MARKETING WITH TWITTER - WordPress.com · MARKETING WITH TWITTER If we put the reply at the...

© 2013 Todaymade | page 1

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Better At Marketing Training

© 2013, Todaymade

todaymade.com

THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO MARKETING WITH TWITTER


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Marketing With TwitterCustomizing Your Twitter ProfileFollowing And Following BackReplies, Retweets, and Direct MessagesHow To Use Twitter ListsHow To Find New Followers

CONTENTS

Getting Started With Twitter

Making Friends And Building Community

Marketing With Twitter

How Many People Should I Follow On Twitter?How Often Should I Tweet?Should You Be Tweeting As Yourself Or As a Brand On Twitter?What Should I Talk About On Twitter?8 Ways To Create Content That Your Customers Will Retweet

Measuring Success On TwitterGaining KloutAutomated DMs: Annoying, Or An Opportunity?The Most Important Lesson For BusinessesWhy Charlie Sheen Was #winning At TwitterWhat Will We Talk About When Twitter Flies The Coop?


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RCUSTOMIZING YOUR TWITTER PROFILELike any good tool, Twitter needs some “pre-use” calibration. This means starting with the foundation: our profile. A Twitter profile that hasn’t been customized is going to be a lonely profile. Our profile is our first impression for any potential new follower; we need to get it right or we our follower count will take a hit.

A dead giveaway to a carelessly considered Twitter profile is the colorful Twitter egg icon. It’s what all new users are assigned when new accounts are opened.

Nothing says “newbie” like the plain old Twitter egg.

This icon is used for a new user that has just ‘hatched.’ This means it shouldn’t stick around too long because our goal is to grow and become a full-fledged Twitter bird. All kidding aside, though, the truth is that the standard egg icon is associated with spam accounts. Determining what is valid content and what is spam is most often accomplished by the initial few-second glance. An egg icon reads ‘spam account’.

To get started customizing our page using the following steps, we need to visit the settings tab once we are logged into Twitter.

https://twitter.com/settings/account


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Optimizing your Twitter icon for all sizes is important.

SETUP YOUR PROFILE IMAGETwitter calls this our picture, though some think of it as an avatar. Whatever it is called, the important point is that it is the thing that people will see the most. Every time we tweet, this icon will be attached to our message.

If our Twitter account is a personal one, then we will definitely want this to be a picture of ourselves. After all, people like to know who they are talking to. If we are managing a company account, we may need to use a logo, but try to be creative. Perhaps a picture of our sign or building would do a better job of personalizing an otherwise impersonal entity.

Whatever we choose, we will want something that is unique, personal, eye-catching. And, we’ll want to optimize the size of it.


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RThis icon is most often seen at 48 x 48 pixels, but it can be larger in some cases. We definitely want to make sure that our image looks good at the 48 x 48 pixels size, but we should also keep in mind that there are some situations where a larger image will be used. The best practice is to start with a 300 x 300 pixel canvas in an image editing program like Photoshop. Once we upload our image, Twitter will automatically resize it for the smaller thumbnail.

YOUR TWITTER BIOLike everything on Twitter, our bio is limited to 140 characters, so we will need to be brief but powerful. Our bio should quickly tell followers who we are and give them an idea of what we’ll will be talking about. Knowing or imagining who our audience is will help us get this right, since we’ll be able to answer:

• What do they want to hear?• What will appeal to them?• What do they need from me?

YOUR TWITTER LINKWhen someone visits our Twitter profile, they’ll probably click on the link we provide. Maybe that brief bio piqued their curiosity, and they want to find out more. In that case, we need to make sure we’re actually providing a link, and that it goes to the right place. Our homepage is a great place to send people, but there are also other options.


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RSome people, like blogger Michael Hyatt, created a custom landing page just for Twitter. At Todaymade, we feel that our blog is the best place to direct traffic from Twitter. This content fits our Twitter audience and provides a good introduction to what we will be tweeting about.

YOUR BACKGROUND IMAGEA picture is worth a thousand words, and with Twitter limiting what we can say to 140 characters, using visuals really is a must. A customized Twitter background is part of that.

With the current Twitter design, there are about 110 pixels that can be used on the left side of our background image. This can be a great place to some additional information about us, or our company. Some things that we might consider including would be our logo, tagline, phone number, or additional links that we want to share. There are many other ways that this area can be used, but the main idea is to use it in a way that enhances our online brand.

You can see how we took advantage of this available space in our Scriply profile.


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RThe best method for creating our own background is to create an extra large canvas in Photoshop and start developing a layout.

At Todaymade, we like to use a canvas that is at least 1280 pixels wide. The easiest way to start would be to use a template file, which can be downloaded here.

Files like those provided at the link above are very handy because they give us a good idea of what users will see at different browser sizes so that we can plan accordingly.

NEVER STOP UPDATINGAs simple as these steps might seem, they are important. When we follow someone new, they will inevitably visit our profile page to find out more about us. In that initial instant, they’ll decide if we are worth following or not.

And, just like any web presence, we can’t just set-it-and-forget-it. We need to change things up every now and again to make our profile better.

http://www.fuelyourcreativity.com/free-new-twitter-psd-background-template/


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RFOLLOWING AND FOLLOWING BACKThe basics of Twitter are easy enough: we follow people, they follow back. It sounds simple enough. Getting this simple step right is essential to setting up our new Twitter account.

Twitter’s own website is a great place to find key followers

WHO SHOULD I FOLLOW?With a site like Facebook, we easily become friends with people that we already know. Twitter is a little different. Generally, with Twitter, we want to follow people that we don’t know, but share a common interest with. The first step, then, is to identify what we will be tweeting about, and who might be interested in what we have to say. Once we do this we are ready to start following our audience.


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HOW DO I FOLLOW?There are several strategies to finding people to follow, with some being good and others not so good. If, in any way, we’re promised big numbers of followers fast, it’s a good sign to stay away. We want to follow people and personalities that are influential who are connected with what we are doing.

There are a few places to start our search for people to follow:

Start Locally

Follow businesses and organizations in our geographic area, as well as individuals who live in our community. Find a few high-profile businesses or local tweeters and see who they are following and who is following them. Generally, the local Twitter community sticks together, so we should be able to glean some relevant connections this way.

