Over the last year, Twitter has seen phenomenal growth, not just amongst individual users, but amongst corporations and businesses anxious to be seen taking part in the next big thing. Some have had more success than others, and you can find a regular string of stories in the press about Twitter accounts causing professional difficulty, whether it is a brand hijacking a sensitive hashtag [1], a soccer player leaking sensitive details about an impending transfer [2] or a TV presenter whose tweets were too saucy for her channel [3].
What you won't find in the press are stories about people using Twitter well - after all, what's the fun in reporting that? It is useful information to know though, and so here is a list of 12 top Twitter tips for engaging customers.
1. Have something relevant to share. Twitter is about sharing. Read something interesting? Share it on Twitter.
2. Be an effective curator. Curation is the key value proposition for Twitter. Users follow people who will share information they find relevant, interesting or funny. Be an effective curator and you will provide great value.
3. Don't be (overly) predictable. One of the joys of Twitter is its serendipitous nature. As we move from broadcast to narrowcast, what gets lost is serendipity. Printed newspapers brought the possibility that the next turn of the page would bring you an interesting article you'd have never sought out otherwise. While randomness is not an effective Twitter strategy, be sure to mix in some tweets that users might not have expected. One of my favourite finance Twitter users is @pkedrosky (http://twitter.com/pkedrosky). And while most of his tweets are finance-related, he is passionate about unusual weather patterns and will mix in links to papers on storm patterns or similar.
4. Don't be (too) self-serving. If all you do is tweet links to your own content (or worse, to pages where you are selling something), your followers will quickly drop off as you won't provide much of usable value. Note: this doesn't apply if your Twitter ID is solely serving as a feed of your published content, for example @nytimes (http://twitter.com/nytimes) or of special sales, for example @delloutlet (http://twitter.com/delloutlet), but those are only useful if there is a strong demand for that information.
5. Join the discussion. Twitter is a social media tool. Join in the discussion. Use the RT (retweet) feature to share other users' comments with your followers. @reply to the questions or comments of other users. Engage. Use Twitter search to find users who are tweeting on topics you care about (or where you have particular expertise), then follow and engage those users.
6. Read and respond (where appropriate) promptly to any @responses you receive. It's a conversation, not a broadcast. If someone responds with a useful comment, RT their comments even (especially) if you disagree.
7. Make a good first impression. Create an attractive and useful profile page. If you have little information (URL, photo, bio) on your profile page, most people won't follow you back.
8. Keep your following-to-followers ratio attractive. Ideally, you want 2-3 times as many followers (or more) as you are following. The reverse makes you look like a spammer. Don't feel obligated to follow back everyone who follows you. You should follow those whom you wish to read. I like to read Nick Kristof of the New York Times but I don't expect him to read what I write. You're following what you like to read, not being a friend to someone.
9. Make sure your tweets are ‘retweetable'. My user name is @graubart (http://twitter.com/graubart). So, to ensure my tweets are retweetable (is that a word?), I need to keep them to no more than 126 characters, leaving 14 characters available for ‘@graubart'.
10. Use hashtags - both to tag your content and also as a short means of commentary. Hashtags help your tweets (and you) become more discoverable through search. But Twitter users have also figured out that hashtags can be a great shorthand way of adding commentary to someone else's tweet or information. For example, if I wanted to RT someone's tweet, noting that they had made some brilliant insights, I could simply put #brilliant before the RT - adding my opinion in just 10 characters. If someone does something really dumb, you can tweet their headline, then add #fail at the end. 11. Spread your Tweets throughout the day. I've seen some publishers (and people) who send a batch of tweets every day at a given time, then remain silent until the next day. That's a dumb approach. First, if your followers are not dipping into the Twitter stream at that time, then they'll miss them. Also, it makes you appear to be either automated or someone who doesn't ‘get' that Twitter is a conversation. If you must post your tweets as a batch use one of the tools that allow you to schedule tweets such as TweetLater or HootSuite.
12. Use bit.ly as your shortener and make sure you create a bit.ly account. This will allow you to track click-throughs from your tweets and RTs 13. And a bonus one, courtesy of my colleague @pvaras1. All you need to know you learned in kindergarten. Don't be rude. Don't be offensive. Play nicely with others.
Barry Graubart has spent the past 20 years applying technology to content to develop high value business-to-business information products. He serves as Vice President, Product Strategy & Business Development for Alacra, a leading content technology company, where his focus is on eCommerce and social media applications. Previously Barry served as EVP & Chief Marketing Officer for Leadership Directories, and spent four years in various roles with ClearForest, an emerging leader in the text analytics market. He has worked in many b2b content businesses, including divisions of Primedia, Nelson Information (now Thomson Financial), Kaplan/Washington Post and McClatchy Newspapers. Barry holds a BA in Political Science from the State University of New York at Albany.
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Over the last year, Twitter has seen phenomenal growth, not just amongst individual users, but amongst corporations and businesses anxious to be seen taking part in the next big thing. Some have had more success than others, and you can find a regular string of stories in the press about Twitter accounts causing professional difficulty, whether it is a brand hijacking a sensitive hashtag [1], a soccer player leaking sensitive details about an impending transfer [2] or a TV presenter whose tweets were too saucy for her channel [3].
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