Twitter for B2B
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If you’re new to Twitter – or if Twitter makes no sense to you – then this quick overview provides the information you need to get up to speed. Developed for the specific needs of B2B professionals, it covers all the basics of getting started with Twitter, building a following and maximizing your visibility and influence with colleagues and business prospects. It also profiles three successful B2B Twitter practitioners and describes the tactics they’ve used to thrive. This presentation covers: The fundamentals of micro blogs and how they deliver value; Filling out your Twitter profile for maximum impact; How to use Twitter readers on desktop and mobile platforms; Finding Twitter members to follow; Best practices for participating in the community; How to build and use Twitter lists; Building trust and visibility in the community; How hash tags work; Twitter events; How successful B2B companies are leveraging Twitter. The PowerPoint presentation includes detailed speaker notes.
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Twitter for B2B
- 1. Twitter: @pgillin Twitter for B2B Paul Gillin, Author The New Influencers Secrets of Social Media Marketing Social Marketing to the Business Customer Attack of the Customers
- 2. Twitter is a “Amicroblogdiffersfromatraditionalbloginthatitscontentis typicallymuchsmaller,inbothactualsizeandaggregatefile size…microbloggerspostabouttopicsrangingfromthesimple, suchas‘whatI'mdoingrightnow,’tothethematic,suchas‘sports cars.’” --Wikipedia Itisthesimplestformofblog. Butin simplicitythereisoftengreatpower.
- 3. A Few Microblogging Services And,ofcourse…
- 4. Twitter: @pgillin Like Fishing a Stream It’s a constant flow of information that yields continual discovery
- 5. What’s the big deal about 140? • Here’s what 140 characters looks like: – “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposi” • Or Tweetshrunk to: – “4 score & 7 years ago R fthrs brought forth on ths continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, & dedicated 2 the prop that all men R crea”
- 6. The Appeal of “Ambient Intimacy” “Facebook users didn't think they wanted constant, up-to-the-minute updates on what other people are doing. Yet when they experienced this sort of omnipresent knowledge, they found it intriguing and addictive. “Each individual bit of social information — is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends' and family members' lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting.” --Clive Thompson, The New York Times, 9/8/09
- 7. Twitter: @pgillin • Branding • Hiring • Traffic building • Professional networking • Publicity • News • Prospecting • Feedback • Peer relations • Competitive tracking • Search engine optimization • Mobile visibility Uses For Twitter in Business Source: Sirona Consulting
- 8. Twitter: @pgillin Twitter Profile Page Tweet
- 9. Finding People to Follow With Search • Determine the target audience • Identify the influencers • Know the keywords and trends CMO & big data >>
- 10. Twitter: @pgillin Step Two Choose a Reader -Twitter.com just doesn’t cut it for active users -Hootsuite and Tweetdeck are popular choices -Choose a mobile client -Readers support filtering, lists, profiles, follow/unfollow, multimedia, cross-posting to other social networks, tweetshrink, URL shortening Follow people -Start with a small list and grow -Follow your friends, then find people through search.Twitter.com, - Listorious is a good source of topical Twitter lists the people others follow Listen For a While Hootsuite Tweetie Twitterific (iPhone) Pandora (Android) Tweetdeck
- 13. Twitter: @pgillin It's Your Turn to Talk Say Something Interesting • Cite good articles on the Web • Comment on others’ tweets • Talk about others, not yourself The Golden Ratio is 9:1 • For every one tweet promoting yourself, send nine promoting others • Be courteous, even if you disagree • Take time to look up user IDs of others you quote @ShellyKramer: It's An Exciting Time to Be A Creative Type | http://bit.ly/c1Fzxo Romania seeks to tax fatty fast food http://is.gd/8JS5a New Mashable app is massive improvement from previous incantation and soo glad they dumped that 'graphic' or whatever it was 16 unusual facts about the human body http://u.nu/3fpw5 Do not have your username "admin" when using a wordpress blog #wcmia 4 Reasons Why Nobody Reads Your Blog http://ow.ly/19kDd #BloggingTips by @binterest Facebook Problems Today: Photo Uploads Broken and Other Issues http://bit.ly/cuRs2n
- 14. Twitter: @pgillin Consider Your Persona • Helpful? • Funny? • Offbeat? • Sympathetic? • Snarky? • Unpredictable?
