I’ve talked about the tools we use with our clients in the past, segmenting them as social networking tools (sharing conversations) or social media (sharing content). The reality is that on social networks you can share content and with the social media tools you can have conversations. The one that splits the difference is Twitter. Its the one that many business people don’t get.
LinkedIn is easy. Its a business professional social network that in simple terms is online networking. Facebook is more of a social interaction tool but with over 350 million people there are consumers and business people on it. And its easy to interact.
Twitter though is just noise right? The misconception is that its a bunch of people tweeting about their latest coffee conquest. The reality is… that happens, and a lot of people are ready to tell you the latest money making scheme. But there is also a lot of great information being shared by individuals and companies. And its a valid business tool.
Here are some thoughts on the business use of Twitter.
You Need a Plan
Like anything in life if you want to mazimize your results you need a plan. (Thats a Social Media plan and a plan for Twitter’s role) You ned to understand what you will tweet about. How often will you tweet. When will you tweet. Will your tweets seek to brand you, drive traffic, or both.
Most business people I know have the same problem …not enough hours in the day. If you don’t have specific times set to tweet you’ll likely find that after a week you missed some days. I use a Tweet schedule to lay out the tweets for our clients. I schedule two tweets a day for every day of the month.
My schedule is simply a spreadsheet with 6 sheets. On the first four I layout seven days broken into two hour increments. On the fifth I have 3 days for the 29th, 30th, and 31st. The last sheet is where I put the 62 tweets I write. I then add the tweets I’ve written into the schedule.
Over the month I will release a minimum of two tweets each day. If something else is wortth tweeting I’ll send it as well.
Target the Right People
There are over 25 million people on Twitter and numerous tools to target users by location, industry, tweet words, words in bio, etc. I use these tools to build a list of followers that fits each client.
You have to get your message in front of the right people to have a chance.
Keep in mind that if you want to add followers you’re going to have to initiate contact. On average for every 100 people I follow, 35 to 40 will follow back. You also need to make sure that your ratio of followers to following stays somewhat in balance.
If you’re following 1,000 people and 800 are following you thats fine. Keep in mind that as you follow more people you’re going to have to remove those that do not follow you back to keep your ratio balanced.
A good ratio break-point is 1.5 Follow significantly more people than follow you and people will wonder why others are not following you back. If you’re following is significantly lower than the number following you and you may be seen as self-interested.
Here’s a good timeline to follow: Add followers and give them three to five days to follow you back. After three to five days remove those non-followers, reciprocate with those who followed you, and follow more people.
Communication
Twitter can be the hub of your social media communication efforts. You can feed your tweets into the LinkedIn status feature, post your tweets to your Facebook account, and even to your Facebook Fan page.
On LinkedIn you can control which tweets update your status through the us of a LinkedIn hashtag. For our clients we only send tweets that are going to be relevant whether on twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook. If you using Twitter for business purposes then you should be able to do the same.
I’ve seen lists of the different types of tweets but for me I classify tweets as a branding tweets, traffic tweets, or informational.
A branding tweet communicates a message without a link. It might be a quote that I like, or it might be simply asking a question.
A traffic tweet is one that includes a link and the purpose is to drive someone to click on the link. This works great for sharing blog posts, articles, or driving someone to a landing page.
Informational tweets allow me to share information with others that was created by someone else. It might be a interesting article I found, a cool application, a great social media tool. etc.
The majority of your tweets should share value.
Slow Your Tweets Down
Tweets on Twitter have a short shelf life. How fast tweets move depends upon the number of followers a person has. A tweet to someone with a couple of thousand followers may only be on that persons first page for 15 seconds.
Two ways you can slow your tweets done is by filtering them into LinkedIn and Facebook. On LinkedIn your tweet will show in your status update until your next tweet. On Facebook that tweet is visible on your wall for three or four days if you’re tweeting twice per day.
When I review the click from tweets I often find that Facebook and LinkedIn produce more responses than retweets.
