Advanced Twitter For Business Final

October 23, 2009
Advanced Twitter for Business

Introductions
How many twitter accounts do you have?
Who is your favorite person to follow and why?
Your favorite twitter anecdote
@freerangemom

Class Objectives
10+ ways use Twitter for business
Get started on your Twitter Business Plan
How and where to find people to follow
How to make your tweets stand out in the crowd – and how to measure their success (or failure)
20 of the best Twitter tools

Class Assignment
Tweet what you are thinking about and learning during this seminar
#ATB
Track what your class mates are saying

“There is no right or wrong way to use Twitter”

Twitter in Context: “Share” of Market
Source: Mashable, July 20, 2009

Twitter Might be Growing, but it has a Long Way to Go to Catch Up

Biz Stone, Twitter co-founder
“The [companies] that are really standing out are the ones that are just using Twitter in this hybrid way as a customer service/marketing tool… Mixing it up like that is a really good approach, especially now that we don’t really know what the correct way to do it is.”
Source: Hubspot video recorded 4/17/09

Opportunity Found & Lost
@FirstPlace

Uses for Twitter

Broadcast

More than just a broadcast channel…

Catalyst
Twitter
Defined

Broadcast

Customer Service

Community Building

Buzz
Twitter reviews influence buying decisions

Sales

Community Building
NEW: LISTS

Monitoring
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=starbucks+via

http://search.twitter.com

PR

Other Ways to Use Twitter
Focus Group
Spin (@motrin)
On-line Events (@resourcefulmom)
Conferences (#gnomedex, #blogher, etc.)

Sales + PR = ROI
http://en.community.dell.com/blogs/direct2dell/archive/2009/06/11/delloutlet-surpasses-2-million-on-twitter.aspx

Other Corporate Examples
@markknoller CBS News White House Corresp.
@Marilyn_Res National Geographic Traveler Mag.
@WestJet Airline
@Dove_Chocolate
@SouthwestAir
@FBIPressOffice
@VZWSoCal Verizon Southern California
@yahoo
@LinkedIn

How have you seen Twitter used successfully?

Have you been Tweeting?

Your Twitter Business Plan

Business Plan
The big picture
5 questions to answer
Elements of your Twitter business plan
Building your profile page
Follower strategy
Content sources
Time Management

One Part of Your Marketing Plan
Traditional Media
Advertising
Direct mail
Collateral
Merchandising
Newsletters
Media Relations
Web Sites

New Media
Social networking sites (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, etc.)
Blog
Landing Pages
Blog Talk Radio
You Tube
Bookmarking
White Papers
Customer User Sites

5 Questions To Answer
What is your business objective?
Are you open to hearing what you community has to say - for good or for bad?
Do you have a regular source of content (copy, links, photos, podcasts, video etc)
Do you have the time to invest in building your community?
Are you prepared to maintain your Twitter community on a regular basis?

Business Plan Elements
Twitter:OneComponent of the BigPicture

Target Audience
Age, location, income, other demographics
What are they talking about?
Who are they talking to?
What is important to them?
Build an imagined follower profile – and talk to that person

Follow Strategy
Follow back everyone who follows you (or not)
http://www.twollo.com/
Follow lists/Twitter directories
http://www.twellow.com/
http://wefollow.com/
Strategically scrape other people’s followers
www.tweepsearch.com
A few to get started

Follow Strategy
Scrape thought leaders by keyword
Or
Follow bios by keyword
www.tweepsearch.com

Follow Strategy

Auto follow:
http://www.socialoomph.com/
Hand follow:
Tweetdeck + finesse

Follow by tweet Keyword

Follow Strategy
By zip code:
http://www.localtweeps.com/
By keyword and region
http://monitter.com/
Geography

Marketing Funnels
Traditional
Twitter

Marketing Objectives & Performance Metrics
Examples

Your Brand
More so than ever, on Twitter your brand is more than a logo.
It is everything about who you are, what your product or service is and how you operate.

