Here is some basic information about Twitter and how use it – follow me on Twitter for a living example!
The Basics
- Twitter is the social network of the moment. It is growing massively every day and every day you are in grows your following. I had over 600 followers in a month of being on it and now have over 8000. That is a much faster growth rate than Facebook. As a user, it is much more enjoyable and useful! I have met some amazing people on Twitter and direct messaging with people I would not have got to by email and got lots of interviews for my blog podcast. Twitter is now my second highest traffic stream to my blog and people sign up to my list every day.
- Big news – Google is adding Twitter search to their search engine – it's not on the mainstream one now – but how long? since the Mumbai bombings & the Hudson plane crash where twitter beat the press to the news, there is a push for realtime twitterstream search.
- Basic rules: It's social networking, not direct sales. It's still based on relationships, but it is VERY fast word of mouth. Tweets are 140 characters max based around “what are you doing?” but marketers use it for their brands. Evrything you tweet goes into the “twitterstream” and people see it – it's about catching people's attention.
- #tags (hash-tags) are used to group tweets and for trending e.g. the other night after Rove everyone was using #tweetAustralia in their tweets and we all got to the “front-page” of twitter-trending. Use #tags to group your tweets.
- Be positive! Twitter is a pull marketing message – people are attracted to your message; they will see your tweets so make them positive, useful, and targeted.
- What do you tweet? I post links to blogs, articles, and comment on conversations all relating to my niche (authors, writing, publishing). I post about a ratio of 6-8 links to other people's stuff and then 1 of my own posts. If people trust that you are useful and not just self-promoting, they will retweet you. This is a sophisticated user community! I do read about 40 blogs a day which provide a lot of content. My secret weapon for tweets = Stumbleupon! (here's a post on it)
For marketing
Build your twitter brand. Decide what you are using it for and set up an appropriate handle. Make it consistent and make sure you tweet on message. You want followers in your niche. If you have more than one niche, create a separate handle. Get an appropriate background, not a standard one. I used TwitterImage for mine.- Follow people in your niche. Most tweeters are bloggers so find your top bloggers and follow them. Check out your competition and follow them. Engage them and get their attention with RT and useful additions to their conversations. You want the people who follow you. There's room for all! You don't have to auto-follow everyone who follows you – it's a personal thing, but there is a ratio you need to keep in mind so Twitter doesn't think you are a spammer!
- Link to your blog. If you don't have a blog, I would question Twitter as it is so dynamic, you can't keep pointing people to a static website – that's a personal observation.
- Get retweeted. Retweeting is like forwarding. You find something interesting from someone you are following and you retweet it to your followers. They in turn may RT it. It's like link love – if you start to RT someone, they will RT you in return (if you are interesting!). Max 140 characters so make them short and more people can RT. This is one of the ways to grow your followers.
- Have auto Direct message on follow. You can set this up on TweetLater. I have a thank you and a link to my free eworkbook “How to be an author”. I am getting a whole lot more people subscribing based on this.
- Tweet at different times. You can schedule tweets using Tweetlater – excellent tool! I have been experimenting with time zones and have picked up followers in UK and Europe by scheduling overnight Oz time. If you get the paid version, you can also set up recurring tweets and rotating text – e.g. set up your free offer to go every 2 days at different times. No one keeps track of it day after day, it is fast moving, so you can tweet the same again (but not too much!)
Tools and Links
- There are lots of blogs on Twitter but Twitip is a pretty good one (it's Probloggers)
- For managing the twitterstream, I use Tweetdeck – brilliant tool
- For iphone apps, I use Tweetie and also Twitterific
- Tweetlater – as mentioned above – necessary for busy tweeple!
- Tweetmeme – for popular tweets; like Digg but showing RT
The most followed people on Twitter – no. 1 is Barack Obama 6 tips for using your Twitter profile to get new followers – includes creating a custom profile page and using your bio to the best advantage Feed your blog to Twitter using Twitter Feed 17 ways you can use Twitter including finding prospects, and getting feedback
