For better or for worse, Twitter has become an essential tool of journalists and news outlets alike. Not only can it help in discovering or reporting stories, it’s also valuable in connecting with your audience and gaining eyeballs, which is why retweets are so important. In the latest Mediabistro feature, digital media pros give advice to journos and news orgs on how to ensure that your tweets don’t fall into the Internet abyss. For example, a common rookie mistake is:

3. You don’t have the right followers

When it comes to Twitter, it’s not just the quantity of your followers that counts but also the quality of your followers. “The more influential followers you have, the more likely you are to get to retweets,” said Sree Sreenivasan, Columbia University’s chief digital officer and a digital media professor at its journalism school.

Your followers’ followers can actually have a profound impact on the distance your tweets can go. “Think about the folks that are following you and who are following them,” Sreenivasan said.

Get four more tips in The Real Reason You’re Not Getting Retweeted.

The full version of this article is exclusively available to Mediabistro AvantGuild subscribers. If you’re not a member yet, register now for as little as $55 a year for access to hundreds of articles like this one, discounts on Mediabistro seminars and workshops, and all sorts of other bonuses.

As if researching, writing, and publishing a story isn’t enough work, we have to promote them, too. It’s easy enough with social media, especially if you have a social media guru in your newsroom. But it’s also easy to get caught click baiting on Twitter. Noam Cohen of The New York Times wrote about the Twitter account @HuffPoSpoilers this week, which tweets summaries of Huffington Post stories, which are usually tweeted with vigor — and lots of buzzwords. Often, the story isn’t as interesting as the tweet.

Don’t fall into your publications tweeting traps. Let them tweet what they will, but take matters into your own hand, too. 

Whatever your platform, I think what comes before the link should be treated with as much care as your lede and 140 characters should suffice. 

•  Remember the 5 W’s and the H. It’s hard not to bait your followers, but don’t make me wonder where, say, that earthquake hit. If it’s so far away from your target reader that they may not click on the link, you’ll have to live with that.

• Unless you work for TMZ, lose the crazy adjectives. Did the congressperson really ‘explode’? Is Marissa Mayer really leading a ‘revolution’? Check yourself. 

• About retweeting. I often fall into the trap of tweeting story links with a vague, one word response. But I’m making a pledge to all my social media friends to start being more useful. If you tweet a story that’s not yours, tell me why I need to read it. ‘Right on,’ or ‘This is naive,’ are click-bait cliches. The short links give you so many characters to describe the story to me — use them wisely! Give me a reason to bookmark the link and read it later. Be your brand, and venture to have an opinion of your own now and again. 

No. 4: You don’t post often enough.

Facebook and Twitter might be the big boys, but people read news on LinkedIn, too. And, while Google+ might not be racking up a ton of active users, if you’re on there, you should at least share something every now and then. The point is don’t leave your profiles barren.

So, pick a schedule: maybe three to five times daily for Facebook and 15 minutes a day where you line up all your tweets using Tweetdeck. And check back regularly to see if people have responded or shared your posts. An application like Twunfollow can give some indication of whether you are annoying your audience with irrelevant content. And, whatever you do, don’t cross-link your feeds. Each platform has its own needs and different audiences.

Get remedies for five more common errors in The Biggest Mistakes Journalists Make in Social Media. [subscription required]