Your Voice
What are your priority messages?
What are you talking about and why.
What do you offer your audience? (Help, information, advice, support?)
Tone, POV, attitude
Value Proposition

Value Proposition

What is your message strategy?
Class Exercise

Your Twitter Profile
@username and account name
Profile statement –
160 characters
Value Proposition
SEO searchable
Location: Seattle, WA vs….
Avatar: Choose wisely
Link: Your Twitter brochure
Profile background

Profile Background Customization
File Dimensions
2040 pixels by 1700 pixels
Branding Dimensions: 80 pixels by 587 px
Coordinates x=20, y=14
Horizontal position: 20 pixels from the left
Vertical position: 20 px from the top
File Size: Less than 800k
File Type: GIF, JPG, PNG
http://www.blog.spoongraphics.co.uk/tutorials/twitter-background-design-how-to-and-best-practices

Editorial Plan
Legal: be sure everyone is trained on legal & communications policy. More open than traditional corporate communications, however, rules still apply.
Availability: Don’t forget to consider the 24x7 dimension of Twitter. How will you provide coverage?

Where to Find Content
Your blog
Tweet each post multiple times
Use one bullet point per tweet
Test headlines with url shortener
Other thought leaders on Twitter
RSS subscriptions
Industry publications
Keyword monitoring: www.netvibes.com , Radian6, Google alerts
Create engagement a la Starbucks

Creative Engagement

Private Social Community

Contests

Social Media RSS Subscriptions
Mashable
ReadWriteWeb
iMedia
eMarketer
Smart Brief on Social Media
HubSpot
Mequoda Daily
HARO

Other Tweepl to Follow
@marismith
@scobleizer
@mike_stelzner
@Gennefer
@Weave
@Warrenss
@chrispirillo
@mashable
@problogger

Time Management
Read and reply to @s and DMs
Review your tweetstream and talk to 1 person
Monitor your keywords to see who is talking about you
Read your key tweepl (3x/day) respond or RT as appropriate
20 minutes, 2x/day

Tweet Break

How to write a Tweet

Made to StickBy Dan and Chip Heath
Why some ideas (or tweets) survive and others die…
Simple
Unexpected
Concrete
Credible
Emotional
Stories

Simple

Unexpected

Concrete

Credible

Emotional

Stories

Funny

Motivation to Share
Self Expression (I-phone)
Achievement (#bwe)
Altruism (#Prop8)
Self-Reward (#squarespace)

Do’s & Don’ts
Do: Use your blog as a way to deepen the Twitter conversation
Do: Ask questions
Do: Think “cocktail party”
Do use ! :o) LOL to indicate sarcasm
Do: break your blog into sections or bullet points and tweet about each of them separately
Don’t: Be afraid to repeat yourself
Content

Do’s & Don’ts
Do: shorten your tweet to 110/120 characters to allow for retweet attribution
Do: use a link shortener to track what gets clicked
Do: quote closely to verbatim, but don’t be afraid to edit
Do: add your own opinion using [brackets]
Do: Use “via” when crediting your content source
The Retweet

Miscellaneous Do’s
Tweet most things in public
Add period for tweets you want seen by everyone ( .@freerangemom )
Set up a separate email account for all of your social media mail
Use Firefox as your browser
Add @address to your email signature, business card
Play with #. Not just for conversations or events, it also tags an idea like #fail.
Use ^ to denote who is tweeting on a shared account
Do….

Miscellaneous Don’ts
Send DM “thanks for following me”
Give out passwords to 3rd party apps unless you are absolutely positive they are above board
Assume DMs (or anything else) is confidential
Think deleting tweets gets rid of them (unless you are the President)
Don’t….

You Can Delete it, but You Can’t Hide

20 Twitter Tools

Tools
http://www.bubbletweet.com/ – embed video in your tweets
http://favotter.matope.com/en/ – see who likes what you have to say
http://www.twazzup.com/ – monitoring, trending, thought leaders and more
http://twittermass.com/ – paid service that does the same thing as Monitter.com does for free
http://twtpoll.com/ – one of several twitter poll apps
http://www.twtapps.com/ – twitter event invites and more
http://ping.fm/ – one stop broadcasting tool
http://hootsuite.com/ – link tracking, delayed tweets and more
http://www.retweetrank.com/ – how you rank on RTs

Tools
http://budurl.com – best stats
http://bit.ly – most used, twitter supported
http://snip.url – link testing
www.tweetburner.com – most social
www.twitturly.com/ – tracking
www.tweetmeme.com/ –blog RTs
Link
Shorteners

Tools
www.twollow.com
www.twello.com
www.wefollow.com
www.socialoomph.com
www.localtweeps.com
www.monitter.com
www.tweepsearch.com
Following

Sample Scenarios

One last chance to Tweet

dolane@aol.com or http://twitter.com/freerangemom
http://www.provientmarketing.com/atb.html