Pay Attention To Contacts

If we know who our Twitter audience is, finding people to follow should be fairly easy. One method that works well is to find one or two key people or influencers, and to follow people that are already following them. Basically, we are learning by using someone else’s follow list. It’s important not to follow everyone, but to follow people that fit our audience. This is definitely useful and appropriate.

Use Twitter Lists

We will be covering Twitter lists a bit later, but a basic definition is that of a human-created list of like-minded followers. Such lists are helpful; they give us a good idea of who is in your type of business. Periodic reviews and scrapings of these lists are worth the time.


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RPay Attention To Twitter Recommendations

Twitter will automatically recommend new people for us to follow based on who we are already following, and also based on who is following us. These are usually solid recommendations and worth paying attention to.

KNOW YOUR GOALSThe goal isn’t to follow as many people as possible, and it isn’t necessarily to have the highest number of followers.

The true goal is to follow relevant and influential people in our sphere of influence. A random follower is lovely but not really “bankable”, so we shouldn’t get too caught up in the numbers. When we follow someone new, keep in mind that we aren’t just doing it so that they follow us back. We should have a genuine interest in what they will be tweeting about.

FOLLOWING BACKOnce we have followed a core group of people that we know or are important to our business, we should start seeing many of them following us back. The trick now will be to start engaging in conversation, so that they start sharing us with their friends. Once this happens, our follower count will start growing organically.

One of the common questions that arises with new Twitter users is wondering who to follow back. Some people take the approach that we always follow everyone back and others like to be more selective.

Consider being somewhere in between. It isn’t necessary to follow everyone back, since not all followers will be feeding us relevant content. However, we should follow those back that fit


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the above criteria and not limit ourselves in number out of fear of having too many people to follow.

Whatever method we chose to use, it is important to remember that Twitter isn’t about the numbers. It is about creating quality connections with relevant contacts.

HAVE PATIENCEThe more time we invest in Twitter, the more we will be rewarded. For the most part, we just need to keep our head down and tweet great content. The more we tweet and the more value we create with our tweets, the more people will pay attention to what we have to say.


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If we put the reply at the beginning of our message, it will be seen by the intended recipient, and any of our followers that are also following that recipient.

REPLIES, RETWEETS, AND DIRECT MESSAGESThere are three basic ways of talking to other Twitter users: Replies, Retweets and Direct Messages. Our Twitter marketing success will heavily depend on our ability to use each of these as effectively as possible to create ongoing conversation with our followers.

REPLIESReplies are the most common way to talk with some back and forth on Twitter, primarily because it is the simplest. A reply is defined as including the @ symbol before the username of any Twitter user. So, our own reply address would be @todaymade. When this is included in a tweet, Twitter will automatically recognize that you are talking to Todaymade, and it will show up in our Twitter profile under the mentions tab.

The only caveat to this that we need to understand is that it does matter where we put the reply in our message.

This message is read by the recipient, and our followers who also follow them.


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This message is read by the recipient and all of our followers.

If we put the reply in the middle of the message, it will be seen by the intended recipient of the message, and all of our followers.

Basically, this distinction only comes up if we are wanting to broadcast the contents of that message to all of our followers. Most of the time we will be talking directly to a user. If we are a business though, there are many situations where our customers might mention you within the post. For example, they might say “I am eating at @YourResturantName.”

It is important to note that replies are not private. They can, and will, be read by someone other than the recipient depending upon how we lay out the message.

RETWEETSRetweets are a way of re-broadcasting one of our follower’s messages to everyone that follows us. This is a simple way to share content that we find valuable or interesting with our own followers. Twitter is a pretty basic system so, again, there are two ways to do the same thing.


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RThe first type of Retweet is the official version as released by Twitter. This will post the Tweet to all of our follows exactly as it appears in our news feed. To do this, we’d use the little Retweet icon at the bottom of the Twitter message.

The second type of Retweet is the manual version where we actually quote and credit the original author all in the same post. This was the original method for Retweeting on Twitter, and is still preferred by most users. The benefit of this method is that we are still “credited” in the tweet, which means that the content is still associated with you. The most common method for this is the “RT @username” method, as seen in the next example.

DIRECT MESSAGESThe last type of messaging allowed on Twitter is called Direct Messages. These messages are essentially sent in private directly to the user of our choice.


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RBesides privacy, the other main difference between Replies and Direct Messages is that we can only send them to people who are following us. With Replies, anyone using Twitter can use this method to send a message to you, even if they are not a follower.

In our tweeting, we use all three of these methods to communicate with our audience. As we use them more, we will become better at choosing the right one for the job.

The important point is that we need to be talking back and forth with people. Twitter is not a tool for broadcasting. It is a tool for communication.


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REASONS FOR USING LISTSThe primary benefit to creating our own lists is that we become the curator for that tweet stream. We choose who is a part of the list and whose tweets we want to see together. You might create a list for several reasons:

HOW TO USE TWITTER LISTSLists were introduced by Twitter a couple of years ago as a way for us to group and organize similar Twitter users together. Each user is allowed to create a list, and add other Twitter users to it as a way of grouping them into common categories. For example, we often see lists surrounding location (ie. North Dakota Tweeters) or a profession.


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• To monitor a selected group of Twitter users from your city or state.

• To group people that all fit a certain category, like “Bloggers.”

• To group friends and/or people you chit-chat with on a regular basis.

• To honor people that you feel deserve a specific label such as “great people.”

• To group coworkers or people from a club or real-life group.

Twitter lists are a simple way for us to organize the people we follow. Rather than sifting through our entire tweet stream, we can group users into categories that make sense to us.

HOW TO CREATE A LISTCreating a list is simple. To get started, simply click ‘Create a new list’ from the ‘Lists’ drop-down menu on our Twitter home screen. We will then be asked to define a few fields such as a list name and a description. Once we click OK, our list will be ready to go. We can start adding new people to the list immediately.


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BEING LISTEDWhen we add someone to one of our lists, they become ‘listed.’ This works the same way as following but is tracked separately. It is very important to understand that following someone via a

Here, we added Todaymade to the ‘Voices of Change’ list.

Public or Private Lists

We can create either public or private lists. Public lists are visible by anyone on Twitter. Private lists are visible only by you.