- 15. Twitter: @pgillin Offbeat and Original Paul Armstrong has built a following of more than 26,000 people for his Twitter persona @themediaisdying. His Twitter fame helped him land a job as head of social media at one of Europe‟s largest public sector consultancies. A team of 16 publishing professionals collaborates on the satirical tweet stream @fakeapstylebook. They‟ve amassed more than 300,000 followers and have a best- selling book. Justin Halpern began recording his father‟s off-color and often hilarious homespun wisdom on @Sh*tMyDadSays. Six months and 140 tweets later, he had 2.3 million followers and a TV show.
- 16. Twitter: @pgillin Check out this interesting article! http://bit.ly/bvnPDV RT @copyblogger Revised AP style guide http://bit.ly/bvnPDV New entry on my blog: http://bit.ly/bvnPDV @JasonFalls do you like @Backupify? I've heard of it but never from someone I trust who uses it. We just launched a new product! http://bit.ly/bvnPDV It‟s snowing in Austin and raining in New York. Something‟s wrong! Info tweet Retweet Help tweet Postman tweet Smiley tweet Youtweet Six Types of Tweets Source: Sirona Consulting
- 17. Twitter: @pgillin Another gem! RT @casieg: My #adtechsf presentation -> Social Media: Integrating Paid, Owned, Earned http://slidesha.re/XDKpYP Really listening RT @TheGoToMom: The art of living is setting realistic expectations that you can actually achieve http://buff.ly/123iCQQ Here's 1. RT @KathaPollitt: I wrote about Gosnell when the story first broke http://tinyurl.com/cvpog5u So there, USA Today. journalism! RT @AntDeRosa: Rep. Steve Cohen to hold news conference to discuss tweet to Cyndi Lauper http://wapo.st/ZRiYoI
- 18. Twitter: @pgillin Don’t… Twitter is public and searchable. People are listening! • Flame or use abusive language • Repeat personal or confidential information • Talk about your gambling, drinking or other after-hours exploits • Complain about clients or colleagues • Repeatedly send the same tweet
- 19. URL Shorteners – There are Many Claims world‟s shortest URLs Create custom URLs like bit.ly/IBWebinar Statistics about URLs you share Embeds ads in tweets http://maps.google.com/maps?q=one+spe en+street,+framingham,+ma&ie=UTF8&hq =&hnear=1+Speen+St,+Framingham,+Mid dlesex,+Massachusetts+01701&gl=us&ei= -hOES45dh- GUB4G1_I4C&ved=0CAcQ8gEwAA&z=16 http://3.ly/lyx From This: To This: Look For: • Bookmarklets/browser integration • Analytics • Geotargeting • Custom URLs • Compatibility with your reader
- 20. Twitter: @pgillin Tips from the Experts • Use LinkedIn contacts or business cards to look up and follow people in your field • Alternate between something relevant to your business and something irrelevant. Comments on the tax season can alternate with notes about passion fruits coming into season. • Add “Follow Me on Twitter” to your emails, website, and other communications • Focus on one or two of your followers a day. Spotlight something about them in a tweet. They’ll notice. Excerpted from “137 Twitter Tips: How Small Businesses Get The Most From Twitter” by Small Business Trends (@smallbiztrends)
- 21. Twitter: @pgillin Use Hash Tags To… • Find people with similar interests • Create conversations around a brand or event • Create structured online events • Monitor topics of interest • Discover new sources and information Tip: Hashtags.org is a good source of the most popular hash tags on Twitter
- 23. Twitter: @pgillin Building Your Follower Base • Follow people you admire • Comment upon and retweet their messages • Include their Twitter name • If they follow you, thank them • Ask for advice, input • It’s occasionally OK to ask for a RT • They know they’re important; don’t abuse the relationship Checking out "Facebook and Health Ads" on @WEGOHealth : http://ning.it/93dQ6z Tweeps: I'm in front of a college journalism class. What shld these students know abt social media. RT @tshuttleworth: This is the golden age of engagement for book publishers. - Arianna Huffington #toccon
- 24. Twitter: @pgillin Building Your Follower Base #brandchat (Weds. @ 10) #smallbizchat (Weds. @ 7) #solorpr (Weds. @ noon) #journchat (Mon. @ 7) #blogchat (Sun. @ 8) A great list of scheduled Twitter chats is at http://bit.ly/TwitChatSched Many bookmarking and URL shortening tools can tweet for you • Attend events and tweet proceedings • Add your Twitter ID to all communications • Participate in Twitter chats • Use sharing tools to quickly tweet interesting content • Respond to questions • Ask questions • Surprise and delight
- 25. • Personal relationships with recruiters improve applicant quality • Image of Sodexo as progressive company appeals to young workers • Recruitment costs substantially reduced Principal Value SodexoRecruiters “The human touch is essential. People know there‟s somebody behind the message and the photo.” -Kerry Noone, Manager, Marketing Communications Quote Spending time connecting with candidates on Sodexo Careers Facebook page this AM - http://www.facebook.com/So dexoCareers • Most of the company„s 60 recruiters user Twitter and other social media to meet hiring demand. • Focus is on building relationships and enthusiasm among prospective employees • Traffic to careers site up 182% in last two years, job applications up 25%. Recruitment ad costs down $300K
