No More L Plates

If you’ve signed up for Twitter and are thinking “now what?”, this article is for you. There are still plenty of people that have never used Twitter, and for many that do Twitter still feels alien to them.

If you have already got the hang of Twitter and want something more advanced then head over to Udemy and sign up for my online course “How To Use Twitter To Build Authority In Your Market Sector”.

For the rest of you I aim to help you get from the point, after you initially signed up, to being a confident Tweeter in 7 easy steps.

Before we get started the first thing to have in mind is that writing a good Tweet (Twitter Message) takes practise. You only have 140 characters, including punctuation and spaces, use them wisely. Whilst some shortening of words is acceptable, try to avoid using Text Speak on Twitter, you’re not writing an SMS!

So you’ve created a Twitter account, you may have even connected with some people and are seeing their updates. If you already know some people on Twitter you may be having conversations, but other than using Twitter as another form of Instant Messaging what more can you do?

A lot depends on why you signed up for Twitter and what you want to get out of it, which brings us to our first step:

1. Why Are You Here?

Why are you using Twitter? Did you sign up to follow celebrities, because your friends are on Twitter or maybe you thought you could use Twitter to promote your business? Any of these are valid, but each means you will mean you will be looking to use Twitter slightly differently once you have got the hang of it.

Having your goals in mind will help you make some choices during the further steps below. You don’t have to use Twitter every day, in fact you never need send a message at all. You can just use Twitter to monitor what others are saying, like your competitors.

2. Profile Image

If you are using Twitter for business you will want to ensure you have a professional looking image as your profile picture.

If your Titter account is representing your business then your company logo would be the best to use. If you are using Twitter to represent you as a person then a photo of you would be preferable. There is no better feeling at a business event than people recognising you because of your Twitter profile picture, it makes networking all that much easier.

Of course if you are using Twitter for any other reason then using any image you wish, try to pick an image that represents your character for best effect. In a previous post I wrote about The Best Profile Photos to Use, especially useful if you want to maximise the amount of people that are likely to follow you.

3. Complete Your Bio

Who are you?

What do you do?

What are you interested in?

My Bio

These are all questions you should answer in your bio. Be warned you only have 160 characters, use them wisely. If you want people to follow you they’ll need a good reason to do so, regardless of whether you’re using Twitter for business or not. Make your bio fun, not just factual, and your likely to get more followers.

4. You Are What You Tweet

Now you’re ready to start Tweeting. But what are you going to say?

This will largely be based on your “Goals” from step 1. If you’re using Twitter for fun and communication with friends then feel free to just chat as normal. If you want to start engaging with others you don’t know, then you have to talk about things that may be of interest to them. And if you’re not a celebrity this will mean avoiding talking about yourself too much!

If you’re into jogging or running for example sharing your times and distances on Twitter can be a fun way to keep track of your training. Mixing this with links to interesting articles you read on the web about running will firmly position you as a keen runner and you’re likely to get other runners follow and converse with you.

You can apply this methodology to any interest or business sector. If you’re using Twitter for business, it’s even more important not to talk about yourself too much. Twitter accounts full of self-promotional Tweets are not that interesting to anyone, although there are always exceptions – see Dell Outlet UK.

5. How Often To Tweet

This will vary a lot dependant on what you are looking to achieve. Even with a casual account based around your own interests you want to be sending out Tweets regularly, 3 or 4 times a day perhaps. If you’re in business and looking to use Twitter commercially you are going to need to Tweet more often. If people get used to you being there and you Tweet interesting stuff regularly they are more likely to keep following you, start conversations with you and importantly share your stuff.

Of course this can be time consuming, so you need to make a schedule for using Twitter just like you would for checking your email. You definitely want to avoid getting sucked into checking your Twitter account throughout the day. In this respect Twitter can be more distracting than your Inbox, so set a schedule and stick to it!

6. Follow To Get Followed

Over time people will come across you due to the information you Tweet, they will then start following you, but you can be proactive about obtaining more followers. One of the best ways to get more followers, is to follow more people. In the earlier years of Twitter if you followed someone, the etiquette was to follow them back, this is how some of the early adopters of the platform gained thousands of followers.

Although not everyone still follows this etiquette, many do, and as long as you make sure your account has plenty of interesting Tweets, a good Bio with a link to your website, if you have one, and a professional profile image you’ll find reciprocation will not be an issue.

So using our example from step 4, go to Twitter.com and type in the search field at the top of the page running. This will bring back all the recent Tweets that mention the word “running”. The results themselves may not be of much use, what is of more interest is the People link top left. This will list all the people with some interest in running, follow these and if you post good stuff they are likely to follow you back.

