You want to target your profile so you attract the type of followers that will be valuable to your business http://twitter.com/#!/CocaCola http://twitter.com/#!/comcastcares Bio pic – no best practice here. Headshots are more personal, logos more professional – but you can have professional headshots. Good rule of thumb – if you’re a big organization, esp one with a recognizable logo, go for the logo. If you’re a small business, don’t be afraid to be the face of your business Twitter account To add a personal touch if you do decide to use a logo, try signing your tweets with the initials of the person who penned them You will attract different types of audiences with your bio Bio – ask yourself: why do people follow others on Twitter? They want something of value, want to learn something new, want to find people with similar interests Your bio should reflect this – tell your audience what value they will get from following you, what you’ll teach the or help them with, and your interests (social media, marketing, news, etc) Your interests should encompass why you’re on Twitter – is it to share news from your industry? Customer service? Prioritize what you include – you only have 160 characters, so it is usually not a good idea to include “cat lover and music afficionado” unless that has something to do with your brand Keywords identify your industry and your interests. Twitter is also a search engine, so what keywords do you want people to find you by? You can use your bio to link out, but don’t include more than one link – some people find it useful to create a page on their website specifically for Twitter users as a welcome landing page, others link to their blogs, portfolios, corporate website etc or just include their email address. This is up to you
Be selective about who you follow Just because someone follows you, doesn’t mean you have to follow back – you want to only follow accounts that are relevant to you and your brand for best engagement Use Twitter’s advanced search to build your list of follows Search for keywords related to your niche, like social media – this will show you tweets from people who are talking about that topic right now Twollo – save keyword searches, Twollo notifies you when someone fits your criteria Who Follows Whom – enter two to five accounts, will be shown all of the Twitter accounts that they share in common – finding “friends of friends” this way Just Tweet It – find other twitter users in your niche using their directory – you can also add yourself to the directory to get more exposure – categories include bloggers, web designers, small businesses, social networking etc Listorious – NEED INFO
The great thing about Twitter is its flexibility – you can tweet anything For businesses, it is tempting to stick to press releases and internal news – but Twitter, like other social media, is about two-way conversations and engagement Tweet things that will be of value to your followers You can send out questions to engage them, highlight one unique Twitter account you’d like to share, retweet them and add your opinion, share cool blog posts you read, share quotes, actionable tips for your niche etc. See article – 25 interesting things to tweet other than blog posts
How often to tweet: one of the most commonly asked questions Good rule of thumb is to tweet at least once per day, but more is better AllTwitter.com tweets between 10 and 20 times per day Try increasing how often you tweet, and monitor how your audience responds You’ll find the “sweet spot” with time Tweet Effect, ChirpStats two tools to show you when people follow or unfollow you Use HootSuite, TweetDeck, Seesmic to monitor your @mentions When to tweet? You want to tweet when your audience will hear you Use Timely to show you when the best time of day for you to tweet is based on your history of tweeting and when people retweet you Use Tweetstats to see detailed graphs and charts of when you tweet, how often, what days of the week etc so you can refine your strategy General peak times for AllTwitter, based in Eastern time: 9AM eastern, 11AM eastern (just before lunch), 12PM eastern (lunch and west coast signs in), 3PM eastern (mid-afternoon and west coast lunch) You can tweet the same thing twice in one day, but follow these rules: Use different wording Spread it out by at least 6 hours Stop if you get complaints – we haven’t, and we don’t know many people who have
Dormant accounts are almost worse than having no account at all – they send the message that you don’t want to put in the effort into your social media campaign – if you have set up a Twitter account just to save the username for a later use, take a baby step and tweet something once a day (link to an interesting article you read) Twitter is not meant for one-way conversations, so don’t tweet out press releases and nothing else – ask questions of your audience, poll them, retweet them, comment on their tweets, share what they’re sharing Bland corporate accounts are not popular – check out giants @cocacola (fun, carefree)and @redcross (serious but topical ie the escaped bronx zoo cobra) for two very different ideas of how to inject personality into your tweets On the other side, don’t be offensive or rude, and don’t tweet mundane things just to inject some personality Spread out your tweets, good rule of thumb is generally 40 minutes but varies greatly depending on your industry and how you use Twitter
