9. How it’s being used Business Customer relations Reputation mgmt Specials/Promos Crisis mgmt/PR Event coverage Issue advocacy Recruiting Individuals Thought Leaders Personal Branding Industry Relations Education Networking
12. Twitter don’ts Don’t tweet about everything Don’t treat it like another medium to push your message to customers and prospects Don’t build followers just to build followers Don’t jump in without learning the rules
16. Twitter dos Profile Include these in your profile: Use your real name and picture. Use your bio to convey your background, industry information and interests. Always include a URL. Customize your background.
17. Use search Find people who mention you, your company, your products or your competitors Search for keywords or topics Find people with similar interests Focus in on: Words, people, places, dates and attitudes www.search.twitter.com
18. How to engage (for business) Monitor conversation about your brand Follow the right people Build industry relationships Build media relationships Engage in conversation about your brand Share useful content Add human element Commit to it for the long haul!
19. “Branding gets built up by interacting everyday with everyday people.” Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos @zappos “Brands that want to participate must remain committed and be part of the community. It is not advertising.” Paula Drum, VP Marketing H&R Block @pauladrum
20. Individual Learn the rules Follow industry/thought leaders Follow people who share your interests Listen and engage (@replies, DM’s) Share useful content (RT’s, links, blog content) Be you!
- Started as micro-blogging service that is a simple way to let “followers” know what you are doing. - Now, many things to many people - For marcom professionals, it is another opportunity to provide strategy and guidance to our clients to meet their objectives - Great opportunity to learn from some of the brightest minds in our industry and our clients industries(Leaders in the SM world share ideas, links to great content including their blogs, and conversations with others in real time) - Facebook is a great way to strengthen existing connections, twitter connect w/people w/common interests. People you don’t know yet. - PR professionals, establish relationships with key journalists for client activities
Left shows how twitter users read the newspaper vs. non twitter users.Right shows demo of twitter users
Left shows how twitter users read the newspaper vs. non twitter users.Right shows demo of twitter users
How individuals vs. businesses can use Twitter for their benefit.
Hyatt – uses Twitter as a concierge service for guests prior to and during their stayComcast – uses Twitter to monitor conversations about their brand and engage customers looking for help through the use of direct messages. Frank Eliason, the person behind their tweet has a team of seven people who do research and help solve customer problemsWhole Foods Market – uses Twitter as a discussion forum around their products, possible new stores and other related items.Jet Blue- uses Twitter to alert customers of flight and weather delays. They started tweeting in the fall of 07 after they experienced a huge amount of flight delays on the east coast.
This is a pretty good, basic chart on Twitter strategy. It focuses on 6 different strategies and then translates them to tactics for the three levels of use – follow, create, and engage. As great as Twitter is for the first two – follow and create – it provides its true value in the last level – engage. The people and businesses that will see true return on their investment in Twitter, will have a thought through strategy and will use it to engage with their target audience.
“Followers” on twitter are similar to friends on Facebook. Best practices with following and followers:In general, follow someone back if they follow you and thank them for following youDo not follow people only to increase your followers, follow with a clear purpose
Basics:RT’s – retweets, anytime you come across a post that you think is insightful, you can tweet it to your followers but you must place an RT+user name in front of the original to give creditDM’s – basically a direct message, many use it to thank people for following them, also used when sharing info that isn’t appropriate for everyone to see@ - if you hear something through an email or want to talk to someone publicly, include their username in your tweetShort url’s – bit.ly, tinyurl, etc. because you only have 140 characters using a shortening service is importantTwictionary
Hashtags are used to categorize tweets by: Topic or purpose – consistent themes or topics that people tweet abouteg. #followfridayEvents – used to live blog at an event, take and share notes, ask questionseg. #SXSWCrisis – document and communicate during a crisis situationeg. #fargoflood
Include these items in your profile:Real nameReal PictureBio - treat bio like SEO copyURLBackground (custom if possible)
Use Twitter search to:-Find people with similar interests.-Find mentions about you, your company, or topics.-Use advanced search to focus in on: Words, people, places, dates, attitudes
Tweetdeck and Twhirl – great ways to manage your account by grouping followers, seeing trending topics, viewing all @replies and DM’s, and managing multiple accountsTweetie and Twitterberry – Twitter apps for iphone and blackberry Twitscoop – realtime analysis on trending topics Xefer – research different individuals tweet patternsTweetmeme – provides retweeting stats for articlesTweet beep – alerts set up similar to google alerts, key word alertsTwubs – follow trending topics based on hashtags