- 26. • Twitter and Facebook are a primary customer support source for this e-mail marketing company. • Twitter used to deliver a constant stream of useful advice and facts about small businesses. • Constant Contact sees itself as a business advisor, not just a service provider. ConstantContact 9% 66% 7% 5% 13% Constant Contact Twitter Content Promotional Helpful/Informational Responsive Retweets Other (humor, quotes, jobs)
- 27. • Launched Facebook account in 2007 and later added Delicious, Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter and a corporate blog • About 80% of the tweeting content is about the marketplace and the economy, with the other 20% related to CME Group • Tactics include profiles of partners, traders and other financial professionals who are active in the Twitter stream CME Group “[Our Twitter feed] is about our audience and what they want. They know that if it‟s coming from us, it‟s a credible source.” Allan Schoenberg Executive Director of Corporate Communications Quote
- 28. Twitter: @pgillin #bpblogging Paul Gillin 508-656-0734 pgillin@profitecture.com Twitter: @pgillin Thank You!
Editor's Notes
- Twitter is the most enigmatic social network. It’s very simple and easy to use, and some people use it a lot. To the uninitiated, Twitter looks like chaos. It’s millions of people all talking at once, many of them about topics that seem unimportant. They talk 24 hours a day and all kinds of languages, and at first blush it seems like they mostly share what they had for breakfast. Yet we consistently hear from marketers, particularly B2B marketers, that Twitter is one of the most effective tools they have to drive awareness and traffic. How can that be?The secret to Twitter is to organize the chaos. It’s to filter out the noise and focus on just the messages you want to see. The secret is also to use Twitter to find people you want to meet, because this is the world’s flattest social network. You can connect with people on Twitter whom you would never be able to meet two other channels. In this tutorial I’ll show you some ways to do that.
- Twitter is a microblog, which Wikipedia defines as a form of blog that “allows users to exchange small elements of content such as short sentences, individual images, or video links.” One of the key attributes of microblogs is that they’re short. They’re generally very easy to use and intended for fast sharing of observations and experiences. Blogs were originally used in that way, but they have evolved into more of a long-form tool. Microblogs are kind of a throwback to early blogging in that way.One of the appeals of microblogs is that they’re quick to use. Many people feel intimidated by blogging because they believe they have to formulate long essays each time they right. In contrast, a message can be sent on a microblog service in minutes or even seconds. That’s one of the reasons you see so much useless information on microblogs, but it’s also a virtue because people share information on microblog services that they would never commit to a long-form blog post. More on that later.
- Here are some examples of other microblogging services. Some of them you probably never heard of but others have significant memberships, including Tumblr. What they all have in common is that they make it easy to share things quickly and to repost other people’s work.Incidentally, Twitter’s famous 140-character message limitation was not the result of a carefully formulated calculation. Twitter was originally intended to be used mostly over cell phones, whose text messaging limit is 160 characters. The founders of Twitter set aside 20 characters for the username and allocated the rest to the message.
- You can’t possibly monitor everything that is happening on Twitter, so use devices to filter content to the topics and people that interest you. You can use the analogy of fishing in the stream. You’re never going to catch all the fish and you shouldn’t even try. Depending on the bait, hooks and casts you use, you’ll catch different fish. Similarly, the best way to use Twitter is to create different streams of information that align to topics that interest you.
- So what’s the big deal about 140 characters? As I explained earlier, the limitation is actually a historical curiosity, but as technology has made it possible for people to send longer messages, Twitter has resisted lifting this limitation. In fact, if it ever did increase the limit I expect there would will be a backlash from Twitter users because the limited space forces people to be creative about how they say things. Twitter users have invented some wonderfully creative ways to fit their thoughts into a tiny space. Here you see just a couple of them: the use of numerals instead of written numbers, mnemonics like the use of the letter “R” for the word “are” and omission of letters that aren’t essential to understanding words. This is just one way people manage to squeeze more content into limited space.
