34 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started on Twitter Since 2006, hundreds of thousands of people have gotten on the Twitter bandwagon. Users of the social media micro-‐blogging platform have grown recently at more than 1300% per month! While I have a following of around 2,700 people now, when I started using Twitter a few months ago, I had no idea what I was doing with it. Like a lot of new Twitterers, after a few days of tweeting to nobody and getting nothing in return (obviously), I thought the same thing I have heard a million times from people, “what a waste of time”. So, if you are new to Twitter and having the same doubts, don’t despair. I am going to share with you the 34 things I wish I knew when I started on Twitter. The first part of this download is going to cover things you should know to actually get started on Twitter, including some notes about your profile and bio, the difference between a personal and corporate account and making a Twitter landing page. Further on, the e-‐book will cover important things like what to say, how to say it, who to follow, how to promote your account offline, Twitter Search, using hashtags and how to use Twitter to improve your customer service effort. So let’s get started. PART ONE:
Setting up your account OK, so you let’s go from the very beginning. If you haven’t got a Twitter username and password yet, then go to http://www.twitter.com and click on the green button that says “Sign up now” and then fill in your full name and choose a username. The username must be no longer than 15 characters and will be how people identify your Twitter account, and therefore you – so choose it carefully. Then enter a password for your account, enter the anti-‐spam device to verify you are a human and then click on “Create my account”. You can then try to find friends who are on Twitter who you already have on either Gmail, Yahoo or AOL.
© Nick Bowditch 2009. All rights reserved.
www.twitter.com/nickbowditch
34 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started on Twitter Then, Twitter suggests 20 people who you might be interested in following. These are usually celebrities or sporting or business personalities. The default is that they are all selected but if you don’t want to follow them you can uncheck them and click on “Finish”. The next screen you will see if your new Twitter homepage, which, at the moment will look pretty bare. If you go to the top menu and click on “Settings” this takes us to the first thing I wish I knew when I started on Twitter.
1. Make a Twitter landing page. A landing page is a specific page set up entirely for traffic from a particular source – in this case, from your Twitter account. Set up a landing page within your website or other online presence and put the URL (or the link address) of that page in the “More info URL” section of the “Settings” page. There are two very good reasons to do this: you look far more professional for a start, you can monitor how much traffic you are getting to your website directly from Twitter. You can also offer a free download, ebook or other product (like this one) to followers this way also.
2. Complete your bio. Why would anyone follow you and what you have to say if they don’t know who you are and what you are going to tweet about? Would you follow someone like that? Include in the “One Line Bio” section of the “Settings” page, at least your real name (for personal accounts) or your business name (for business accounts) and a webpage (or even better a customized Twitter landing page – see above) and a short but succinct summary of you. Keep in mind, there are lots of third party Twitter devices now that crawl accounts for keywords that people might be interested in, so make sure you include your keywords in the bio so that people can find you and follow you.
© Nick Bowditch 2009. All rights reserved.
www.twitter.com/nickbowditch
34 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started on Twitter 3. Locate yourself Fill in the “Location” section and be as specific as you want to be. For some accounts, it might be enough to say you are in Australia for instance. Others might want to be far more specific and put Sydney, Australia or even a suburb of Sydney. Third party Twitter applications such as Nearby Tweets (www.nearbytweets.com) or Monitter (www.monitter.com) crawl the platform for tweets being sent from a certain geolocation so if you want to be targeted for specific deals, offers or relevant information for your location, make sure you check the “Enable geotagging” section as well.
4. Don’t protect your tweets This is a bit contentious, but I believe you shouldn’t check the box that says “Protect my tweets”. By checking this box, nothing you tweet about will appear in the public timeline and only people who you have already allowed to follow you specifically will see what you are tweeting about. Like all social media platforms, Twitter requires people to be social and get involved – in fact, this is the best way to get a good following and thereby get the most out of Twitter. If you exclude people, other than those who already know you, to get the benefit of your wisdom and knowledge on Twitter, then I think you are missing a golden opportunity.
5. Is it a personal or a corporate account? You should have a personal account and username if you are that person and a business account if you just want to project the corporate image of your business without any real personalization. Even if the account is a business one, I think that representing your business with a more personal feeling is a good idea. People want to connect with people, not logos. © Nick Bowditch 2009. All rights reserved.
www.twitter.com/nickbowditch
34 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started on Twitter 6. Personalise your personal account. If your Twitter account is a personal one, use a photo of you as the display photo and make the photo relevant to your personality or the subject of your tweets. For instance, I have used the same photo of whilst on holidays looking silly for my photo forever and since I tweet mostly about family travel and the lighter side of travel, the photo is both appropriate and has become what my Twitter profile is known for. Also, think about including a personalized background for your Twitter homepage as well. I reckon nothing looks worse or gives off more of an impression that you are not really committed to tweeting than having one of Twitter’s default backgrounds or worse still the default avatar instead of a photo. I design very simple but effective Twitter backgrounds for a reasonable price. If you are interested email me at nick@nickbowditchtravel.com for a quote.