Finding People to Follow

Follow me and I will follow you back!

Of course you may want to follow some of the brands or celebrities in any case, just to read their stuff.

Advanced Tip: If you click on a Twitter accounts name you will see how many followers they have. If you click on this link it will list those followers, and if that Twitter account talks about running, using our example, then it’s followers are likely to be interested in running! Start following these accounts and there’s a chance they will follow you back also.

7. Share Generously

One of the reasons Twitter is so popular is that it is really easy to share information, not just your own information, but others too. If that information is interesting enough it can even go viral, spreading around the web very quickly. This is one of the attractions for businesses, the ability to spread messages widely with relatively little effort.

The trick to getting your content shared is to write or produce interesting and useful stuff, whether it be a quirky photo, short video, a “how to” article or just an interesting comment. You also need to be open to sharing others content too. Very much like getting followed, if you help others spread their content they are more likely to reciprocate.

This is where the ReTweet comes in. The ReTweet link below a message allows you to send someone else’s message on easily to your followers. If there’s enough space in the Tweet you can add a further comment too if you wish.

Retweet & Share Generously

Bonus Tip: Going Mobile

Twitter has been a popular tool for many in developing countries or living within oppressive regimes not only because of the ease with which you can spread a message, but also due to the low level of technology needed to use the platform. You can just as easily use Twitter on a basic Nokia phone with no smart features as you can on the latest iPhone or a PC.

Going mobile with Twitter can add another dimension to your Tweets making them more real and instant. You don’t need a WiFi connection or data plan either, you can Tweet just using SMS.

To connect your mobile to Twitter just head over to the Mobile Settings on your Twitter account. Then see the help section for How To Use Twitter on Your Mobile.

You can even send picture messages too!

Note: Any Tweets you send via you mobile using this method will be charged against your text message allowance dependant on your mobile contract.

Hopefully this will get you off to a good start, if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me on Twitter or leave them in the comments below.

When you’re ready to move to the next level then please try my online course: “How To Use Twitter To Build Authority In Your Market Sector”.

Hitting TheTarget

But to do so requires you to have a following and not just any followers either. You need those that may be interested in what you have to offer.

They are out there somewhere, but how to find them?

There are a number of applications that can make reaching out to your target audience in Social Media that bit easier.

Hootsuite

Probably my favourite Social Media management tool, Hootsuite allows multi-account management and multi-user collaboration. Giving the account manager ultimate control. Aside from being a great management platform it is also fantastic for monitoring the social space.

Within Hootsuite you can set up something called “streams”. These are defined channels of updates based on preferences you set.

For example if you want to monitor Twitter for mentions of a phrase related to your market sector you can easily do so in Hootsuite. In the screenshot below I have set up a stream to monitor for the phrase “car insurance”.

Hootsuite Stream

From this stream you will see plenty of opportunities to reach out to your target audience. Many other filters could be employed to define location or even sentiment.

Twilert

This handy tool allows you to monitor Twitter for a specific phrase, @ mention or hashtag. Twilert will then email you at the interval you define when it finds anything.

This means you can monitor Twitter remotely and react as quickly as possible to any mentions of your keyword or phrase.

Whos’s Following Who

Twitter is such a great prospecting tool as all the information is open for you to see. Unlike other social platforms where you need permission to follow someone, with Twitter you can do so without question.

Taking advantage of this openness allows you to see who’s following your competition and following them ourselves. It’s likely if someone follows your competitor they may well be interested in you too.

One idea may be to collate a private Twitter List, and add these people to it. Monitor their interaction with our competitor looking for opportunities engage. You don’t even need to follow them if you don’t want to.

Facebook Ads

Facebook can prove very popular for some brands, whilst others struggle to make it work for them. The one thing that makes Facebook so appealing is the ability to run highly targeted Ads.

Every parameter you could think of is available allowing you to display adverts to very specific audiences. Some of the criteria your are able to leverage is:

• Age
• Location
• Marital Status
• Hobbies
• Place of Work
• Education
• Upcoming birthdays
• That Like your Facebook page
• Even the friends of people that Like your page

In fact with the right combination of filters it is almost possible to target individuals. At the very least you can target highly specific groups driving them to your page or website.

LinkedIn for Business

If you prefer to target business people rather than individual consumers then LinkedIn may be the platform of choice.

With a premium LinkedIn account you can search for business leads based on the following filters:

• Seniority
• Company Size
• Interests
• Function
• Interests
• Years of Experience
• Fortune 1000
• Your Groups
• New to LinkedIn

Even without a premium account you can search for specific companies and look for key contacts. Find out how you are connected to these individuals and ask for an introduction from your network.