- I’ll also address the question of people tweeting about what they had for breakfast. Sounds silly, right? It actually has value, though. The details of our lives – even the mundane ones – create potential touch points that lead to deeper relationships. For example, you may be able to connect to people you want to meet by discovering that you have a shared affinity for arena football or wine or Starbucks lattes. People don’t share this kind of information in many places, but they do share it on Twitter because it’s easy to do so.Choosing to share personal information is an individual decision, but companies are increasingly encouraging their employees to selectively relate details of their personal lives to others on the thinking that it generates more opportunity for touch points and deepens relationships.
- Twitter is probably the most versatile social networking tool. It has applications in all of these areas. Creating a distinctive voice and content stream contributes to brand image. Research has consistently revealed that Twitter is one of the top traffic sources to business websites, particularly in B2B markets.For professional networking, Twitter is probably the most effective tool you can use to strike up conversations with individuals you want to meet. For publicity, it’s a natural complement to press release services, and it’s actually one of the best ways to find out what’s going on in the world. Consider an important news event. You can go to CNN or ABC news and get one perspective on the news, or you can go to Twitter and get guidance from many people who are following the same event. They will point you to the best information sources.Salespeople use it for prospecting by mining the Twitter stream for keywords such as “can anyone recommend computer printer?” Twitter helps you sustain peer relationships by occasionally reaching out and touching people you haven’t been in communication with for a long time. It’s also useful for tracking competition by tuning into what they’re saying on their Twitter accounts as well as what others are saying about them.Search value is harder to determine, but research indicates that tweets do factor into search engine rankings. And because Twitter works well on any device, even text-based phones, it’s a good way to post updates and retrieve information when you’re not at your desk.
- When you joinTwitter you’re asked to fill out your profile. You only get 160 characters for this, so choose them wisely. Tell people what you do, but I also recommend giving them a hint of something personal, like Jane has done here with her references to being a #Foodie. You can also include a link in your profile. I recommend you link to an expanded profile on a website so that people can learn more about you.The basic Twitter metrics are tweets (the messages you sent) the people you are following and the people who follow you. You can review your tweet history at any time by clicking on the Tweets link. When you visit a Twitter profile page you have the option of following that person or adding him or her to a list, which is something we’ll get into later.Your individual tweets are listed below your profile. A tweet is simply a message, but you can also choose to view the conversation around it and/or associated images and videos. When you upload multimedia items to Twitter, they actually go to third-party websites, which are linked to from individual tweets. However, if you look at those tweets on the Twitter.com website, Twitter puts them all back together for you.
- The next step is to start following some other people. That’s because people are unlikely to find out about you unless they see you first. Unless you’re the Pope or the CEO of IBM, you’re unlikely to build much of a following without generating activity and following other people. Here we see the result of a Twitter search on the term “big data.” Note that the searcher chose to use the #bigdata hash tag rather than search on those terms. That’s because a hash tag search is more likely to return results of people who care a lot about big data. When they apply a tag to their comments, they’re essentially saying that this is a topic of special interest. That’s as opposed to people who just happened to mention the words “big” and “data” consecutively. We’ll talk more about hash tags later.Twitter will show you individual tweets, but also people, videos and images that use the term you search for. It’s a pretty good bet that the profiles will be people who share your interest in big data, so this is a good way to find people to follow. As you go along, Twitter will continuously recommend other people you might want to follow based upon the content of your own tweet stream
- You can use Twitter through the Twitter.com website, but that’s actually not the most popular or preferred method. There are a variety of third-party readers that enable you to filter your Twitter stream and display multiple filters on the same screen. TweetDeck and HootSuite are two popular ones. As you use Twitter more, you’ll increasingly filter Twitter activity by topic or lists of users. The advantage of readers is that they let you see a lot of different views of Twitter activity in one convenient place. Most readers also work with other social networks, so you can keep track of activity on LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+ and other social networks and also post to multiple networks from a single place.I you use a mobile device, I also recommending installing one of the many free Twitter apps that basically do the same thing as the PC reader apps in a smaller form. They’re clunkier to use, but they do provide some level of filtering, which is the key to using Twitter productively. One of the keys to making Twitter work for you is to contribute something to the conversation every day. Mobile clients are useful in this respect because you can take advantage of downtime waiting in line or standing on the subway platform to send a couple of tweets or retweet somebody else.
