Change your profile picture. Use a picture of yourself to make it seem more personalized if this is your personal Twitter account.

Utilize as much of the 160-character limit Twitter BIO space allows. Include keywords your followers or potential followers may be searching for.

Create your own background image. However, do not make the image too much like an ad or sales pitch. The background image must be less than 800k and we recommend a size of 1600x1200 for a large image or smaller if you plan on tiling the image or just having it on the left-hand side. Finally, keep in mind that smaller resolutions and monitor sizes will hide much of the background.

Taking advantage of the hundreds of different third-party online tools and services will enhance your Twitter experience! Below are a few which we recommend!

1. Twitpic - Take advantage of Twitpic to post pictures on your tweeter! If you want to post pictures while away from the computer, simply use the Twitterific application!

2. Qwitter - A great support service that sends an e-mail to you any time someone unsubscribes from your Twitter profile and mentions a possible Twitter post you made that may have caused them to leave.

3. Manageflitter - Awesome site to help manage your followers and getting an easy to read overview of people not following you back, quiet users, and inactive users.

4. WeFollow - An extensive website that allows you to add yourself to a listing of Twitter users by tags you find interesting.

5. SocialOomph - Another wonderful service with a collection of free Twitter tools including the ability to schedule when a tweets gets posted.

6. Tweetbeat - A comprehensive website that records the trending topics on Twitter and gives you a clearer explanation of present and past trending topics.

7. TweetMeme - A really good location to find the hottest viral links on Twitter.

8. Twitter Grader - This website allows you to grade any Twitter account and gives you additional details and ranking information.

9. Twitter Fan Wiki Apps - Keep yourself relevant and updated with this listing of the most up-to-date Twitter tools and application!

Take full advantage of the Twitter search tool! We have a few tricks that can help improve your search capabilities on Twitter.

Search for your website, blog or twitter URL and see if others are mentioning your page.

Searching for anything near you by adding near:"city state". For example, typing near:"Fresno California" club would return current tweets that have happened in Fresno, California with the keyword club in them.

Find people who you may enjoy following by searching for keywords that interested you.

If you do not want tweets with links add ? -filter:links at the end of your search query.

Any time you get excellent results click the "Save this search" button to save that search. These searches can then be found under "Saved Searches" on the right-hand part of your profile on the old Twitter interface or under the "Searches" tab next to your timeline on the new Twitter interface.

Engage and interact with your followers!

Do not follow too many people. No one is going to follow someone who is following thousands of people but only has 10 followers.

Retweet interesting posts!

Retweet and participate in conversations with people with a lot of followers.

Realize it is impossible for anyone to read every single tweet!

When you first join twitter, do not follow hundreds of people immediately, doing this may mark you as a bot!

Try to make all your tweets informative, interesting, useful, funny or witty.

Do not post mundane posts, e.g. taking a nap.

Add hastags to your tweets. For example, if your tweet is about computers, consider adding #computer in the tweet.

Tweet frequently, on one is going to follow someone they do not know who has not tweeted in months. Try to tweet a few times a week or daily if you can manage it.

Do not whine or complain. Everyone will unfollow anyone who constantly whines or complains.

Try making your valuable tweets during the times people will most likely see them.

Keep some space available in your tweet in case someone retweets your post.

Understand the Twitter lingo! For example:

@reply refers to a mention. It is a function used to reply to another user(s) or send a direct message to a user.

Direct Message (DM) is any message sent directly to a specific user.

Hashtag is a function used with Twitter and other services that give a post or tweet a keyword. For example, someone could use the #cats hashtag to let others know it relates to cat and have it easily found and sorted. All hash tags must begin with the hast character, which is the symbol (#) above the 3 on U.S. keyboards.

ReTweet often abbreviated as RT is a term used on Twitter that describes the process of mentioning another users tweet. For example, if youread a tweet you enjoyed or think your followers might enjoy you can hover over the tweet and click the Retweet link to create your own tweet. When retweeting a tweet it will begin with RT @missdolliecrave, where @missdolliecrave would be the name of the user you retweeted.

Trending Topics are a listing of the top keywords or hashtags currently being discussed on Twitter. These trends are a powerful and easy way to see what the hot topics around the world or in your area are and who is talking about them.

Apple iPhones, Blackberry phones, Android phones, Windows phone 7 phones, and most of the other smart phones have Twitter applications. Take full advantage of these applications.
For users who do not have smart phones Twitter also has extensive support for SMS, which can send tweets over a text message.