Have you all but given up on Twitter?

You’re not the only one. Ask 20 people to name their biggest problem with Twitter and you’re likely to get 20 different responses, each one as indignant as the next. If you don’t have time to listen to your interlocutors spout off, just ask Twitter can do right these days — you’ll be out of there in no time.

As a platform, Twitter has plenty of shortcomings. All social media sites do. For better or worse, though, Twitter remains among the best social media marketing vectors for B2B and B2C organizations. A lot has changed since its heyday in the late 2000s and very early 2010s; you won’t get very far with this vintage list of Twitter marketing tips, for instance.

This up-to-date list of 10 engagement-boosting best practices should.

Follow Back, With Caveats

Like most social media platforms, Twitter uses complex and opaque algorithms to assess and track its users. These algorithms are getting better every week at tracking and minimizing bots and spammy human handles, so it’s not in your best interest to follow random handles willy-nilly.

You absolutely should follow quality human handles that follow you first, though. Subject each new follower to a mini-Turing test that controls for variables like follower counts, profile image, location, description, tweet content. If they’re spouting out disjointed, advertorial garbage or have very low follower-to-following ratios, ignore them. Otherwise, give ‘em a follow.

Retweet Appropriate Mentions

If someone takes the time to call your business out by name or share content with which your firm is directly associated, acknowledge them with a “like” and retweet. You’ll immediately get said content — for instance, a media mention or favorable testimonial — in front of your followers, a small victory in itself.

Clarify What You Stand For

Your Twitter handle should be an unequivocal champion of your company’s mission and values — the very things you stand for and strive to uphold day in and day out.

There are dozens of ways to do this properly. The Twitter handle for Bixler University, a Vermont-based jeweler, offers one, with tweets that speak to Bixler’s commitment to quality and artisanship.

One representative blast reads: “Our master jewelers make all our fine jewelry *by hand* in North America. We’re proud to make an all-American product for an all-American audience.” You can’t get much clearer than that.

Ask Questions of Your Audience

Listen twice as much as you speak — at least.

Host regular tweetchats (like 1A, a popular NPR show) or Q&A sessions with company leadership. These formats keep the focus on your audience’s experiences and impressions, even if your side does some of the talking.

If you’re really feeling adventurous, flip the script and adopt Reddit’s “AMA” format. You’ll get more questions than you can answer, and that’s the point.

Share More Than You Speak

The same logic applies to shared content. For every piece of internally produced content or company news that you share on Twitter, reserve at least three tweets for third-party content that’s relevant to your industry or brand. Overly sales-y tweets are liable to wear on your audience; breaking them up with long, non-sales-y interludes is a good play, even if your audience doesn’t always know what to make of it.

Get Comfortable With Live Streaming

This one is easy: if you have a scheduled event that’s open to the public in real life, live-stream it on Twitter (and Facebook) as well. It’s too important to be kept under wraps.

Learn to Thread Properly

Sometimes, you can’t say it in 280 characters. There’s nothing wrong with taking more than one tweet to get your point across, provided you thread the whole conversation properly. Twitter has a good primer on tweet threading here.

Avoid Over-Tagging

Ever heard the phrase, “don’t @ me”? It’s commonly used and totally understandable — if slightly rude — the expression essentially means, “I want to generate conversation without directly engaging with individual followers.”

Proper Twitter etiquette encourages unspoken adherence to “don’t @ me” protocols. Do your part by eschewing individual tags in your tweets unless they’re necessary for attribution — for instance when you’re sharing content that your followers might assume is original without its creator’s tag present.

Lay Out “Favorite” Themes

Settle on a few “favorite” non-advertorial content themes, then hit them consistently. Your ideal themes align with your core products or services but aren’t overtly sales-y. For instance, if you’re in the home meal kit delivery business, one obvious avenue is kitchen design. Your customers clearly use their kitchens, and they’re probably interested in doing so more efficiently given that they’re investing in meal kits, but your company doesn’t have a money-making or -losing dog in that fight.

Two real-world examples drive this point home. At first glance, it’s not clear what long-distance travel has to do with FitBit. But consider FitBit’s core audiences: upscale, mobile urban professionals who care deeply about their physical and mental well-being.

Indeed, FitBit’s wheelhouse overlaps pretty neatly with Michelob ULTRA’s — which is one big reason that ultra-low-calorie beer brand can’t share the Twitter limelight with its more traditionally minded parent.

Use Screenshots to Underscore Your Points

Yet another argument that pictures really are worth a thousand words. Screenshots are all-purpose engagement boosters, even if you’re merely screenshotting highlighted text in the article to which your tweet links.

Remember, most Twitter users scroll rapidly through their feeds, slowing just enough to comprehend the words and images in the tweets rushing by. They’ll reward anything you can do to make their lives easier.

Life Comes at You Fast

However, you choose to engage (or not) with your fellow tweeters, remember that the world is more complicated than Twitter’s 280-character limit might suggest. It’s worth reiterating point #4: that, paradoxically, the world’s chattiest platform is at its best when its users actually listen to one another.