- The first thing you’ll what do on Twitter is see what people are talking about. Here are three free services that let you do that. Monitter is a basic keyword monitoring tool that continually pulls up the most recent tweets about a term you specify. Trendsmap aggregates what people are talking about and groups the trends geographically. By the way, Twitter has a location component and you can choose to share your geographic coordinates as part of any tweet if you want.Backtweets will show you who has tweeted any individual URL. This is particularly useful if you want to see activity around something you posted on your website.There used to be more services like this, but unfortunately many of them have died off because of the lack of a business model or Twitter’s continuing clampdown on access to its data stream. Any of these sites may suddenly go dark. On the other hand, new ones are popping up all the time.
- Earlier I mentioned Twitter lists, so let's take a little bit of a deeper dive on that We’ll start at the profile page of Eric Anderson who’eanIBMer who has created some great Twitter lists. If we click on the “list” menu in Eric’s profile we see a collection of his lists and those that he subscribes to. Any Twitter member can create up to 20 lists with up to 500 members on each list. We can also see what lists Eric is a member of, meaning that other people have listed him. This is a good way to find people just like Eric by using the work that others have already done. You can use any criteria for lists that you want. In Eric's case, he's put together several great lists of IBM accounts including owned or branded accounts. We can flip over to our HootSuite client and follow Eric's list in a column. This gives us a constant stream of updates from all of the accounts on Eric's list. When we refresh we get the latest information from these accounts. It’s a great way to keep up with groups of Twitter members that have been assembled by others along various thematic lines. We can also choose to see a list of the accounts that are included in Eric's IBM accounts list. These aren’t tweets but profiles. We can choose to add any of these accounts to our own list if we want.
- Listen for a while to get a sense of the culture and language of Twitter and then start posting your own tweets. The rule of thumb on Twitter, as in all social networks, is to add value to the community. If you simply promote your own agenda, you’ll quickly see the growth of your follower count slow to a trickle. The more value you provide by pointing people to useful information, answering their questions and helping to solve their problems, the more your social authority will grow and poor quality followers you’ll gain.Here are some examples of the types of tweets that work well. Point people to good articles on the Web, comment on others’ tweets and acknowledge the useful advice of others by responding to them and retweeting them. The golden ratio I like to use is 9-to-1. For every one tweet you send promoting yourself, send nine that promote others. If you keep this ratio in mind, you can get your personal agenda across without hitting people over the head with it.
- Consider your persona, which is the online personality you want to display. You should always talk in a style that’s comfortable to you, but what you choose to say and how you choose to say it. People are more likely to follow you if you have a unique and appealing style.Consider these two examples. Guy Kawasaki has well over 1 million followers on Twitter. Nearly all of his content is selected from a site he runs called Alltop. He cherry picks the most interesting and entertaining topics he could find, then writes intriguing teaser tweets. Study his style. His messages are intended to provoke you to follow the link to his site to learn more.Skittles has a wonderful style for its market. It comes at ordinary topics from a completely new angle, and it uses wordplay to make us laugh at things we wouldn’t find to be funny unless we looked at them from this unique angle. “I believe that one day, sea cucumbers and land cucumbers will finally put aside their differences.” That’s brilliant. Their style is similar to that of comedian Steven Wright. This can work in a B2B context as well.Always write in a manner that feels natural to you, but use Twitter to bring out your sense of humor, playfulness and even your sense of the bizarre.
- Here are just three examples of Twitter users who have had life-changing experiences as a result of building creative Twitter personas
- Sirona Consulting classified tweets into these six categories, and I like this approach. The most common tweets are informational, helpful and informative. You’ll want to use all of these styles occasionally, being conscious all the time of the 9-to-1 ratio. Make most of your tweets informational, helpful or offbeat. Reserve the “Youtweets” for that 10% that are all about you.