Once we have created a group and added a few people to it, we will be able to see all of the Twitter activity from those people in one stream. If our list is public it will be available for other people to view or follow.

FOLLOWING USERSAdding users to our list is simple. Next to each follow button, there is a small drop down menu with a ‘list’ icon. When we select this, we will see all of the lists that we have created. Simply check the box for the list that we want them to be a part of.


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Keep in mind, that if we add someone to our list, we will not automatically be following their tweets. Following them and adding them to our list are treated as two separate actions on Twitter. We will still need to do both.

FOLLOWING LISTSIf you find a list that you like, you can choose to follow that list, and it will be added to the lists on your following page. Again, just like before, the lists you follow and the people you follow are treated completely separately on Twitter. If you follow a list, you will not automatically follow all of the people one the list.

MENTIONING LISTSWe can also link to any Twitter List as we tweet by mentioning it as you would a Twitter user. All we need to do is add a forward slash “/” followed by the list name to the list owner’s username. For example:

@garrett_moon/voices-of-change

WHAT SHOULD I DO WITH LISTS?While it might be an honor to be included on lists, not everyone makes heavy use of them. We have to determine if it is a tool that we could make use of, and how it would benefit us.

Lists can be a good way to organize our Twitter following activity

list is different than the normal way we follow them on Twitter. Lists are viewed and tracked separately.


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in a way that is easier to digest and to read. However, with a robust social media dashboard tool like TodayLaunch, we may already have solved our social media management issues.

Being added to lists is still an important part of social media engagement and Twitter etiquette. Try to follow back lists that have added us if possible, as a common courtesy. Remember, if we’re added to a list, it usually means they think we have something important to say, and that is an honor.

LISTS AND METRICSLists are a factor in many of the metrics systems that track Twitter engagement and influence levels. One of the metrics is Klout.com, which is the current authority in Twitter engagement tracking. The more lists we are on, the higher our score will go. While lists are not the primary factor, they can certainly have a positive influence on our score.

Twitter lists are an important part of the Twitter platform, but they have received mixed reviews. Try them out, learn a bit about them, and see if they are a good fit.

http://todaylaunch.com

http://klout.com/


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RHOW TO FIND NEW FOLLOWERSTwitter promises us that we can receive ‘instant updates from your friends, industry experts, favorite celebrities, and what’s happening around the world.’ Following our interests is exactly what Twitter does best. One of the keys to enjoying Twitter is to be following an engaged group of people around a common interest.

Believe it or not, finding new people to follow used to be a challenge. As part of one of Twitter’s major updates, they included several features that will help us follow new users based on proximity and interest. Here are a few ways that we can use Twitter to find and develop new followers.

USING TWITTER’S BUILT IN ‘WHO TO FOLLOW’ FEATUREOne of the best ways to find new people to follow is the ‘Who To Follow’ feature built right into the Twitter navigation menu.

This feature was built to suggest people we don’t currently follow that we may find interesting. The suggestions are based


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on several factors, including people we already follow and the people that they follow.

Basically, Twitter uses our user information to make smart suggestions on who we might be interested in. The suggestions are constantly being updated as we use the service, so checking back in once in a while might lead to some great new discoveries.

FOLLOW KEY LISTSPreviously, we talked about the lists feature. This feature allows individual Twitter users to group people they follow into one convenient group. This grouping of people is a major benefit if we’re looking to follow people based on a specific interest. With lists, similar users are grouped using a reliable human-selected curation system. Be on the lookout for lists that fit our interests and follow key individuals from that list. If we need some help finding good lists, we can check out Listorious.com.

FOLLOW OTHER FOLLOW-EESOne of the simple, old-fashioned, ways to find new followers is to simply glean users from others. If there is a Twitter user that we

http://listorious.com/


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enjoy, go take a look and the people that he is following or are following him. Chances are many of these people will also be of interest to us and are worth following.

USE TWITTER SEARCHTwitter search can be a really easy way to find new followers. If you are interested in frisbee golf, a Twitter search for that term will give you hundreds of results. All of them will be from people who have conversations about frisbee golf. Follow the interesting looking users and continue to search additional terms. If you are hoping to follow people in your surrounding area, Twitter search will also allow you to do that. Using Twitters advanced search you can find new users using proximity.

FIND FRIENDS

Under the ‘Who To Follow’ section on Twitter’s website, we will also find the ‘Find Friends’ tab. This tool allows us to connect to other social media accounts so that we can import our contact information from those services. This is an excellent way to follow people that we already know and communicate with on other services. We can even use this tool to invite friends who have not yet joined Twitter.


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DEVELOPING A FOLLOW POLICYWe previously discussed some of the basics of following and following back. We touched on deciding how many people to follow and how many people to follow back. We will discuss it in the next chapter. This issue is something that we will want to have a plan for ahead of time as we begin following and communicating with new people.

Twitter is one of the best-known tools for following an interest and creating conversation around it. The first step is finding the right people to follow, and the second is getting involved in the conversation.


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RHOW MANY PEOPLE SHOULD I FOLLOW ON TWITTER?

Deciding how many people to follow on Twitter is definitely a “first world” problem with a solution based on each of our own preferences. Each follow policy will vary depending on how we are using Twitter.

FOLLOWING FOR PERSONAL ACCOUNTSTwitter is first and foremost a communications platform, which means that it is used best when connecting people to people. This means that the goal of our Twitter activity should be to develop personal relationships with our followers through common interests and conversation.

For this reason, if we are following so many people that our Twitter feed is filled with junk or far more data than we can handle, then we’re following too many people. We might find it pretty easy to follow a few hundred people at a time or we might be willing to go up to 500, but this will vary depending on our own activity.

ALWAYS FOLLOW BACK?There are some strategists that feel we should follow everyone


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who follows us. This isn’t the best approach. The people we follow should be the people that we actually have conversations with or are looking to network with in the future. If someone starts a conversation or is someone we actually talk to, adding them to the following list at that time makes sense.

Again, this is a personal strategy. The actual number of people we follow doesn’t matter much. No matter how many we follow, we need to be able to use Twitter as a communications platform and not just a place to broadcast our message.

