto DMs and enable email notifications for DMs

In case you didn’t know, DMs are Direct Messages. And they can be automated. So whenever you follow a person who has automated DMs enabled, you get a “Welcome” DM from them, which isn’t genuine.

So, why not block it? If you do so, your twitter inbox would be much cleaner. You would only receive genuine DMs. Here are the steps to block ‘em.

1)  Log in to Twitter.
2)  Follow @OptMeOut.
3)  Wait for @OptMeOut to follow you back. @OptMeOut will send you a DM to tell you it has followed you.
4)  Then send a DM to @OptMeOut. (You can write whatever you want in the DM, it does not matter.)
5)  After sending the DM, unfollow @OptMeOut. (This way your opting out remains private since you won’t be in the list of @OptMeOut’s followers. We will unfollow you as well.)

Must be done in that order.

For more information of opting out of auto-DMs, click here.

And now that you have gotten rid of all the spam, you can enable email notifications now.

Now you will be notified every time a person sends you a genuine, personal direct message, via email .

2. Share your replies with others

If you send out a reply starting with ‘@username’, a big bunch of people is not going to see that reply, unless they are following you and the person to whom you are replying.

So if you think your reply is useful, go add something before ‘@username’ like

‘Hey @username I think it looks brilliant! http://bit.ly/2t6XtY”

or with a full stop.

“.@username I think it is amazing! http://bit.ly/2t6XtY”

3. Get a custom twitter background

A custom twitter background is cool and pretty (Much, much better than the default one). It also gives your profile visitors some information about you. Plus, it gives more evidence that you are a human and not another bot, which most people don’t like to follow.

Here is my example of a twitter background.

Click here for 10 websites to look for stunning (and free) twitter backgrounds.

4. At least, tweak the colors

If you don’t think you have the time to create a twitter background, you should at least tweak some of your twitter profile’s colors. Default twitter colors are just too…default.

Go to Settings >> Design >> Change Design Colors to do that.

5. Subscribe to a twitterer

Well, sometimes it’s easy to miss tweets on twitter when you are away. If you don’t want to miss tweets from a particular person, subscribe to their twitter feed using an RSS reader.

Of course, subscribe to a person (so that it won’t mess your RSS reader up) whose updates are interesting, useful, or important, like @spam, or even celebrities.

To do this, click on the RSS icon (the orange thingy) at the sidebar of a twitter profile and paste that link into your RSS reader.

6. Create a twitter landing page

When you click the homepage link on a twitter profile, you go to the person’s website. Have you ever thought of creating a twitter landing page specified for visitors from twitter?

On the landing page, you can introduce yourself, your best blog posts, etc.

My example of a twitter landing page.

7. Capitalize your twitter username (i.e. twitter handle)

We’ll use John Yankee as an example.

http://twitter.com/johnyankee –> http://twitter.com/JohnYankee

Get the idea? It makes your name looks less confusing and easier to read.

To do that, go your twitter settings and capitalize the first letters of your name. And…you’re done!

Don’t worry, twitter profile addresses are not case sensitive so you can reach http://twitter.com/JohnYankee if you type http://twitter.com/johnyankee.

8. Don’t just tweet about what you are doing!

Sometimes people are not very interested to know what you are doing.

So, tweet other stuff, like

1. Links
2. Quotes
3. Facts
4. Jokes
5. Puns
6. News

Here are 16 types to tweets to tweet.

9. Come on, tweet something personal!

If you tweet a lot of  links and quotes and facts and stuff, you should really tweet something personal; something interesting about your life. If it is not interesting, make it interesting.

Tweeting personal tweets help your followers to get to know you and your personality better. It also helps to prove that you are a real person and not a robot.

10. Use twitter like Yahoo! Answers

(Credits to @the_gman for this point)
Twitter is an interactive tool so it is important to occasionally tweet some questions for your followers to answer. This shows to your followers that you want to interact with them and they will probably answer your question.

Here are some tips when asking questions

1. Use it as a research tool.
2. Sometimes twitter is better than Google in helping you solve your problems. Example.
3. Don’t ask questions that are impossible to answer, or they won’t be answered at all.
4. Ask questions that are easy to answer to generate more replies.
5. Ask questions when your loyal followers are most active.

And, not only you should ask questions, you should answer questions and help people solve their problems too, which builds friendship.

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So those are my 10 ways to improve your twitter. If you liked this post, please feel free to share it with your twitter buddies.

Do you know of any other ways to improve one’s twitter? Please feel free to share them in the comments .

Happy tweeting!