Having set up your Twitter account(s), you will now want to start using it/them to begin pushing your message out and interacting with your new social community.
At this stage, you will probably find it useful to begin using a system like http://www.tweetdeck.com/ or http://hootsuite.com/ – these are social media ‘dashboards’ that enable you to look at a lot of information on your screen as well as keep an eye, via searches, on what other people are doing on Twitter.
When you are working out your messaging, as with any communications activity, you will need to establish what you want to say. But beause this is social media, you will NOT want to do a hard sell and generally bang the HR drum.
What you should do instead is highlight useful information for your Twitter community – whether it’s in the press or on your web site. The key: help people and offer a solution.
You will also need to react and respond, not just speak ‘at’ people. If you imagine Twitter as a giant cocktail party, you get the idea that you will want talk about lots of things other than your direct business.
VIP list
You can start ‘tweeting’ straight away, but until other people are ‘following’ you, nobody is actually going to see it. So start off with a VIP list. Make a list of everybody that you would like to engage with – key people in the organisation, your industry, trade press (virtually all journalists are on Twitter), suppliers, clients, trade bodies, local organisations and so on.
Follow them and hopefully they will follow you back – if they do, drop them a tweet back to say ‘thanks for the follow’. When you are both following each other, you can then communicate by private ‘direct message’ if you prefer.
Your tweets can take the form of a mix of business messages, links to general news items and links to specific industry news/developments. You might also like to put out requests for help like ‘we need to hire 50 tables for an event at short notice – any recommendations?’
It’s genuinely amazing how much ‘reach’ there is with social media and how fast you can get information out there as well as back. (Questions relating to your specific business are good so, for example, ‘if you need information on new regulations starting on 1 June, go to our website and get free advice’ and so on.)
You should also aim to keep your Twitter feed ‘live’ by doing several tweets everyday – around five or six is ideal, but there are no rules. If you have masses to say and a very interactive community, you could do a lot more than this. Find the level that works for you.
As you start tweeting and interacting, you will come across interesting people and organisations that you will want to join your community so enjoy.
Helen Moore is co-founder of specialist digital agency, The Media Marketing Co.
One Response
Twitter Advice
Great advice on how to kickstart your twitter experience. It makes sense to follow the right people to bein gaining a community of people to talk to. Hootsuite and Tweetdeck are two good platforms for people who may have more than one twitter or social media site and helps to keep track of messages, follow backs and friends. Building your following and online community will happen faster if you follow the right people and tweet good quality content several times a day.
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