Twitter Module 1 Session 4: Twitter Dos And Don ts
Table of Contents Things You Should Be Doing On Twitter 1 Post Good Quality Content 1 Respond To Messages and Participate On A Consistent Basis 2 Retweet Customers/Potential Partners 2 Use Live Tweet 2 Monitor Keywords, Phrases & Hashtags 3 List of Objectives 3 Things You Should Not Be Doing On Twitter 4 Don t Neglect Profile 4 Don t Underestimate the Importance of Descriptive Bio/ Optimized With Keywords 4 Don t Rely Only On Twitter Platform 4 Don t Ignore Messages 5 Don t Protect Your Tweets 5
Welcome to module 1, session 4: Twitter dos and don ts. In this session, what I want to do is cover off some of the basic rules of thumb, so things that you absolutely should be doing to help you get better results and as well, things you should be avoiding that will definitely hinder your success on Twitter. Things You Should Be Doing On Twitter Post Good Quality Content First things first, let s talk a little bit about what you absolutely should be doing on Twitter. Now, one of the first things that you want to do is make sure that as much as you can be posting original content and make sure that the content is going to add value and help you attract more quality followers. Here again, it is important to know your audience. It is important to know what are their hot buttons, what kind of information is it that they are searching for, that they are looking for and helping them find it. What will happen is, over time if you are finding good quality content and you are filtering through the poorer quality content, you are going to develop a bit of a reputation for yourself online as being a source of good information. Now, it doesn t necessarily have to be your own original content. Obviously, if you re using Twitter as a traffic tool, so as a tool that helps you get traffic to your website, which you absolutely should be doing and that is a big part of inbound marketing, if you are going to be using Twitter to do that, then you want to be posting your own original content. The way that I recommend doing that is you post original content to a blog that is attached to your website and then you tweet out what I call a hook. So, a hook is basically your tweet message, but it is written in a way that is going to invoke curiosity and lists are a great way to do this, nine things that will make your life easier, nine ways that you can save $3,000 on their taxes at the end of the year. These are just examples, I am pulling out of thin air, but that is the kind of idea of what a hook would be on Twitter and then of course, you provide a link to that content or to that blog post on your website. So, that is a way for you to post your own original content out on Twitter and pull people from your Twitterverse over across into your website. That is how you would use it as a traffic tool. But, there again, the rule that I recommend is called the 10-4-1 rule. So, out of 15 posts or updates that you put up, 10 of them should be to other people s content. Four of those updates should be to your own content. The final update, or one of those updates, should be to, what I call, a landing page or a squeeze page, where the person that lands on that page is being offered a piece of premium content where they need to exchange their contact information, usually their first name and their email address for that content. So, that helps you to build an email list, which is again, another part of inbound market. So, making sure that you post 1
original content to add value, it is going to help you attract quality followers. It is also going to help you build a reputation as being a thought leader in the industry as well as a great source of information. Respond To Messages and Participate On A Consistent Basis The second thing that you should be doing on Twitter is making sure that you respond to messages and participate on a consistent basis. It is not necessarily essential for when somebody says, hey, thanks for following, you don t have to respond to every single one of those. But, if somebody takes the time to say, hey, I looked at your site and it looks really nice, or hey, I really appreciate this update, or ask you a question, those kinds of engagements need to be responded to. So, it is really important that you responded to those types of messages to you and participate on a consistent basis. That is the number one cause of failure on Twitter is that people get excited in the beginning, they get all gung-ho, I am going to do Twitter and they go out there, they go hard for a month and then they get busy, it falls by the wayside and they don t stay consistent with it. If you want to stay front of mind with your audience, if you want to be a thought leader, if you want to stand out as a great source of information, you need to deliver over and over and over and over and over again, so that is really, really important. Retweet Customers/Potential Partners The next thing that you should absolutely be doing is retweeting your customers, as well as retweeting media outlets, trade associations, and other potential partners that you want to build relationships with. This will help establish a foundation for relationships. It is going to help you gain trust with other people and build camaraderie. So, it is really important to be retweeting people when they put out good content. This is a really helpful strategy in the beginning because in the beginning, you need to get awareness for yourself, so if you are retweeting other people s content, they are going to notice that and their followers will notice that. So, it is important to be retweeting and just sharing good sources of information out there as often as you can. Use Live Tweet The next thing that you want to do is to be using live tweeting to keep your followers informed, engaged, and excited. It is possible with a lot of these social media tools to put everything on autopilot and schedule all your updates and that sort of thing and while there is a time and a place for that, I do believe that in order to be super effective with Twitter, you need to live tweet, you need to engage in conversation with people. It is much more important on Twitter than it is on the other channels. Let people know what is going on with you professionally, but also let people know what is going on with you personally. I mean business is personal. 2