Who Are You Connected To

Who’s Asking

Looking for people asking questions related to your market sector can be another great way to reach your target audience. There are several popular Q&A services that you can monitor or event take part in.

LinkedIn and Quora are probably the more sophisticated platforms that make it easier to connect with those asking questions.

Here you may need to be more proactive by providing a suitable answer to gain trust before trying to build a relationship with the users.

Providing Value

Wherever you look for your target audience on Social Media there is one thing you need to ensure you provide, and that’s value. Whether it be in the form of content or a solution to their problem.

Without either of these your target audience is unlikely to engage, and without engagement your unlikely to generate business.

Confused About Social Media

Would you let a member of staff talk directly to the press about your company without media training?

Or allow them to work in your customer service department without knowing how to handle incoming calls?

Why then do so many companies allow staff to represent their business online without a thorough understanding of the fundamentals of Social Media?

The web has long suffered from underinvestment by businesses that see it as a free and easy way to promote themselves. A lack lustre approach which often leads to a lack of understanding of the the value the web can add to any business.

At first it was websites, commonly, companies would employ “a nephew” that knew about computers, a member of staff who could use Dreamweaver or just leave it for the IT department to sort out.

Hopefully, for websites, those days are largely behind us. Companies now realise that a professionally designed website, with appropriate functionality, can make all the difference when it comes to acquiring customers online. Of course budget will determine what you can afford to have built, but at least the awareness is now there.

Choosing The Right People

Social Media is going through the same growing pains, as websites did before it. Just because the “Intern” in marketing uses Facebook to chat with his mates doesn’t mean he should be the one representing your company in that space. In fact quite typically it is more experienced members of staff, that do not have any knowledge of Social Media, that would benefit both themselves and the business most from knowing how to use Social Media effectively.

Whilst a complete Social Media strategy is always the best way to proceed, at the very least you should ensure staff know how to use Social Media effectively. Understanding the strengths of Facebook versus the intricacies of Twitter, and how LinkedIn can be used for recruitment can make a major difference in the success of your use of Social Media.

Know Works And What Doesn’t

With the right knowledge and tools there’s no need to be on Twitter all day to build authority. Posting endless updates on Facebook can be far less effective than carefully thought out questions or polls.

Knowing how to use competitions to build loyalty, as opposed to growing meaningless follower numbers. And knowing when to take a discussion offline rather than debating a disagreement in the open online space.

Social Media can be used for more than just marketing your products or services. Recruitment, customer service, client collaboration, crowd sourcing and research are just some the other valid functions it serves.

Get A Return On Your Investment

This list highlights the other skills your internally appointed Social Media expert or experts may need. In fact for many companies customer services and HR are two oft he departments that can benefit most, experiencing high rates of ROI in relatively short periods of time.

And ROI is a key reason to ensure staff have the right knowledge. Letting them meander from platform to platform, finding their own way, can mean getting a return on the time invested can prove elusive. Whereas with the right support from the beginning a return on investment from Social Media isn’t so hard to obtain.

Social Media nearly always works best in-house, just ensure that the staff you employ to manage it for you are given the best chance possible to succeed with the training and tools they need.

Soak Social can provide Social Media Training tailored to your requirements, whether it be one on one coaching or training whole customer service departments.

Here Comes Everybody

How does your business view the web?

As a cheap route to market? An easy way to increase revenue?

Or as a serious business tool that can catapult you ahead of the competition.

In the 90′s the web was seen as an opportunity for smaller companies to ”level the playing field”.

There were many opportunities to leapfrog large brands, too slow and cumbersome to keep up with the change in technology.

Here Come The Brands

Then big business started to catch up. It realised the massive opportunities it was missing out on and ploughed in the money. Building ever more complex web sites with functionality to match. Using technology to automate many processes, they reduced costs, closed the open door on markets and used their brand to once again dominate.

Small business was back to where they started. Save for the exceptional few with wonderfully wild ideas and the uncanny ability to disrupt a marketplace. For the rest it was business as usual, picking on the scraps left behind by the big corporates.

At least until the advent of Social Media.

Social Media Enters Stage Right

Now the social effect has been around for longer than we initially think. It’s based on the fact that like minded people congregate together, that exceptional customer services trumps price and it involves one to one communication.

It’s this last fact, one to one communication, where the opportunity lies. Big business by design is typically bad at being personal. Much money is spent by brands trying to be less corporate. Whereas smaller businesses are far better matched to Social Media.

It’s very difficult to scale personal experience, ask your local baker, butcher or newsagent. They’re still in business due to the personal local service they offer. They are not particularly cheap but they don’t need to be, people don’t buy from them on price.