Wrap Up
Twitter is a great way to communicate to large numbers of people. There is a lot of noise, but if you listen close you’ll hear a lot of great information being shared. One thing I do is periodically use the search function to find tweets about a topic. This allows me to stay on top of what others are saying about social media, LinkedIn, Facebook, and a number of topics that interest me.
If you’re trying to figure out how to use social media to drive busines, Twitter is a tool that should be in your toolbox. It may take some time to get used to it but you’ll find that its a great resource to communicat, to share, and to learn.
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About Sean Nelson
Yes of course twitter is the valid business tool, i agree this.
Hi: My twitter has more people following me than I am allowed to follow…I have over 400 direct messages an I dont understand really how to best obtain from twitter the best for twittering. I am greatful for your article.
Sincerely,
Saundra Allman
Realtor DRE #01188528
Sean
thanks so much for this post.
I have to agree with your point:
“One thing I do is periodically use the search function to find tweets about a topic. This allows me to stay on top of what others are saying about social media, LinkedIn, Facebook, and a number of topics that interest me.”
Nevertheless, it is a time consuming tool if you are running a small or medium-sized business.
Hence, without addressing your opportunity costs you might be surprised….
Urs @ComMetrics
My.ComMetrics.com – benchmark your blog – improve performance
Sean,
This is a very useful article, even for a social media idiot like me. By the way, twitter actually has 75 mil users…
Keep up the good work!
Samuel Diener
Thanks for the comment.
Thanks Saundra. Clear out some of those people who are not following you back and you should be able to reciprocate with those following you.
Urs,
You do have to pay attention to your time and ensure from a business perspective that your time is spent efficiently.
Thanks Sam. As far as the number of people on Twitter there’s no way to officially know. I saw a reference to 90 million, then saw another with 50 million. The last official notice I saw was at the 25 to 29 million mark. I took the safe way saying more than 25 million so technically I wasn’t wrong, but obviously no where near the buillseye.
Theres also the issue of thenumber of accounts that have less than 10 followers and less than 3 tweets, which I saw cited as around 38%. Twitter so far does not release official numbers.
Keep rockin’ Sam. ***For those interested Sam’s blog is on the blog roll. Check it out.
Sean
Sean, as you said, if you have a plan and target the right people to follow and that follow you, you can get tremendous results from Twitter. I get, on average, about 2,000 visits to my website just from Twitter alone.
Good review and info, Sean. Brings more clarity to the issue and ideas on high to maximize depending on your business need and time utilization.
Also like you site.
Twitter can drive traffic. Great job.
Sean
Mike,
Thanks for the comments and glad you found value.
Sean
I think Twitter can be just noise, but you need to understand how to filter it out and utilize what’s there for you. I think the new “lists” function helps corral the folks you want to communicate with, and filters out the ones to ignore.
Without a plan in place, as you discuss, twitter is just practicing self expression, or pushy sales.
Thanks for sharing great articles.
Thanks for sharing the article.
It always comes back to having a plan. Thanks for the comment.
You are welcome.
Sean,
You hit my issue with Tweeter right on the head as far as my experience: “A tweet to someone with a couple of thousand followers may only be on that persons first page for 15 seconds.” I was the one with the not thousand but just few followings and it became no more than just a noise.
Whether a following a few people or thousands you can find value in tweets from others. Not everyone, but there are some gems out there.
This weekend I’m taking a class on Social Media Strategies to better understand the powerful tools available. We are a recycling start-up looking to expand our brand. This is a new and fresh adventure. Kind Regard’s / ‘M’.
Good luck with your class. Look at some articles back to September and you should find some good tips and strategies.
Thanks so much for such an informative article! I'm going to incorporate several of your ideas, including the twitter planning spreadsheet, into my business.
Sean, I just read your article and found it very informative. I am just starting to use social media for my business and Twitter always seemed to be difficult for me. I decided to do a little more research so I can understand it better. Thanks for sharing your expertise.
Georgia thanks for commenting and glad we could provide some guidance.
Sean