People do business with people that they know, that they like and that they trust and one of the easiest ways to get some somebody to know, like and trust you, is to find out that share a similar belief system, or a similar value, or maybe you both put a lot of value in giving back, or you both have kids in hockey. There are number of different things that people can find a common ground on and that helps build a deeper, stronger connection with that person. So, don t be afraid to post up things that are on the personal side because people do business with people and the more that you share personally about yourself, the more of a human being you are, rather than just this talking industry figurehead. So, I do think it is healthy to have a good mix. Again, this is something that maybe other social media gurus may not agree with me on and to each their own. I have had a lot of success doing it the way that I have done it and that is what I recommend to people. Monitor Keywords, Phrases & Hashtags The next thing that you want to do is you want to be monitoring different keywords, phrases, and hashtags that are relevant to your industry and that will just help you kind of keep the pulse of what s going on in your industry and with your networks. It also helps you define conversations that you can join. Again, Twitter is the conversation network. That s a big part of the way that you should be using it. So, get your Twitter list setup. When you do a search inside of Twitter, you can save those searches. So, get those things in place, so that you can start keeping an eye on, or finger on the pulse of what s going on in the network and what s relevant to your industry, to your clients and to your prospects. List of Objectives The last thing that you want to do and we have talked a little bit about this before, is you need to develop a list of objectives and determine a way that you can measure whether or not you are being successful with your Twitter activities. There are numerous ways that you can be using Twitter. We have talked about a lot of them so far in this first module, but you need to figure out what is the business goal that you want to achieve. So, it is always stop and think about what is the business goal that you want to achieve first and then, ask yourself how can I accomplish that with Twitter, or with another network, or with social media. So, what is the goal that you want to achieve and then, how can you use Twitter to help you achieve that goal and again, the measurement is what s key in that. What we measure, we can improve. You can t improve something unless you are measuring it and you have some sort of a benchmark. Maybe that s how many average visitors are you getting to your website from Twitter each month. Maybe that s how many new email subscribers are you getting, or how many people have read your blog. Like I said, for each business, for each individual, it is going to be a different objective, but the key there is being able to measure the success of your Twitter activities. 3
Things You Should Not Be Doing On Twitter Don t Neglect Profile To wind up, what are some things that you should not be doing on Twitter and this is important. One of the big things is don t neglect your profile and don t underestimate the importance of maintaining your Twitter presence. It is like anything. It takes some time. It takes some work and some effort before you start seeing your results. Twitter is not a magic bullet. It is not the answer to your current business problem. It can assist with meeting your goals. It can assist you with your current problems or whatever you are having in your business, but it is not the answer and it is going to take some time to ramp up and get things really moving for you, so don t neglect your profile. I recommend at the very minimum, update your profile once a day and in that way, it shows people that you are around, that you are active, that you are not dead, that you are a part of the community, so I really believe that s important. Don t Underestimate the Importance of Descriptive Bio/ Optimized With Keywords The next thing is don t underestimate the importance of having a descriptive bio that is optimized with your keywords. Your Twitter profile is indexed by the search engines and so, at the core of internet marketing or inbound marketing is knowing what keywords your prospects and your customers are searching for in Google and making sure that you are optimizing for those keywords. That s going to help you come up and get in front of those people. So, if you are using those keywords that people are searching for, that are relevant to your business, if you are using them in your bio in Twitter, there is a good chance that your Twitter profile will come up once somebody searches for those terms in Google. So, it is really important to optimize for those keywords. The other really important thing with your bio is making sure that you have a link there, where people can go to learn more about you, or learn more about your products, or services, or your brand. But, make sure you include a link. Don t let the people who are interested in you and interested in what you have to say, don t let them fall short by not being able to get off of Twitter into more information about you and about your company. Don t Rely Only On Twitter Platform The next here is a big one and this is an important one. It is, don t rely on the Twitter platform only to sustain your strategy and your campaign, use third party tools and apps. We are going to get into that in a future module. I am going to talk about the various third party tools that are out there and the various apps that are out there. What matters to me when it comes to social media marketing is that you are effective and efficient and in making it the best use of 4
your time, how do you get the most impact with the least amount of time. That is kind of what drives me with my training with social media. So, it is important to use these third party tools to help you find out what time can you post to get the largest reach where the most people will see it, or how do you keep your account in balance, or how do you make sure that every blog post you put up you are tweeting about. I am going to show you a few different third party tools and apps that you can consider that will help take your Twitter marketing efforts to the next level. Don t Ignore Messages The next one here is don t ignore messages. You have the direct message inbox and it is a shame, but there are a lot of people that spam the direct message inbox. There are bots or software out there online now, that when somebody follows you, you can automatically send them a direct message. Do not be a part of the problem people. Do not do this. Do not send automatic direct messages to people that follow you. It is ignorant and marketing is all about zigging when everybody else is zagging. So, if everybody else is sending these really stupid automated direct messages, don t do it. Send something that stands out and shows that you are genuine and real and not just another one of these Twitter accounts that s completely on autopilot. If somebody takes the time to send you a direct message, send them a message back and engage with them. Don t ignore the messages though because you will come across as one of those people that are just on autopilot that just wants to be heard and doesn t want to listen. Don t Protect Your Tweets The last one here is don t protect your tweets. I mentioned this earlier, when it comes to the settings of your account, you can choose whether to have public tweets or private tweets. So, don t protect your tweets, make sure that you are public. People aren t going to be able to determine whether or not they want to follow you unless they can see the kinds of things that you talk about. That is an important part of it. So, when somebody is kind of sizing you up after you follow them, or maybe they have stumbled across your profile and you look kind of interesting, when they are sizing you up, they are going to look at your photo, they are going to look at your bio and then, they are going to look at your tweets and they are going to see what kinds of things you talk about. So, don t protect those tweets, if they can t see the tweets, they are probably not going to follow you. That kind of wraps up the things that you should be doing on Twitter, as well as some of the common mistakes with the things that you should be avoiding on Twitter. Thanks so much for tuning in to module 1 and we will see you in module 2. 5