FOLLOWING FOR A BUSINESS ACCOUNTIf you are using your Twitter account as a business, then you might have a different follow strategy. For example, I tend to be far more liberal with our @todaymade account, and I actually do follow everyone who follows us. The primary reason for this is because we use third-party tools like our own Todaypulse to find the people and subjects that we want to have conversations with. When you have a 100% follow-back policy, good filtering becomes important.

WHY FOLLOW EVERYONE BACK?The reason to follow everyone back is pretty simple. People tend to continue following people that are following them. When I go through and clean out my follow list I am far more likely to un-follow someone that is not following me. Often times businesses are looking to maintain as many followers as possible so a 100% follow-back policy can be very appropriate.

IT’S ALL ABOUT COMMUNICATIONThe key to all of this is to be using Twitter for conversation and not just broadcasting a message. Whatever method you develop you should be doing as much as you can to create a platform of communication between you and your audience.


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RHOW OFTEN SHOULD I TWEET?

The answer to “how often should I tweet” requires us to keep in mind what it is like to read content on Twitter. It moves fast. We can’t read it all. Our best chance is to absorb a few bits of it here and there.

Our own tweet frequency will play off of this same idea. Our followers will not be reading everything that we Tweet. In fact, they won’t read most of it. For this reason, and in order to maintain a consistent presence in Twitter, the answer is to tweet more than you think you should.

YOU PROBABLY CAN’T TWEET TOO MUCHUnless we’ve somehow automated our tweets and are spewing out thousands each hour, our followers want to hear what we have to say. Generally, we can’t tweet too much. For most businesses just starting out with Twitter the tendency is to tweet too little.

The most important thing to keep in mind when considering how much to tweet is to evaluate what we are sending out. If we are


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just pumping out links and talking about ourselves (something called ‘push marketing’, a very bad thing), then yes. We can definitely tweet too much. It won’t take too long with tweets like that to burn through the patience of our followers. They don’t want their feeds clogged with our messages if there is little worth reading.

However, if our tweets are a good balance of links, retweets, and conversations with others, then we really have no limits. Twenty or more tweets a day will only increase positive exposure for our brand.

Still not sure?

Beginner

For a new Twitter user, three to five tweets per day is acceptable. Three really is a minimum, yet for a beginner, it might still be more than they can handle. If we are a new user, our goal is to work our way to this level and then handle it easily.

Individual

If we are running a Twitter account for ourselves, we can easily tweet as many as 7 to 20 times per day without much effort. It is easy, though, to slip into self-promotion rather than having conversations with others. Individual users have to work hard to maintain a good balance.

Business

For most businesses, tweeting more than 10 times a day is unnecessary. Users on Twitter are far more likely to tolerate a high level of tweets from an individual than they are from a business, so it is important to keep our tweet levels in line with their expectations.


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RCONTENT IS KINGRemember, though, that these numbers are just basic guidelines. The main concern should be whether or not we are providing valuable content. Remember: quality over quantity. And, consider why a user would follow us anyway. Are we interesting, funny, helpful, or conversational?

The question of what we are tweeting is far more important than how often we are tweeting it.

MEASURING FREQUENCYKeeping a measurable and mathematical eye on our tweet frequency might help us in determining how we are doing. Knowing our tweet stats helps us maintain a healthy and consistent level of exposure.

Tools like TweetStats can be helpful, and are simple to use.

The sample graph shows Twitter activity from TweetStats. We can see that the activity varies from day to day and includes a big lull during a vacation that the user went on. From this graph we can see that the activity is decent, but perhaps an increase in the frequency of replies and conversation would be in order.

http://tweetstats.com/


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IMPROVISEVery little on Twitter is based on science. It is meant to be a natural conversational tool, after all. The right amount of tweets and the right mix is up to us to find, just as we find our own voice on Twitter. Knowing our audience, noting how they respond to our tweets, and making adjustments is the best we can do.


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RSHOULD YOU BE TWEETING AS YOURSELF OR AS A BRAND ON TWITTER?

Whether we tweet as ourselves or as our brand is a difficult and ongoing debate for many marketing professionals. Why?

• Someday you may no longer work for, or represent, the brand.

• An authentic and personal voice is desired above all else in social media.

• Separation between personal life and work life shouldn’t be clouded.

The answer? It…depends.

There comes a time when we all must decide if we are, or aren’t, a company man.


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RDebate aside, it comes back to the person, and the situation. Generally speaking, employers and employees will naturally desire different accounts. This is usually the best policy for everyone involved.

With this split, however, it is important to understand the difference between each account and how to maximize their effectiveness.

THE CORPORATE ACCOUNTCorporate Twitter accounts are easy to spot. They are usually well branded with the company logo, and they speak using an official voice. This account is usually independent of the person(s) updating it, which means it speaks as a masked logo. While this is a safe strategy with advantages, it has disadvantages, too.

Advantages

• Visually, it matches the look and feel of the brand, making a visitor’s experience cohesive.

• The ‘voice’ fits what people have come to expect. The experience isn’t jarring.

• Is not dependent on one person. It can be operated by several people within the organization, and is impervious to staff changes.

Disadvantages

• Corporate accounts easily become broadcast channels, which make it difficult to use Twitter for conversation.

• A ‘corporate’ voice can actually lead to a lack of voice. This means the account takes on marketing-speak with little personality.

• Corporate accounts usually aren’t fun. They are more


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calculated and cautious.

Corporate accounts struggle with establishing a unique voice, and it can be difficult for followers to feel like they connect with such an account when they do make an attempt. They know there is a person there, but they don’t know if it is the same person. They don’t know the ‘who’ behind the tweet, just the ‘what.’

When we are tweeting on the official channel of the company, we feel like we need to represent everyone in the organization. In many ways, we do. This often leads to ‘official’ sounding tweets that don’t resonate with a human audience. Without a plan in place to acknowledge the real humans behind the logo (such as initials of the different employees responding to customers) this kind of an account runs the danger of being dying in an echo chamber.

THE PERSONAL ACCOUNTIf the corporate Twitter account is a hotel lobby, then a personal account is a college dorm room. Anything goes. While many people use their personal accounts to talk about their work, they don’t always stay focused on that subject. They are allowed to talk about what they are doing over the weekend and what their kids are eating for lunch. Individuals use Twitter differently, so the spectrum on this type of account is wide. Generally, though, these are the kinds of accounts that are the most fun to follow.