- Let’s talk about retweeting or “RT.” A retweet is simply a forward of somebody else’s message, often with a comment of your own. To retweet a message, you simply click the “retweet” option on your Twitter client and either send or add a comment. Retweeting was invented by the Twitter community – not by Twitter itself – and has become one of the most powerful ways to spread information. Basically, when you retweet something you share somebody else’s comment with your own followers. That means theoriginal message gets bonus visibility, and the more the message is re-tweeted, the more people have achance to see it. Getting re-tweeted is one of the fastest ways to build visibility and audience on Twitter. If you say remarkable things that are re-tweeted by people with much larger followers bases than yours, some of those people will choose to follow you. You can also ask for retweets from your own followers, although I wouldn’t do this very often.When you retweet other people you pay them a compliment. That means they’re more likely to follow you in return. I recommend that between 10% and 20% of your tweets should be retweets of other people’s messages. Ideally, add something to the front of the message that imprints your personal opinion or adds some value. All of the retweets in this example fo that, and it’s a good way to move the conversation forward.You should create messages with the goal of having them re-tweeted. I recommend you limit messages to about 120 characters whenever possible so that people can easily retweet them without modifying them. A new syntax has recently emerged called “MT”. This is a retweet in which the original message was modified, generally for length. MT is not nearly as ubiquitous as RT, but it’s a good signpost to use if you had to change the original message.
- Let’s talk about some things you should never say on Twitter. Never flame people or post tweets that use angry or insulting language. This should be obvious. I also recommend you think hard about highly charged topics like religion, sex and politics, particularly if you tweet on behalf of your company. These are topics that inspire a lot of passion and can potentially create enemies. If you’re trying to build your Twitter following, then railing against a political party is a bad way to do it.Don’t share personal or confidential information, and keep in mind that it isn’t always obvious what’s dangerous to share. Stating on Twitter that you’re on vacation with your whole family is the same as telling people that your house is empty. Think about what people can do with the information you share.Don’t talk about things that could embarrass you or complain about clients or colleagues. There is simply no upside to doing thisDon’t spam people by sending the same tweet repeatedly. This is admittedly a bit of a moving target, because there are no hard and fast rules for what is spamming. There’s nothing wrong with sending the same tweet promoting an event once each day, and maybe twice a day when an event is imminent. If you’re sending it five or six times a day, however, you’re on the verge of annoying people.I’ll share a personal anecdote in this area. A few years ago I was attending an un-conference where attendees created their own agenda by posting session titles on a big bulletin board. I thought it would be helpful if I tweeted the individual session titles as they were posted. I’m a pretty fast typist, so I was popping out session titles about every 10 to 15 seconds. After I had sent about 50 of these tweets I looked at my Twitter stream and found that people were shouting at me to stop because I was clogging their activity feed. About 15 people un-followed me immediately. I learned from that experience that to be a good Twitter neighbor, you need to share the Twittersphere with others.
- URL shorteners are a fixture in the Twitter world. They take long Web addresses and squeeze them down into just a few characters. Some services also provide additional value like link tracking and geo-targeting. At the top of this slide you can see an example of how a link shortener can take a monstrously long URL and shrink it by over 90%. The most popular Link short letters are Bit.ly and Ow.ly. Ow.ly is the native short and are used in the popular HootSuite platform.Both bit.ly and ow.ly provide link tracking, which means you can check back later and see how many people have shared your link. Bit.ly has the advantage of enabling you to customize your links with things like dates, site names and campaign codes. The reporting system is a little clunky to use, but it works pretty well if you don’t have a large number of links to track.Here are just a few popular link shorteners with descriptions of their unique features. I recommend choosing a tool that you can embed directly in your browser toolbar. It’s faster and easier to share webpages if you can do so with a single click.
- Small Business Trends asked of group of its readers who are Twitter veterans to share their tips for getting the most from the Twitter experience. You can download the document for free by clicking on the link in this slide or just searching for the title. Here are a few good ideas I picked out of that research.Follow people you’re connected to on LinkedIn. LinkedIn offers members the option of including their Twitter handles in their profiles, and many people do so. If you follow people who are in your field of interest, they’ll lead you to others you should also follow. Look at the lists they’ve created or the people who are following them and chances are you’ll find some good choices.Mix it up. Don’t always tweet about the same things but surprise people with unexpected topics now and then. Keeping people off balance is one of the best ways to keep them interested.Add your Twitter handle to all of your online presences, including your e-mail signature line and information about you on your website or blog.Make it a point to acknowledge orcompliment at least a couple of followers every day by retweeting a message or responding to something they say. If you focus on two new people each day, that’s 500 relationships each year that you will have enhanced through that small contact.
