Twitter poses a particularly interesting platform for marketers. We have a few tips that will enable you to make the most of your marketing efforts. The challenges lie in the fact that there is a limit on the length of the updates you can send and that you aren’t guaranteed an audience who will view your tweets.

1. The weekend is the best time for Twitter. Saturdays and Sundays have a 17% increased engagement rate over weekdays. Large brands are already using this statistic, and 19% of brands have marketing efforts active on Twitter over the weekend.

2. As far as a time to tweet goes, between 8:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. increases visibility by up to 30%. Some 64% of brands tweet during this time. This includes weekends and is a no-brainer since may be the most natural time to work in. If you are targeting a particular geographical region, be certain to calculate the difference in time zones before sending out your tweets.

3. Twitter is geared for short messages. Statistics reveal that messages with less than 100 characters have a 17% increased engagement rate. Keep your messages short and to the point for a better engagement experience.

4. #Hashtags are your friends. Tweets with hashtags have double the engagement effect as those without. Plus, being in a sweet spot to be trending helps your tweets to snowball. Most companies are still not taking advantage of hashtags. In fact, less than 25% of tweets have hashtags.

5. #Hashtags allow you to add emotional elements to your message and are an effective method of subliminal communication. For example, if you want to engage the idea of a launch, your product launch tweet could have the message, “Widget with increased efficiency is a go! #launch #greensignal” #greensigna.” Tweets with up to two #hashtags have over 20% increase in engagement, whereas more than two will decrease your effectiveness by over 15%.

6. If you want something ask for it. A message with RT or Retweet: will have a 12-fold chance of being retweeted versus a regular message. Just 1% of tweets ask for a retweet. There is a gold mine of traffic in simply asking for retweets. To maximize effectiveness, use a #hashtag that is trending and ask for a retweet in your message. Using the word RT increases your success rate by a factor of 10. However, using the word Retweet increases effectiveness by a factor of 23.

There will always be standard Twitter best practices such as completely filling out your profile, putting in a tagline, having a relevant profile photo and of course a name that doesn’t end with a number, etc. Make the most of your Twitter marketing and happy tweeting!