Social Media Camp Workshop Victoria - Maximizing Twitter: Juhli Selby
1. Social Media Camp Workshop Series : Victoria Maximizing Twitter for Business! Understanding & leveraging a powerful niche platform Juhli Selby @JUHLiSELBy on Twitter
General questions to gauge the level in the room… -Do you have an acct on Twitter? -Still have ‘the egg’ for your profile photo? -Do you follow or have more than 100 followers? -Do you tweet daily? Weekly? Monthly? -Use lists? Favorites? Hashtags? -Been to a Tweet-up? -Use Hootsuite, TweetDeck or other? -Use Twitter from a smartphone? Or mobile phone?
Ask yourself: Why do you want to be on Twitter? What are your goals? -There are some suggested best practices, but there are no hard & fast rules -Experiment!
-They all relatively new to Twitter! They started Tweeting in 2010! (all 2010, except the Pope was June of 2011) For reference: Astronaut TJ Creamer (Astro_TJ) Cher (@Cher) Bill Gates (@BillGates) Tiger Woods (@TigerWoods) Sly Stallone (@TheSlyStallone) Steve Martin (@SteveMartinToGo) Donald Rumsfeld (@RumsfeldOffice) Conan O’Brien (@ConanOBrien) Pope Benedict XVI/The Vatican (@news_va_en)
Pope -Staged photo op… vs. Astro TJ -Someone did tweet him to ask what he eats for breakfast & he answered!
Twitter is a niche platform -There are somewhere in the neighborhood of 3K-5K Twitter users in Victoria vs. 180K Facebook users -13% of Americans use Twitter – up 5% from November 2010 -This platform is not right for everyone – takes some time to learn how to use it, takes daily participation to be an active part of the community Some Stats: -42% of users are between 30-49 (I have heard average age of 37 as well as 39 on Twitter vs 44 on LinkedIn) -81% of users follow less than 100 people -5% of the users create 75% of the content -24% of users check tweets several times/day -40% of active monthly users choose not to tweet at all -Approx 460K new accounts created/day on average -Users send 200 million tweets/day OR approx billion tweets per week (vs. 350 million/week in March of 2010) -183% increase in mobile users from 2010 to 2011 For comparison: FB (2004) – 800 million Twitter (2006) – 200 million LinkedIn (2003) – 115 million Google+ (2011) – 50 million Side note: Oprah joined Twitter in January of 2009 – 43% jump in Twitter traffic – by April 2009 there were 6 million users
-Twitter is described as the new water cooler or like a business networking mixer -Think of it as a cross between text messaging, instant messaging & blogging -The new telephone (customer service in real-time) -Sharing short blurbs of info– You share ideas, thoughts & information one 140 character tweet at a time -You can follow people who share interesting ideas, thoughts or information from anywhere in the world -- & people from anywhere in the world can follow your tweets -Twitter is super cool because you can learn about what’s happening right now in your city, in your industry, or in your area of interest (personal or professional) -The reason people ‘don’t get’ Twitter at first… (empty room)
-This graph is from the Social Media Marketing Report 2011 – by Michael Stelzner – This survey included sample included 3,300 marketers, mostly in the US (64%), half B2B marketers and half B2C marketers. You can use Twitter to: -Gain exposure/create awareness for your business -Increase traffic to your website -Connect with new partnerships/strategic alliances -Get qualified leads/referrals to improve sales (‘inbound’ vs. ‘cold call’ lead)
-Know, like & trust factor
-Compared with a traditional website or other traditional media – Twitter opens a channel of 2-way communication between you/your business & your audience -Most people use Twitter for ‘open networking’ vs. ‘closed networking’ on FB or LinkedIn – majority of tweets are public -Conversations that were once private, are now public -Twitter is the new telephone – business in real-time – people expect an answer within 5 min (Jose’s BC Ferries example) -If you are monitoring for opportunity – you can proactively interact! -If you have a business account on Twitter – you better be listening 24/7! -Best if you or someone on your team has a smart phone for monitoring -Alternately: You can post ‘hours of tweeting’ like hours of business if you are not prepared to tweet 24/7
-Opportunity to respond to build relationships -Potential to increase referrals if you provide great customer service -People who are active daily on Twitter are influential ‘sneezers’ (more likely to blog & use multiple social platforms)
-People like to ask questions… some are general, some could lead to real business referrals
Hot Tip: Look for opportunities to connect people! -Actively refer business to others & they will be more likely to refer back to you -The more you refer business to others, connect people with common interests, share other people’s content, etc. - they will try to return the favour
-Make it a habit to give shout outs & make recommendations -Don Power is very good at this!
-Just like any other type of relationship marketing – you will get out of Twitter, what you put into it. -If you make the time to be a regular part of the community you want to do business with, you can build relationships that will lead to business.
-Might be helpful to know why people connect with brands/businesses on Twitter Hot Tip: Connect with existing customers who are on Twitter to help increase your chance of referrals! -Export your list of contacts from your email program into an Excel csv file – there are ways to import your contacts into Twitter (if they used the same email address) – Do this every 6 months – more & more people are joining Twitter -What type of content would be interesting to your audience? What are you passionate about? What are you knowledgeable about? How can you share your personality?
Being ‘salesy’ too soon – rookie move – use the 80/20 rule Boring = no value added (i.e. Foursquare check-ins posted on Twitter without a comment) Too much automation (i.e. Auto DMs or setting tweets to auto pilot with no reply…)
-You will get followed back more if you set up your profile completely -Can link to your LinkedIn profile, FB page or other social site if you don’t have a website -Use a simple short name for your handle – close to your own name or your business name – shorter is better!
-Don’t bother following this person (i.e. don’t be this person on accident)
Name 2 reasons people will follow a brand/business on Twitter
-My suggestions for follow back best practice – if they seem like a real person or business (especially a local business) – I follow back -In Victoria many businesses employ a follow back strategy because it is a direct way to build relationships, allows people to privately DM you (you never know where business will come from) -You can follow and list, or just list (if it is obvious they won’t follow back) – Be personal if possible -Don’t follow too many people at once -The home feed is (or will be) useless – must use lists to follow the people you are really interested in -You can list people privately or publicly
-mention MT -how to RT -native RT vs. manual RT -why 120 is important -add value when/where possible vs native RT
#twittertips Chris’ #ihatemyjob / #ilovemyjob one
-Import your list of existing contacts -www.search.twitter.com – keywords & hashtags -other people’s lists -directories – Twellow, wefollow, listorious -who is getting “follow-friday-ed”?
-using the @reply will make sure a user sees your note – and so can everyone else
Name 2 ways to find people on Twitter
-This happens sometimes – you didn’t do anything wrong -Just try again in 5 min, 1 hour or later in the day
Hootsuite
-Buffer -Great if you are only using Twitter or FB & Twitter (since you need to post manually in FB anyway)
Success can include will include ↑ # of followers, ↑ # of interactions (@mentions), ↑ in # of RTs -↑ in Klout score Success will depend on your goals…What are your goals? Awareness? Customer Service? Get new business? – Thru referrals from existing connections, or brand new clients? Ultimately – after a one year period (of sustained effort), have marketing costs gone down? Or did you see an increase in qualified leads that turned into sales?
Why Twitter is such a great platform? – access to influencers who ‘sneeze’ -72% of active Twitter users publish blog posts once/month -70% comment on other’s blog posts -61% write at least one product review per month -56% write articles for third party sites -50% make contributions to Wiki sites