Hello - you could tweet about industry related news, interesting articles you have read which relate to your business (have a look through industry related article websites, theres loads!) and when you can, try and write your tweets in a way that engage discussion (perhaps ask for opinions) ..people retweeting and replying to you is a good way to interact and gain followers. Hope this helps!

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Telephone Answering virtual assistant
alldaypa.com

Also check to see what is trending. I've done a good bit of work with trending terms, a number of my clients use them at the end of their tweets. This past week, we were pushing for awareness for Fragile X and by ending each of my tweets personal and business with #FragileX I gained a number of followers for both accounts, which provides possible new client contacts.

Lisa, I like your idea of a tweet task schedule. I'm new to Twitter both personally and professionally. I may have to steal your idea to get me on a consistent schedule.

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Donna
Paragon Support Services

I also don't tweet only about my business, for example, I 'm obsessed with the Android OS, so I follow and converse with a lot of Android folks. I tweet w/ local news folks as well and businesses. I like seeing a business profile that is as much about the person as it is the business, it feels less like an advertisement to me. Obviously you need to watch what you're tweeting, don't get too personal, keep it professional.

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Stacey Harris
On Demand Virtual Assistant

I'm not a huge fan of automation for social media (I especially dislike the automatic messages I get when I follow someone new on twitter!) BUT I do like to automate my blog posts and email messages to twitter.

Blog Posts - I use Tweetable which automatically sends my blog posts to twitter.
Email - I use Aweber which sends emails to my list out to twitter automatically, too.

Then of course all the advice on building relationships and engaging comes into play on top of the automation. If it's all automated then you will turn people off.

I'm always careful of spending too much time on Twitter/Facebook as more direct methods get me better results.

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WordPress Website Design Course for Virtual Assistants and Small Businesses

I agree - automation for social aspects is generally a bad idea. The 'thanks for following' automated mesage is very annoying!

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Telephone Answering virtual assistant
alldaypa.com