- Let’s turn our attention to hash tags now, because these are a very powerful way to organize the Twitter stream as well as to build your own following.Hash tags are simply strings of text preceded by a #or hash symbol. This innovation was created by the user community – not by Twitter itself – and it has turned out to have great power. LinkedIn now supports hash tags in updates and Facebook has announced plans to also adopt this tool.What’s so special about a hash tag? Think of hash tags as a label that people apply to their own content. The geeky term for this is metadata, which is information about information. When people apply hash tags to their messages, they’re in effect categorizing them. Many people monitor hash tags in the same way that they monitor keywords. The difference with a hash tag is that the person who applies it has made a conscious decision to label the content that way. Monitoring a hash tag gives you different results than monitoring a keyword. For example, take the word “jobs.” When someone applies the hash tag #jobs to a tweet, it’s usually because they have a job they want to fill. So if you monitor that hash tag on Twitter, you’re much more likely to find available jobs than if you simply monitor the keyword “jobs.”You can create any hash tag you want – your own name, for example – but the greatest value comes from using hash tags are already commonly accepted. In this example, we see that the terms #datagovernance and #dataquality are popular in the realm of information quality. That doesn’t mean other hash tags can’t be used, but over time certain terms tend to float to the surface.Hash tags are a great way to listen to Twitter because they’re are effective filtering mechanism. Monitor #cloudcomputing and you’ll get a constant stream of news and opinion about that topic. They’re also a great way to build your Twitter following, because when you use a relevant hash tag you get your message in front of everyone who’s following that tag. That means that a lot of people who have never heard of you will have a chance to see your messages, reply to them, retweet them and follow you.What’s the optimal volume of hash tags to use? I’d say two to three in a single tweet is about the maximum. You do see tweets with as many as 10 hash tags in them, but those are nearly impossible to read. Focus on a few popular tags and use them regularly so that the people who monitor them will see your name turn up again and again.
- The way you get followers is by following others. There are ways to build your follower base quickly, such as following people who automatically follow you back (you can search for lists of those) or even buying followers. Search for “buy Twitter followers” and you’ll find a thriving ecosystem of vendors that will sell you absolutely useless followers for as little as four dollars per thousand. These services are a waste of time and money. You’ll get names but no interaction, and interaction is what you’re looking for.Start by following people you admire. Search for them and then look at who they follow. Look at what lists they’re on. Chances are good that other people on that list share their interests. Comment upon and retweet their messages. When you share content they’ve produced, take the time to look up their Twitter handle so you can include it. This may take you an extra 20 or 30 seconds, but it means that they will see the information you tweet about them. Everyone on Twitter tracks their “mention” stream, so you want to get your message into that valued space.If they follow you back, and if they’re people that you really want to connect with, send them a thank-you tweet for following. Respond to the questions they ask. Occasionally ask them questions. Very occasionally ask for a retweet, but don’t abuse that tactic. When people do retweet you, make sure you thank them.
- Attend and organize events. Reporting from events is one of the fastest ways to build your Twitter following. Set up your laptop or smart phone and capture quotes from the keynote presentation, being sure to tweet them with the Hash tag recommended by the organizer. People love to follow events on Twitter, and by reporting on what you’re seeing, you’re providing a service to the people who can’t be there. The hash tag enables you to take advantage of the filter that people are already using to track the event. You’ll find that people will start retweeting your messages and following you as you deliver them valuable information from the floor. I have seen my follower count grow by as many as 50 in just one hour by reporting a conference keynote over Twitter.You can also create Twitter-only events, sometimes called tweet chats. These are virtual chat sessions that are held around a hash tag. You can create your own event or take part in one of the hundreds that happen every week. I given you a link here to a spreadsheet that lists many of them. Tweet chats usually last 1 to 2 hours and take place on a regular schedule every week or two. Participating in tweet chats that are relevant to your industry is another way to get your name in front of other people who share your interests. That’s the key to building followers on TwitterThere are even physical events that have their roots in Twitter. They’re called tweetups, and they are often organized around another event such as a conference. You may be going to a user group meeting, for example, and decide to create a tweetup for people in your area. Start telling people on Twitter to follow the hash tag #IndianaMSP for instructions on where to meet. Others will retweet your message and it’s often surprising how many people will show up.
- Thanks for joining me. With the information you learned here, you should be ready to boldly strike out into the Twittersphere. Follow me, send me a message and I’ll follow you back. It’s the right thing to do.Here’s my contact information if you’d like to reach me and discuss this topic, or any topic regarding the evolution of the social web, in more detail. These are also my two most recent books. Buy them.