It’s All About Social Business

By applying these principals you can leapfrog the largest of the competition. The other advantage is that technology now offers a way for you to scale that personal communication. It enables you to reach, help and interact with people you may never have otherwise come into contact with. It puts the personal back in your business.

The key to an effective social business is monitoring, followed by engagement. If your social strategy includes these two elements you can keep pace with the marketplace very efficiently. And whilst your larger competitors are still deciding which department is going to deal with Twitter, and who gets Facebook you are already picking up new customers.

Will The Corporates Catch Up?

Maybe, but whilst they concentrate on trying to create the next viral sensation or beautiful Facebook Timeline you can already be talking to their customers. Because, it’s engagement that really matters, and not the number of followers or fans.

Get your social strategy in place and start engaging today.

Do You Have Twitter Credibility?

When we enter the social space, especially Twitter, establishing credibility can be even more important in growing a following and building engagement. Establishing credibility via other online mediums like a web site can come from visual design, depth of content or even position in the search results, this is not available on platforms like Twitter.

Recent research by Microsoft shows that as more people come across Tweets independently of their immediate social networks, via search engines or other 3rd party sources, they have less information to base credibility on.

The report states that, “In addition to reading tweets from users they followed, respondents consumed tweets by conducting searches on search.twitter.com (84%), clicking trending topics on the Twitter homepage (84%), searching for tweets using Bing’s and Google’s social search functionality (72%), or serendipitously encountering tweets mixed into the results of general Web searches (81%).”

Importance of Credibility

The topic of a Tweet determined the respondents concern over whether it was credible or not, with celebrity news and gossip style tweets of little concern. The credibility of movie and restaurant reviews were deemed slightly more important whilst news, political and consumer based tweets were of greatest concern in terms of credibility.

Key Factors Effecting Credibility of a Tweet

Microsoft established 31 elements of a tweet that determined credibility:

Credibility Impact is on a scale of 1-5 with 5 being high and Attention Received on a scale of 1-3 with 3 being high.

Elements associated with low credibility include use of non-standard grammar and punctuation, using the default Twitter profile image or using a cartoon for your profile image. Having an unbalanced follower to followed ratio, with more followed than followers gave Tweets lower credibility – one respondent commented, “if someone is following significantly more people than they have following them, I mistrust them.”

Information based around the author of a Tweet played a major role in accounting for positive credibility. Author influence measured by number of followers, retweets and mentions played a large role, as did topical expertise. This expertise judgement being driven by “Twitter homepage bio, history of on-topic tweeting, pages outside of Twitter, or having a location relevant to the topic of the tweet.”

Unsurprisingly, whether the respondent already followed the author, had heard of them, the author had an official Twitter account verification seal, a URL on their bio leading to a high quality site and a consistent history of valuable tweets played a role in establishing a positive credibility.

Take a Twitter Health Check

To maximise the chances of your Tweets being considered credible check your account against the following:

1. Use correct grammar and punctuation
2. Have a company logo, or better, your photo as a Twitter profile image
3. Keep your follower to followed ratio positive
4. Continually work on increasing your number of followers
5. Keep Tweets on topic
6. Complete your Twitter bio
7. Link to a quality web site in your bio
8. Ensure your Tweets are high quality e.g. don’t Tweet what you’re having for dinner
9. Build relationships by engaging with your followers

You can access the full research here.

Broadcasting can work when done in the right way, but engagement is better. Automation has benefits, but personal engagement is best. There are as many ways to use Social Media as there are Social Platforms. Here are 10 for you to try:

1. Collaboration

Not found a way to justify Google+? Then try collaboration with colleagues or clients. Hidden away in Google+ Hangouts, the video conferencing application built into the platform, is Hangouts with Extras. This section of the application allows you to combine video conferencing with Google documents, Screensharing or a Sketchpad. You can even record your sessions to share at a later date.

Collaboration

2. Customer Care

Phone support is time consuming and costly, you customer service team can only deal with one call at a time. Outsourcing leads to a reduced quality of care. Social Media, specifically Twitter, can offer a great additional channel to support your clients. BT took this a stage further with a dedicated Twitter account @BTCare. Note the names of those supporting clients is given in the profile to make it even more personal.

Customer Service

3. Product Research

Not sure if a new product idea is right for your market? Or do you need feedback to make improvements to an existing product? Why not ask your customers what they think. In the blog post below regional brewer Adnams asked customers whether they would drink a reduced alcohol beer. The question was prompted due to a reduction in duty on lower alcohol products in the UK. Feedback was positive enough to lead to the production of a new product 4 months later, which went on to sell successfully.

