Laurel Papworth on how to make the most of your Twitter account

Imagine if your thoughts and opinions could reach 6 million people every month. For social media expert, Laurel Papworth, this is a reality.

Having managed social media platforms for major companies, such as: Westpac, ABC TV and Sony - and after being named in Forbes Magazine's top 50 social media global influencers in 2012 - it made sense that we reached out for her top tips on making the most of the industry's twitter accounts. What did we find? Well, it's all about hashtags!

Let's talk about hashtags...

Why should you bother using hashtags? Well, not using a hashtag usually means only your own followers see your content and you don't get introduced to new people very quickly. Just like advertising to a Google keyword search can help you to reach your desired audience, connecting your updates to a hashtag connects you to a specific community. To connect to the financial services community I would tweet with #finserv or #fintech. Also #money for a more general audience. The key is to know the keywords for your target industry not your own industry.

The best way to find a hashtag is to monitor the key people in your target audience. Who tweets a lot and who tweets successfully? I use 'Twitter lists' and find them invaluable. For instance, my 'Execs Australia' list has 100 CEOs and CFOs and shows me the tweets ONLY from that list. From the CEO of La Trobe Financial, to the CEO of Pilbara Minerals to CEO of ING, it makes Twitter less about what people had for lunch and more about what senior executives consider as relevant information.

The most common use of a hashtag is as a search. If you click on #qanda you will be able to search for all tweets, Facebook updates, Instagram posts, LinkedIn posts etc. about the TV show Q&A. If you click #fintech on those platforms you will find those talking about financial services technology.

Want to know how to find and measure hashtags? Try Tweetreach.com. Type in the hashtag and see how many people tweeted it in the last 50 interactions, but mostly watch velocity - this is the time it took to reach 50 interactions. There's quite a bit of difference between 50 interactions in a minute and 50 interactions in an hour.

**What other tools can you use?**You can also try tools such as hashtagify.me and hashtags.org. Some of these give correlative analysis (keyword to keyword) others give the top tweeters in that category which is very useful for key influencer (citizen journalist) marketing campaigns.

What does this mean for the future? Twitter (just like Facebook and LinkedIn) uses Big Data to analyse audiences, including credit card purchases, home ownership etc., so you can check out analytics.twitter.com to see the income of your followers and their net worth and find out more about your audience (minimum number of followers required).

Laurel Papworth runs corporate workshops on social media and has 10,000 students studying with her online including her course on HASHTAGS. Laurel also teaches social media at the University of Sydney, connects personally with 6 million people online each month and has managed Facebook and blogs for TV shows such as Idol, Big Brother, and Junior Masterchef. laurelpapworth.com is her website and you can find her on twitter @silkcharm