Twitter, Vital for Business?
It seems everyone is talking about Twitter, and you keep hearing about how businesses need to be involved in social media, and no social media campaign is complete without Twitter. With nearly 200 MILLION users, Twitter is a huge opportunity for businesses to engage customers and communicate with peers. But, you don't have time to learn a new Web site, and you don't get why anyone cares about what you ate for lunch.
So, let's dispel the some of the hype. While it is true you can post about your last meal, you run a business, and lunch is not necessarily the sort of message you care for people to know about you. But if you are having a luncheon with the Chamber of Commerce, you may want to share!
The second thing to realize is that Twitter is simple. Dead simple. There is no great learning curve to using Twitter. If you can run a business, you can use Twitter.
So, this post is to help someone new to Twitter get up and running and learn a little about some of the tools out there to make our lives easier and help succeed on Twitter.
How to attract Twitter Followers?
The first step to attracting followers is to post content that is useful. Build up one hundred of more tweets and you will start to see a few followers. Make sure your Tweets are not too sales-y, and offer some value. Tweet about information you've read, or tips and tricks, offer compliments to someone. Be genuine. It drives me nuts when I see a new follower is just posting their own material over and over. Remember, people hate commercials, and if all you seem to care about is self promotion, nobody will respond. Give me some reason to follow you. Be original, be personal, be useful.
One mistake that I often see is people create a new Twitter account, and immediately start following thousands of people. Sure some will follow you back, either because they have an "auto-follow" set up, but I choose to vet my followers before I will follow them back. If someone has created an account and has 2 tweets and is following over a thousand people, with few people following them back, I will often NOT follow them.
One of the best ways to attract followers on Twitter is to follow other Twitter users. So, how do you decide whom to follow? I like to follow people who post information that I find interesting. In the world of Web design, there are so many blogs and bloggers that keeping up with all of the information out there is challenging. Well, Twitter helps me solve this problem. By following poeple who post links to blogs, I can easily skim their tweets for blogs that look interesting to me. Often, bloggers whom I like will have a link to their Twitter account, and I will follow them. This often leads to them following me, and many times their followers will also follow me.
Use Twitter Tools
One of the beautiful things about Twitter is it's simplicity. This simplicity has opened the door for creative developers to create very usefull tools that can make your life much easier. Many tools are free for basic accounts, and offer more advanced features as paid subscription accounts. What sorts of tools should you use?
Tweet Schedulers
A tweet scheduler does just what it sounds like. Using a scheduler, you can put together several tweets and have them post at a specific time and day. The life span of a tweet is incredibly short. If you tweet right now, chances are with in seconds, it will be buried under dozens of tweets. You may find your followers use Twitter more during certain times of the day. A Tweet Scheduler allows you to Tweet at just the right time, when it will be seen by the majority of your followers, even if you are busy at that time.
Often, we will schedule a customer's tweets at the beginning of the month, with one Tweet every day. This way we avoid annoying our followers with dozens of Tweets. That is bad netiquette, and can cost you followers.
Use you scheduler to plan for special events. If you are attending a conference, schedule a couple of Tweets promoting the event for a few days before the event. If there is a holiday coming up, go ahead and schedule a Tweet the honor the holiday. Do not use schedulers to bombard your followers all day, every day. Remember, treat your follows as you wish to be treated. If you abuse them, they will leave you. With Twitter, as with all social networks, we are building relationships, not audiences.
Auto Followers
Back to building a following on Twitter. While you need to choose some key people to follow, you will find that people will start following you in greater numbers. One way to speed up the process is to set up an auto follow. These tools can be very useful when you are trying to rapidly build your following by automatically follow those who follow you.
Does this mean that you shouldn't vet your followers? Absolutely not! It is important for your brand to have an understanding of who your followers are. You could do damage if you are following someone who posts offensive or controversial tweets. Who you follow says a lot about you and your brand. Make sure the people you follow compliment you.
Auto Direct Message
A direct message on Twitter is like sending someone an email. These are "private" messages in that only the person who is sent the message can view it. Keep in mind that, as with all social media communications, nothing is truly private, so don't ever send a direct message that you wouldn't feel comfortable posting publicly.
Most services that offer auto follow and scheduled tweets offer an auto-direct message. Auto direct messages can be set up so that anyone who follows you can receive a personal thank you from you. You should also consider including some information about you. As with all communications on Twitter, you are limited to 140 characters, so make your DMs short and sweet.
RSS Feed Poster
Ok, that is a lame name for this incredibly useful tool. Most if not all blogging software produces an RSS feed. If you aren't familiar with RSS (Really Simple Syndication), think of it as the news ticker you see scrolling across the bottom of your favorite network. Though configurable to show different information, typically your blogs RSS will include your posts title, a link, post date/ time, and possibly an excerpt. You can subscribe to an RSS feed and have it delivered via email or RSS reader. The feed is updated every time you update your blog.
I subscribe to various RSS feeds from blogs that I read regularly, I receive an email that contains the latest updates from the blog, saving me from wasting time visiting a blog that hasn't been updated yet.
The other great thing about RSS is that it is a standard, and well supported. One of the better uses for RSS is to automatically post to Twitter whenever your blog is updated. This saves you the trouble of posting manually, which may not seem like a giant chore, but it is nice to know there is just one less thing to worry about in your busy life.
Once you set up your feed with one of these many services, they will check if your feed has been updated on some interval. My feed is checked once every 24 hours, if you update your blog several times a day, you may think about setting a shorter interval. Whenever my blog is updated, it is automatically posted to Twitter.
Great, eh? But wait, there's MORE! These services often provide some statistics for your feed, such as how many click throughs you receive, and where the click throughs originated. This helps you decide where to focus your efforts.
Twitter Alerts
How would you like to know whenever your brand or product is mentioned? Or, if someone expresses a need that you are able fulfill? Once, I had some car trouble, and what is the first thing I do when stranded on the side of the road? Call for a tow truck? Nah, I tweeted my woes. Well, with in seconds, someone with a car repair blog sent me a message with some tips. Amazing. This wasn't someone I follow or who followed me, yet they were able to find me in my time of need and deliver a short meaningful message. Did it work? I am writing about it now, aren't I?
Was this person blessed with powers to discover people in distress? Doubtful. Instead, they probably set up a Twitter alert that notified them whenever someone mentioned a keyword or phrase. Tirelessly searching Twitter for you and opening the door for you to reach your audience at just the right moment. Pretty sweet!
Easy Updates
The last thing I want to cover is how easy Twitter is to use. This is key to the success of Twitter. In addition to scheduling your tweets, and the obligatory share buttons on every web site and blog, you can tweet in just about any way imaginable.
Email Twitter
When you signup for Twitter, you get an email address that you can tweet straight from your email client, Web mail or other.
SMS your tweets!
That's right, you can send tweets via text message. This means that even if you don't have a smart phone or a mobile data plan, you can still update your Twitter account.
Twitter Clients
There are many great Twitter clients or apps out there. Some are for your phone, some are for your computer, and some have versions for both phone and computer. Some are free, some are paid. Obviously, the paid ones have more features and nicer interfaces, but the free ones are a great place to start.
Twitter Web Site
How is this last? Should be first. The Twitter Web site is very easy to use and is pretty fast. There is a mobile version for Tweeting on the go.
The Twitter site has undergone some upgrades in recent months and added some much appreciated features. All of which are designed to make Twitter easier and richer experience.
Well, thanks for reading, I know it was a pretty long post (I wonder how many tweets this would require :), but my hope is that it provides some clarity for getting started on your Twitter campaign. Twitter is easy and can have a great impact for your business.