Advantages

• With a personal account, we get to be our own man. We get to say whatever we want, whenever we want.

• Corporate accounts usually come with a logo for an avatar, but personal accounts get a face. Who doesn’t prefer talking to a face rather than a logo?


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• Even the biggest companies are made up of folks with families and problems just like the rest of us. It feels good to know we aren’t alone. We trust these humans with human stories more than we trust a logo.

Disadvantages

• For the individual, it can be difficult to merge the work voice and the personal voice into one cohesive stream.

• For the company, if the employee decides to leave, they take their tweeting audience with them.

• It can be difficult to keep things personal and business-appropriate. There is also the danger of an employee wrongly (and badly) speaking as the company, doing serious PR damage.

In reality, personal accounts are what Twitter was designed for and what it does best. Corporate accounts are welcome, but can definitely feel like the odd man out. They lose a lot of the flavor that works best in social media very easily.

WHEN TO MIX CORPORATE AND PERSONAL

Now, there are a few situations where you will want to mix your personal and business accounts. Here, are a couple that I came up with. There are probably more.

• You are solopreneur – meaning you are the owner and sole operator of your business.

• You are a personality for hire like Scott Monty. Monty makes no bones about being the voice for Ford, and if Toyota hires him tomorrow it would be the same policy. It works for him.

• You are a personal brand, like Gary Veynerchuk.

https://twitter.com/#!/scottmonty


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• You are the CEO!

WHEN TO NOT MIX, BUT HAVE BOTHConsider having one of each account: one we use for our company, and another that we use for ourselves.

The company account will inevitably have a more corporate feel, but by familiarizing ourselves with the personal side of Twitter, there is likely to be some “bleed” and we’ll give our brand more brand. Additionally, having that personal account means we aren’t tied to a brand, and we can build our own online Twitter brand. It is important to note that it is perfectly ok to talk about our company on our personal Twitter accounts. In fact, corporations should be encouraging this activity.

With the corporate account, consider having it manned by more than one person who respond as themselves and indicate such by using their initials ( ~ME, for example) at the end of posts. Establish content guidelines that are reasonable but still allow for employees to be creative and human.

At the end of the day, the right solution will be different for every personality and every business. Whatever we decide, it is important for each account to have a clear and distinctive voice that fits what it is representing.


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RWHAT SHOULD I TALK ABOUT ON TWITTER?

A common question for new Twitter uses is the most obvious question: what should I say? In truth, we can say whatever we want to. Depending upon our goal, though, that might not be the best strategy.

If we are looking to build an audience and gain influence using Twitter, we need a more focused strategy than “say anything and everything!” This strategy includes developing the right voice and building an audience over time. There are three key components that will help build a quality following with a high level of trust.

PROVIDING VALUEProviding valuable content is the absolute number one rule of almost all online marketing, so it is no surprise that it is also the most important rule on Twitter. This type of content is usually developed by constantly asking the question “what’s in it for them?” when we think about our followers. If our content provides a good answer to this question, we’re on the right track.


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RHere, are a few ways that we can use Twitter to share valuable content with our followers.

Share what we know.

As we develop our Twitter presence, we’ll spend time considering our area of expertise. The best way to provide value is to talk about what we know best.

Provide quick tips.

Twitter limits all messages to 140 characters, so we’ll have to be brief, but helpful tips are often retweeted.

Use blogging as a platform.

Blogging is a great and often times necessary component of an online strategy. If we have a blog, we should be sharing our posts and content on Twitter.

Links to other sources.

Find bloggers that are talking about our area of expertise and share their links on Twitter. Helping our followers find great content is a valuable service.

ENGAGING CONVERSATIONTwitter is not only a place to share valuable information, but it is also a place for conversation.

One of the fastest ways to create value for someone is to be their friend and engage in interesting dialogue with them. On Twitter, it is OK to hop into any conversation on a moment’s notice.


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The key to engaging in conversation is finding the right people to talk to. If we are tweeting within a certain expertise or niche, we should be talking to people who are also in that niche and have built themselves some influence. Over time, we’ll develop a following and friends that are both influential and helpful.

TALKING ABOUT YOURSELFThe last thing on the list of things to talk about is ourselves. We’ve all been to the dinner party where one person dominated the conversation by talking about themselves non-stop. Such a person ends up looking foolish. The same thing can happen on Twitter.

It is important to let our own personality shine through (that’s what makes Twitter human), but we should definitely be careful about how personal we get. We can talk about ourselves, but it shouldn’t be in a way that dominates all conversation.


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R8 WAYS TO CREATE CONTENT THAT YOUR CUSTOMERS WILL RETWEET

Retweeting has become a popular pastime for Twitter users, and a badge of honor for content creators. The more retweets we have, the better we are tweeting. It is the modern word-of-mouth advertising.

Retweets can organically spread your reach!

While we’re talking about Twitter specifically, these ideas can be applied to any social media network because they are all about giving our followers the content they want, and consequently, the content they’ll share.

THE NEW WORD OF MOUTHIf social media really is the new word of mouth advertising, then it’s easy to see why it so darn valuable. It has always been the aspiration of businesses to get their customers to talk about them to others. Social media now makes this very doable. Creating content that people want to share isn’t easy, but here are a few ways that you can make it happen.


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R1. Make Them Smarter

There are many reasons that people tweet, and one of them is to find great content that will make them better at what they do. People often use Twitter for professional reasons, which means they are there to learn. If we can teach them something, then will likely share our helpful content.

To create this kind of content, focus is first and foremost on our audience. Who are they? What do they want to learn? When we know this, we create content that answers those questions.

2. Make Their Day

Making someone’s day is not only fun, but exceptionally powerful. Customers love to share their experiences with others, and Twitter is the perfect place to do it. What if we can be the person to surprise them with great news? For example, getting something done faster than normal, or giving them a free bonus with their order. It’s the simple acts that make a person’s day, and it’s exactly that kind of thing that gets shared on Twitter.

3. Make Them Laugh

Being funny doesn’t come naturally to all of us, but we certainly know when something gives us the giggles. Laughter is contagious, so humorous tweets spread quickly. We all enjoy a good laugh. Remember, social media is, at its core, human. And people like to laugh.