Product Research

4. Monitoring the Market

You don’t need to actively take part in Social Media to make use of it. There are many tools available that let you track conversations within the social space. Whether you want to do competitor research, monitor brand mentions or track sentiment. Applications such as socialmention can help you stay in-touch with your market-place.

Monitoring The Market

5. Build Authority

This is especially important if you are relatively unknown or just starting out in business. How do you establish yourself in the market? A great way is to be vocal, engage and share information pertaining to your market sector readily. Gary Vaynerchuck is probably the best example of someone who has built authority through the social space, initially for his wine business, which then lead to him forming his own media company and writing two books. Gary’s persistent and engaging attitude has earn him over 900k followers on Twitter and worldwide acclaim for what he has achieved from a humble base.

Build Authority

6. Events

Promoting events in the social space is one of the most under-utilised uses of Social Media. Facebook for example allows you to easily create an event, inform all your fans about it and see who is going to attend or not.

Events

7. Product Demos

YouTube is much more than roller-skating babies and surfing dogs, it’s a free resource that can easily be leveraged to promote your products or services. When done in an interesting way even the most standard of products can become a viral sensation. Blendtec were prepared to demonstrate how their blender with blend virtual any object. The result was phenomenal, with the video of an iPhone being blended now having been viewed over 10 million times.

Product Demos

8. Lead Generation

Oh yes, social media does work for business generation, it’s not all about viral videos and market research. A recent study by Hubspot of over 5,000 of it’s customers showed that on average just under 3% of visits to a business website originating from LinkedIn converted to leads.

Lead Generation

9. Target Marketing

One of the great byproducts of social media is the availability of user data. Much of this is freely available allowing you accurately target groups of people, even individuals with your marketing messages. From Facebook Ads through to free tools like followerwonk you can ensure that your marketing efforts and spend are never wasted.

Target Marketing

10. Sell Products

Who said you can’t sell products via Twitter? With the right approach it can be a very effective channel to promote certain types of product and service. Dell use Twitter very effectively to sell through their refurbished equipment, notice however that they still engage readily with followers, it’s not all just broadcasting.

Sell Products

Bonus – Social Search

If you still can’t find a use for Social Media within your business then it is well worth having in mind the “Social Search” effect. Google has been using social activity from as early as 2009 to effect the results you see when you perform a search. Now with the advent of Google+ it is even more relevant. If you have a presence on Google+, with solid, engaging content, that is readily shared, you can leapfrog the natural and paid results.

Social Search

Have you got any other uses for Social Media?

Coca-Cola Content Strategy

It doesn’t matter whether you’re creating it or curating it, each plays a different role, the quality and focus of that content will determine the success of your marketing campaigns.

And if you still don’t believe me, then maybe Coca-Cola can convince you?

The big red international corporate giant that we have all grown up with, has pitched it’s marketing dollar seriously in the content arena, with it’s Content 2020 strategy.

It wants to create stories that add value and have significance in it’s market so that they engage with the audience. Although the stories will be individual and stand on their own, the stories will be connected to a common theme.

They aim to inspire participation, but the point that got me was that they saw inspiring their agency and staff as important as inspiring the consumer. Now that is Board Level Buy-In!

In all they want to create a Culture of Creativity that delivers results.

To prove a point they have produced the following videos that explain their plans in a very engaging manner.

What do you think to Coca-Cola’s marketing strategy?

Get Engaged with your Audience

Whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or any other social platform the number of followers is not what’s important. What matters is how you engage with them.

Many brands are fixated with increasing follower numbers. To a point you require a certain level of following, but achieve these in the wrong way, and they become meaningless, empty, with no loyalty to your brand or business. Whereas growing your followers through engagement not only lowers the cost of acquisition, but builds greater loyalty.

An engaged audience will do much more for you. By interacting with your fan base they are more likely to share your content, becoming brand advocates in the process.

The following ideas should give you some practical ways you can grow engagement with your fans:

Encourage them to join in

1. Ask relevant questions.
2. Reply to their comments.

Ask for their stories

3 Memories attached to your products.
4 Upload relevant photos.

Big ideas

5 What would they do better or different?
6 What are the issues?

Join in the celebrations

7 Highlight milestones.
8 Celebrate seasonal events.

Have some fun

9 Fill in the____.
10 Offer exclusive deals & promotions.
11 Run competitions.

Make it personal

12 Allow staff personality to shine through.
13 Let internal champions engage.
14 Make it about more than your product.

Connect with others

15 Share other peoples content.
16 Help solve other peoples problems.

Do you have any more ideas for improved audience engagement?