Being “good” at Twitter is more of an art than a science.

There’s no magic formula for social media success, nor hard and fast rules for how to use Twitter well.

But there are guidelines, informed by scads of data and legitimized through case studies and success stories, for writing the “best” Twitter headlines as measured by their clickability. Tests have shown that you can increase your conversion rate on a link by 73% when you write a compelling headline.

And getting users to click on links in tweets is one of the major goals of brands using Twitter.

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Need a little weekend reading? We’ve compiled our top ten Twitter stories of the week, which includes the late Roger Ebert’s 8 rules for using Twitter, 5 ways that social media content is evolving for brands, news that men are far more likely that women to use social media whilst on the toilet (or drunk), how small business are using social media (and what they might be doing wrong) and a look at the many hats of a community manager.

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Social listening is the modern marketing practice of staying constantly attuned to your customers, fans, and followers, leveraging their free insight into your brand or business and engaging in a two-way social dialogue.

Twitter is a rich resource for social listening, with millions of conversations proliferating daily across the network about a wide range of companies and brands. A great place to start, if you’re interested in fine-tuning your listening, is with Mention.net, a free (up to a point) service that’s like Google Alerts on steroids.

But that’s just the beginning. For 10 solid tips on how to be a better listener on Twitter, keep reading.

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Much-loved film critic Roger Ebert died on Thursday after a long battle with thyroid cancer. Surgery in 2006 had left him unable to speak, but he continued to be a prominent user of social media, and Twitter was a particular favourite.

Indeed, after some initial resistance, with Ebert proclaiming that he would “never become a Twit” and that Twitter represented “the end of civilisation”, he would go on to write more than 30,000 tweets before his death.

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Need a little weekend reading? We’ve compiled our top ten Twitter stories of the week, which includes a study that reveals how prominent hashtags have now become, some eye-popping social media smartphone data, why Twitter’s Vine could soon be very important for brand marketing, social marketing tips for small businesses and a report that looks at how demographics use social media, and which platforms they prefer.

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Need a little weekend reading? We’ve compiled our top ten Twitter stories of the week, which includes the state of social sharing in 2013, a study which analyses which social media marketing tactics are driving the most engagement, a look at a popular hashtag which has been challenging stereotypes and misogyny in media, an 8-step social marketing strategy for brands and a visual that tracks the rise of social media apps.

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Ever go on vacation and your family BEGS you to leave the iPhone at home? You can’t, of course, because you’ll miss all the @mentions and @replies – and we ALL know that witty replies become exponentially less so as the days pass.

Why? Well, it seems like you’re not quick on your feet and that’s a Twitter taboo in the land of snappy comebacks and hashtags.

What’s an IRL human to do? Set an out of office reply on Twitter and then you can pick up where you left off, wit intact, and your family won’t divorce you!

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How many profiles should you follow on Twitter? Fast answer: as many as you can honestly manage.

There is no universal magic Twitter following figure that everybody needs to observe or should strive to meet. It’s entirely up to you. You should follow as many users as you find comfortable. And it’s important that you’re honest about this number, and that you aren’t simply following profiles because you feel it’s something you should do, or because you’re hoping that they will follow you back, because this isn’t how Twitter works. In fact, behaving in this way is counter-productive to enjoyment.

Follow too many people on Twitter and one or two things will happen:

1. Because of the sheer volume of tweets you’ll be forced to ignore many of them (or will simply miss their updates)

2. Twitter will be completely ruined for you

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Twitter’s learning curve is pretty steep, and when you’re new to the social micro-blogging network – especially if you’re brand new – it can quickly get overwhelming.

Where on earth do you begin?

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So, you’re probably aware of the Instagram vs. Twitter rift, in which Twitter cut off Instagram’s “find friends from Twitter” feature after which Instagram disabled photo integration with Twitter.

Many Instagram users still share their ‘grams directly to Twitter, but now their followers have to click the image link and be taken to Instagram, rather than being able to expand the image right in Twitter. Kind of annoying.

But, there’s a solution.

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