4. Make Them Think

Challenging and thought provoking tweets promote reaction and retweeting. They get conversations started just by their very nature. Challenging doesn’t necessarily mean controversial or


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confrontational. It merely means taking a poke at the status-quo for a bit. A bold statement about something naturally makes people respond with an opinion.

5. Make Them Answer

One of the easiest ways to create conversation and engagement is to ask questions.

Even if we only have a few followers, we will likely get a response to a question. This is especially so if we ask a question about our followers. Asking big questions that involve our entire community on Twitter gets conversation and retweets going.

6. Make Them Aware

News is a big deal on Twitter. The real-time nature of the service has made it one of the most revolutionary news sharing tools of our time. If we can be the source that helps distribute newsworthy information, we give our followers a reason to pay attention to us as well as something to share. News travels fast on Twitter; we want to be in front of the wave when it happens.

Retweets magnify your message, so don’t be afraid to ask for your followers to retweet what you have to say.


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R7. Solve Their Problems

Why are our customers our customers?

It’s almost certainly because we solve a particular problem. Commerce is made up of customers exchanging money for produces and services they need. How can we channel what they need into our Twitter stream? If they are willing to pay for what we give them, then wouldn’t they be willing to Retweet it?

8. Ask For It

Dan Zarella, the social media scientist, points out in his research that the method of asking for retweets in our update can pay big dividends, even if we have a small audience. This method simply involves adding “please RT” to the end of your tweet. While it may sound too simple (and annoying), Dan’s research makes it difficult to argue with the results.

GOING FOR DISTANCEGetting retweets is both a powerful business tool and a great boost of confidence for a blogger or day-to-day tweeter. The more retweets we get, the more our message spreads. That is what we are after.

http://danzarrella.com/


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RTHE TOP TOOLS FOR MEASURING SUCCESS ON TWITTER

Online metrics are a double-edged sword. They can be a distraction and cause us to erve a goal of getting better numbers rather than better content, or they can be necessary to measure how effective our efforts in social media are. Ignoring available data isn’t the answer; understanding how to use it properly is.

WHAT ARE THEY FOR?The thing to keep in mind when using stats and analytics is that everything must be in moderation. If we let them control our actions, we’ve gone too far. Here’s a simple formula for success:

1. Check stats monthly.2. Track and chart the ones that matter3. Make adjustments according

If we find ourselves checking stats daily, or even weekly, we are headed for trouble. The only exception is if we are monitoring a single campaign.

WHICH STATS MATTER?According to Olivier Blanchard, the author of Social Media ROI and an authority on the subject, we should be tracking things that help us determine and measure our business goals. Business objectives become social media objectives, and we use measurement tools to track how all of those things are lining up.

With that in mind, here are five tools we can use to measure our progress on Twitter.


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TWEETSTATSTweetstats is part of the old guard, having been in place since the beginning. They take an inward look at our tweets, measuring our activity. They can tell us who we like to interact with the most, and what time of day we like to tweet.

Most of these stats aren’t overly helpful – just interesting. The most powerful stats on Tweetstats surround our actual tweet frequency and type. If we click on the line bars for each individual month, we will get a nice breakdown of your activity.

From the graph above, we can see that activity on this Twitter account is fairly healthy. There is a good balance of tweets, replies, and retweets. Frequency has some noticeable valleys that could be improved, but overall it’s pretty good.

KLOUTKlout is a tool that attempts to measure our level of online social influence using Twitter and Facebook. This is a flawed measurement for many reasons, one of which is precisely because it only takes into account Twitter and Facebook. Still, it is a good tool, giving at-a-glance understanding of how we’re faring online in general.


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Like Tweetstats, this will primarily grade our overall activity, showing us areas where we need to improve in how we use Twitter.

BIT.LY (AND T.CO)Bit.ly is not specifically a Twitter stats tool, instead gaining popularity for creating and shortening URLs on Twitter.

Twitter now automatically shortens links using their in-house t.co system, which is meant to protect users from dangerous links and aid in the development of their own Twitter analytics.

Bit.ly has suffered some from the introduction of t.co, but many users still swear by it. Bit.ly tells us how many times a user clicked on our links. For many of us, most of our need for shortened links is because of Twitter, so this kind of analysis can give us a good idea of how likely people are to follow through with things that we recommend to them. This data could tell you which type of links get the most activity, and which get easily ignored.


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RBACKTYPEBacktype is a useful tool that measures the number of times our URL is shared on Twitter.

It is a simple but important metric if our goal is to gain more traffic to our site. This tool tracks shares and user engagement. If we are are trending upward, then we are definitely doing something right.

GOOGLE ANALYTICSThough Google Analytics is a heavy-duty stats tool for entire websites and traffic, it can still be used to track our Twitter activity.

Specifically, it can be used to measure how much inbound traffic we are receiving from Twitter. If Backtype tracks shares, and Bit.ly tracks clicks, Google Analytics shows us how many people actually make it to our site. More importantly, it shows us what they did once they got there. This is hugely important, because in marketing, our goal is to social media, like Twitter, to drive traffic


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to our site. We not only need to measure the amount of traffic, but also the quality of traffic (bounce rates, goal completions, etc).

TWITTER WEB ANALYTICSTwitter has promised to release in-house analytics for their Twitter interface with an announcement in late 2011. While this hasn’t been rolled out to everyone, it will give user the benefit of convenient and direct access from within a Twitter account.

According to Twitter, these stats will provide three things:

• Understand how much our website content is being shared across the Twitter network

• See the amount of traffic Twitter sends to our site• Measure the effectiveness of our Tweet Button integration


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RPUTTING IT TOGETHERRemember, we need to use these metrics responsibly. Define objectives, set goals, and use these metrics to track our progress. Statistics are about reaching goals and objectives. Remember to avoid putting the cart before the horse: use them, don’t let them use you.


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Within the sphere of social media metrics, there are three different categories that users generally fall into.

• Group 1: Obsessed with the numbers. They are constantly going over the stats and watching them after every tweet.

• Group 2: Knows about stats, but doesn’t always know what do to with them. For this reason, they tend to just ignore them.