A tweet schedule is pre-written and scheduled tweets that you stagger throughout the day, interspersed among your real-time tweets – they are evergreen, meaning they don’t refer to anything topical and they can be posted at any time Examples – tips, general observations about your industry, recommendations, promoting your services, Make sure they all add value for your followers Scheduled tweets should present your brand in a postive light and remain on-topic, related to your niche or your reason for being on Twitter Once you schedule these tweets, they don’t require any followup – unless you use them to ask for feedback from your followers, in which case you must make note of when they will go live and followup A tweet schedule is one of the easiest ways you can increase your brand’s presence on Twitter. If you already use a Dashboard, you’ll know that you can schedule tweets hours, days and weeks in advance. Simply write out each of your tweets in HootSuite or another Dashboard, and schedule them in the future using the calendar I suggest writing up between 10 and 20 tweets to start, and scheduling one or two a day – you still want to do some real-time tweeting to remain current, so avoid filling up an entire 24 hour time period with scheduled, evergreen tweets Make sure your evergreen tweets are scheduled in between the realtime tweets you send out
Twitter offers you the ability to tap into a real-time conversation that is happening in bite-sized bits. As tweets are public (as opposed to Facebook wall posts, for instance) Twitter is a goldmine for information about what your customers (and competition) are saying How to monitor Twitter Define keywords – must know what you’re looking for, or else suffer from information overload You can search for your business name or Twitter handle, or keywords that are part of your industry such as social media Prepare a working list of several keywords you want to monitor Make schedule – monitoring Twitter works best when you set a schedule – once a day or once a week, spend even 10 minutes searching for your keywords to see what people are talking about Incorporate this into your social media strategy Find tools – use the tools that I’ve included in this presentation. There are also many tools out there if you want to get a little bit creative with your Google searching – they allow you to search by location, present aggregate data about keywords on Twitter and more Follow retweets – if you share links on Twitter, you can monitor how many people retweet them – use URL shortener service bit.ly to shorten the link you want to share. Tweet it out, and then copy it into your browser and add “+” at the end to see how many people clicked on it and the type of conversation it generated Repeat – Monitor the conversation regularly on Twitter – this will help you not only discover what people are saying so you can participate on Twitter, but it can also give you insight into hot topics, sentiment and more
Dashboards like HootSuite or TweetDeck – I prefer HootSuite as it is web-based and can be accessed from anywhere, but any dashboard that allows you to set up keyword monitoring streams is great Follow the competition – without letting them know you’re following them You’ll want to keep tabs on what they’re tweeting, but you don’t have to let them know you’re doing this. You have several options here. You can follow them with your personal, as opposed to business, account. Or, the more “secret” way – create a private Twitter list of your competitor’s twitter account(s). Private lists are only viewable by you Be sure you find all of their Twitter accounts – search for them in Google and on their corporate website, they might have others other than their main one – personal accounts of execs or employees, customer service accounts etc Next, create a stream in your dashboard that will display all mentions of your competition and related terms. When creating a new stream, use the “search” tab to add keywords like the company name, major products, their Twitter handle, slogans or other specifics. This will show you what people are saying related to those terms. You might want a separate column of just their @username, as this will show you what people are saying directly “to” them – will also show you whether they’re running a Twitter campaign, and customer service issues they’re having etc. You can also browse through the list of users the competition is following and who is following them to get some insight into the relationships they have built on Twitter – there are also tools, like friend or follow which can show you who is following them back for more insight
Hashtags can be any string of characters following a # hashtag sign or pound sign They are a product of the Twitter community, Twitter didn’t create them – formed as a way of organizing conversations Were the most popular form of trending topic in 2010 – not any specific keyword, just hashtags in general – they are taking off When someone sees a hashtag, it signals a topic. When they search for that hashtag, your tweet will appear in the timeline. Find out what currently trending hashtags mean by exploring what people are saying about them – click around the “Trending Topics” module on the right hand side panel of Twitter.com to see current hashtags, or go to What the Trend to see user-created explanations of currently trending topics, including hashtags. They organize your tweets by giving them context, help target your audience by indicating what topics you tweet about often (if you use #marketing101 for instance in several tweets, quick and easy way to let people know your niche), and can get you more retweets if you are entering into relevant hashtag conversations with others Be sure you don’t “hijack” hashtags – only use them when they are relevant to your tweet and your brand – don’t simply add a trending hashtag to one of your tweets to get it in front of more eyeballs, people will reject your tweet You can follow hashtags using TweetChat or another hashtag monitoring service – this is great to have open if you’re at a conference or following a live tweeting event and want to catch everything that is said Finally, hashtag chats are a great way to network with others in your niche. These are conversations that occur around a specific hashtag at a specific time each week or month. There are blogging hashtag chats, marketing, leadership, social media etc etc etc. I have a list of these and more info on AllTwitter which I’ve linked to at the end of the preso.
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