• Group 3: Right in the middle. They use social metrics to help make smart marketing decisions, but don’t obsess over them in an unhealthy way.

It’s easy enough to track how many followers we have on Twitter. The problem is that it really doesn’t matter. It’s not too tough to gain followers if we’re only going for numbers. We don’t just want huge numbers of followers. We want to be influential. And that’s what’s a little tougher to track: our influence.

A TWITTER METRIC THAT MATTERS

Klout.com is a site for measuring online influence. While we can also include Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube, it is a great Twitter tool that can be used to evaluate any Twitter user. It produces a clean and focused report on useful metrics.

GAINING KLOUT


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Klout Metric 1: The Klout Score

This is the first metric we are provided with, and it is an overall measure of our online influence. This score ranges from 1 to 100, with the higher score representing a strong sphere of influence. Ideally, we want to see a number between 40 and 60, but the mid–30’s are still respectable.

Klout Metric 2: True Reach

True Reach is the size of our engaged audience. This stat tells us how many of our followers actually listen to what we have to say. Chances are that this number will be less than 50 percent of our actual follow count.

Rather than giving us useless stats about follow counts and the number of lists we’re on, it provides information about our actual sphere of online influence. To do this, it breaks our influence down into four key metrics.


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RKlout Metric 3: Amplification Probability

Amplification Probability is the likelihood that our content will be acted upon. Action, according to Klout, is primarily measured by people actually responding to our posts and messages. This doesn’t measure the number of links clicked.

Klout Metric 4: Network Influence

Network Influence is the influence level of our engaged audience. This score primarily looks at the quality or “influence” level of the people who interact and respond to our content. The higher they rank, the higher you rank.

HOW TO USE KLOUT STATSOne thing that we need to remember is that almost all metrics are flawed in some way. There are plenty of blog posts that note the flaws n Klout (and there are some). The key is to know how to use Klout for what it does well, and not focus on what it doesn’t do well.

Don’t get into a numbers race.

Focus on creating good content, not bigger numbers.

Use them for personal improvement.

The main thing that matters, is that our numbers are growing. Focus on improving what we do, not improving the number itself.

Don’t get stuck in comparisons.

It is inevitable that we will compare ourselves with other Twitter users, but there is no point to that. We are in competition with


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ourselves, not others.

Don’t cheat!

Quick methods for success will give us higher numbers but won’t provide greater influence. Numbers don’t sell things, but influence can.

Don’t check the numbers every day.

It is obsessive, and serves no purpose. Spend 20 minutes a month reviewing our stats and then spend the rest of the month focusing on better content.

At the end of the day, stats don’t matter if we don’t use them to improve our content or validate what we are doing. All we need to do is understand what the numbers mean, and then use them to refine our goals.


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RAUTOMATED DMS: ANNOYING, OR AN OPPORTUNITY?

We don’t need to be using Twitter for very long before we experience an automated Direct Message (DM) coming our way. They usually are sent to our Twitter account once we have followed someone on Twitter. The ideas is that we can use these to thank someone for following us, which seems like a nice thing to do. However, it is highly disliked among Twitter users.

But why? A ‘thank you’ message shouldn’t inspire loathing, should it?

The problem with automated DMs is that some brilliant marketer decided that they could be turned into an opportunity to spam people with a link to their website. This means we now have automated DMs that look ike this:

Hi there! Thanks for following me. Please buy illegal prescription drugs from me at http://mywebsite.com

That is annoying.


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AUTOMATED DMS AS A MARKETING TOOL?Automated DMs are not a marketing tool. Plain and simple. Spamming might get us a few clicks each month, but we won’t build a lasting customer base that way. Using an automated DM is old-school in-your-face push marketing. Avoid it.

WHAT ARE DMS FOR?The DM feature is great for connecting and sharing information with people that we know. However, because of automated DMs, many Twitter users have an inbox that has become inundated with spam, and so they no longer use the feature. This is unfortunate, and clearly shows how most people view automated messages.

USING OTHER’S AUTO DMS FOR GOODAuto-responding DMs are not a good practice to get into, or rely on. While there are a some immediate benefits (say, 5 clicks per month) it’s a quick way to annoy Twitter followers who might have given us more attention if we hadn’t ruined our first impression. Twitter is a tool for community and building relationships. That will best happen without the automatic message.

But what about those early-example sincere automated DMs? Not all are spam. For example:

Hi my name is _______ and I look forward to connecting with you. I like to blog at http://mywebsite.com.

At least this is the kind of messages that we can actually do something with, without buying illegal medications.


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RWhat if, whenever we received a DM like this, automated or not, we took three seconds to respond? Maybe something like this:

Hi, thanks for the message. I blog too at http://todaymade.com/blog. I would love to hear your thoughts. Thanks!

It’s a taste of their own medicine, and we can decide our feelings on receiving that kind of exchange ourselves. However, that’s a best-case scenario response. While we might tolerate someone sending an auto DM to us, most people won’t. As a business, we need to work to not annoy our followers.

However, by replying back, we might create a new connection, loyal follower, and possible future customer. Don’t write off auto DMs from others, even if we aren’t using them. Remember, we can only receive a DM from someone we are following, so something must have piqued our interest in the somehow. If we’re vetting who we’re following well, we should avoid spam most of the time.


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RTHE MOST IMPORTANT LESSON FOR BUSINESSES ON TWITTER

It’s a story of being 18 days late, and a tweet short.

Justin, from here at Todaymade, recently sent a question via Twitter to a web service provider that we were looking to learn more about. This is a common use of Twitter between customer and businesses, and so we expected a typical experience.

Except we didn’t hear back.

When, after 18 days, we finally got a response, it was too little too late.

SPEED MATTERSPart of the beauty of Twitter is that is completely real-time. Part of the challenge of Twitter is that it is…completely real-time.

In an instant, our tweet is automatically added to the different Twitter software available. As a business, we need to understand


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that Twitter isn’t just fast, it’s instant. Twitter is a big part of what people are calling ‘the real-time web.’

We don’t mean to pick on the specific business in the example above, but they do serve as a reminder of how important it is that we pay attention to our Twitter account. Whether we do it on Twitter or with social media management software like TodayLaunch, we need to be prepared to manage our account.

That doesn’t mean that we need to stay up all hours night watching our Twitter feed, but it does mean we need to develop a system and be committed to it.

ALWAYS CONNECTEDWe regularly monitor the Todaymade Twitter account, whether on mobile devices or a computer. We make a point to reply to each tweet that requires it, and even some that don’t. We might not always be instantaneous, but we are never 18 days late.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU’RE SLOW?When we’re slow to respond there are a few things that happen.

You tell me that I am not important.

We have all been on the customer service call where the recorded voice tells us over and over and that our call is very important. That’s very tough to believe; important calls don’t get put on hold. When we don’t respond quickly, we send the same message.

You lose credibility.

We aren’t customers with the company in our example, and we never will be. They might offer a great product, but there is now a credibility issue. A company that takes 18 days to respond is


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a company that has too many other things going on. It makes us concerned we would get lost in their shuffle.

You break my trust.

Doctors have what is called “fiduciary” responsibility, meaning that the doctor is required to work in the best interest of the patient at all times. This makes sense in medicine, but shouldn’t it also apply for all business? No response to use before we are paying customers causes us to lack trust that it would be any different once we are paying customers.

You lose my attention.

Attention is one of the most precious commodities in business. Getting someone’s attention is a gift, especially online where there are an endless supply of distractions. For whatever reason, a business captured our attention. What a shame to squander that by neglecting to respond.

You lose the sale.

Where our attention goes, so do our dollars. Every customer is a great customer, and every lead is a potential customer. Treat them as such.

BEING THEREThe real lesson is simple: Twitter is fast, the users on Twitter are fast, and they expect fast service.

If we use Twitter to market and promote our business, we need to make sure we can keep up! If not, it might be best to shut down our account. In our example, it would have been better if this company required us to email them. Perhaps their response time would have been faster, and we would have still been interested.


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RWHY CHARLIE SHEEN WAS #WINNING AT TWITTER

We all remember crazed and confused Charlie Sheen, whose public breakdown on Twitter in 2011 was unique in modern epic proportions. At the peak of it all, Sheen and his hashtags monopolized Twitter, it seemed. He even set a new Guinness Book of World Records for “Fastest Time to Reach 1 Million Followers.” Sheen rocketed past that to over 2.4 million followers in nine days, and is past the 7 million mark today.

While we can’t all have a breakdown on Twitter as a plan to gain new followers, it is interesting to look at what made Sheen so wildly successful, and what can be learned from it.

CAR ACCIDENTS FROM A DISTANCESheen’s dramatic rise to the “top” was based on the same human aspect that makes us unable to look away from a car accident as we drive by. Nothing good is happening, we have mixed feelings, but…we just can’t look away. We are captivated by the horror that we’re glad we don’t have to go through. We work out our fear by living vicariously through someone else’s mess.


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WHY SHEEN WAS #WINNINGWhile Twitterdom may have been captivated by Sheen for all the wrong reasons, we can glean one very basic truth: we love story. Sheen was a great story at the time. Money, drama, public verbal brawls – it was a story, indeed. We all have a huge appetite for story, whatever form it takes. We want to know what happens next.

And even better, it seemed to be an authentic story.

A bit crazy, yes, but authentic. It was really happening. We stuck around because we wanted to see the ending.

THE HUMAN ADVENTURESheen’s situation wasn’t something to be taken lightly (it was a serious issue for him and those close to him), but he did do something particularly magical in the realm of social media: he offered up reality without any filters. There was no frontman, no spokesperson, no sanitizing of details. It was just Sheen, talking to us.

Not only are we attracted to stories, but true stories really hook us. They are emotional and cut to the heart of our own humanity. We are captivated when we find a way to connect.

As marketers, we must ask how we can use the natural human attraction to unfettered, true stories. How can we invigorate our brand? What story can we tell that will captivate our own followers?

What’s our story?


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RWHAT WILL WE TALK ABOUT WHEN TWITTER FLIES THE COOP?

Facebook and Twitter have dominated the social media discussion for awhile, but there are always newcomers scrambling into position. Here’s the question then: what will happen when these services go away? What will we talk about when Twitter flies the coop?

Twitter is a tool, nothing more and nothing less. It just happens to be the first real-time communication tool to hit mainstream popularity. Twitter captivated the world.

But so did MySpace.

THE MYSPACE EFFECTPeople in social marketing love to talk about MySpace and its fall from grace. When we talk with customers about Twitter, periodically we will hear the question of what will happen if it collapses like MySpace. The very thought of its impermanence seems to be a reason to not use it.

MySpace, of course, didn’t go away, though for all intents and purposes, it is dead.


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RFacebook sucked the life right out of it. If you look at the core of what MySpace was, however, it never went anywhere. MySpace was one of the first sites that allowed people to connect with friends online in a unique (though now common) social manner. Its flaws gave Facebook the perfect opportunity to take over the market, but the core of it – inter-network communication with text, photos, and videos – was the meat of the service.

MySpace, as a concept, is still alive and well.

WHAT TWITTER REALLY ISTwitter is a tool.

It provides a platform for real-time communication, and that is exactly why it has changed the world. Perhaps someone will come along with a better method for facilitating that conversation, but real-time exchanges will always be a part of our universe. The tool might change, but there’s no going back on real-time exchange. Becoming fluent in the language of real-time exchange is transferrable no matter what tool we use.

KILLING TOOL TALKTalking about Twitter or Facebook or the Internet isn’t the point; those are conversations about tools, current tools that we use to deliver messages and create conversation.

It is so important for us to not get caught up in the tools. Investing large amounts of time in specific how-to guides for tools helps us master one tool, but not the product it creates. These tools change constantly, but the foundational aspects of what they create remain: conversation with real people. The things we need to learn are what kinds of change these tools are bringing, and how to work within that change.


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So, at the end of all of this, consider: Don’t bother becoming a Twitter expert. Become a real-time communications expert. Figure out how to use tools like Twitter for productivity and human engagement. Figure out how to use them to spread messages and understand crowd thinking. These underlying rules of communication will last a lot longer than the newest way to measure our Twitter followers.

Get busy. Go communicate in real time. And for now, use Twitter.


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TodaymadeA web development and design company helping the world create and share great content.

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