7. Follow to get followed. Don’t get caught up in the “how many followers do you have” mentality. You could have 10,000 followers but if 9,999 of them aren’t who you want to read your tweets or who you are trying to reach in your Twitter community then what’s the point? However, when you start and you are trying to actually reach the people you want to, if you follow people a lot of them will follow you back. This is a good way to get the ball rolling and add some credibility to your account. If you are wondering who you should follow first, search for the opinion leaders or big players in your industry, and start there.
8. Watch for people replying to you who aren’t on your list. A reply or tweet to you from someone who you are not following is often an invitation to engage with them and either follow them or begin a dialogue with them. Some of these can turn into some of your strongest followers and most useful Twitter community members.
© Nick Bowditch 2009. All rights reserved.
www.twitter.com/nickbowditch
34 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started on Twitter So, always check the replies on your Twitter home page – the link looks like @nickbowditch but with your name instead of mine – or better still, use a third party application like Tweetdeck so you wont miss anything (more on third party apps in part three of the download.
9. Reply to people you are following, especially if they’re not following you. I don’t mean the kind of sad way a lot of people reply to the Twitter celebrities in the vain hope they might actually engage with them, but certainly with thought leaders or interesting people in your field, this is a great way to get off the mark with them and further establish your ‘twit-‐cred’.
10. “Building community is a marathon and not a sprint”. Chris Abraham Basically be a good citizen, don’t piss anyone off and you will see your community grow as I and lots of others on Twitter have. Also don’t be disheartened if it seems to take forever for people to get your stuff, remember it’s quality not quantity.
11. “Listening always comes first.” Chris Brogan So true. Don’t try and jump in and be an opinion leader or Twitter master overnight. Sit back, follow some interesting people and learn… you will be much better for it in the future.
12. Give your tweets good headlines. Consider starting tweets that you want to grab attention and hopefully get re-‐tweeted with headlines such as: “Breaking News”, “Free E-‐Book” or “New Blog Post”. Remember, there is a lot of boring stuff about what people are having for lunch to stand out from!
© Nick Bowditch 2009. All rights reserved.
www.twitter.com/nickbowditch
34 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started on Twitter 13. Shorten your URL’s. There are a lot of sites now which will shorten your link in a tweet from a big long messy string of characters down to a handful. One of the most used (and the one I use) is http://bit.ly. It basically changes something like: http://nickbowditchtravel.com/business-david-social-media-small-business-big down to this: http://bit.ly/bizdavid which obviously frees up a lot more characters for your tweet. A lot of third party applications such as Tweetdeck also include a URL shortening function.
14. Tweet your blog posts in three different ways. If you tweet to your followers to alert them to a new blog post (as I do) you can’t just use them same wording over and over and you shouldn’t just tweet the title of your blog post either. Ask a question about what you’ve written, or take a standout (or perhaps controversial) line from the blog and tweet that instead, followed by the link. For instance, if I wanted to tweet about my new blog post entitled, “How to use social media to make your small business big”, I would word it something like this: “Want to know how to make your small business big with social media? New blog post: http://bit.ly.smallbiz” In doing this, I have (hopefully) captured the reader’s imagination, provided them with a potential solution to a problem, and included a call to action. If you tweet about a new blog post three times in one day, make sure it is worded in three very different ways. © Nick Bowditch 2009. All rights reserved.
www.twitter.com/nickbowditch
34 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started on Twitter 15. Tweet when comments are made on your blog/site. This is another way you can get extra exposure and traffic to a blog post or item on your website that you may have already tweeted about. When someone leaves a comment (good or bad) you can thank for them for it (if they are on Twitter) or just tell your followers to check out what they said on your website. This has the added bonus of maybe encouraging others to comment on the post as well.
16. Make your tweet ‘re-tweetable’. Re-‐tweeting is basically when you see something you like that someone has said in your Twitter community and think it is worthwhile sending on to the rest of your community who may not have seen it. If you want your Twitter community to spread your word around (and let’s face it who wouldn’t) then you have to make it as simple as you can for them to do it. When someone re-‐tweets any of your tweets there are some characters at the start (eg RT @nickbowditch = 16 characters) that will be included in their re-‐tweet. Therefore, try to keep your tweets (or at least the ones you hope people will re-‐tweet) to a maximum of about 120 characters instead of the standard 140.
17. Retweet others without ulterior motives. There is nothing that says you are a good Twitter citizen like re-‐tweeting or promoting other people’s work when it has nothing to do with your area of interest or expertise. I don’t mean just retweet all the rubbish about people heating up their lasagna leftovers, but if I see something that is responsible, legitimately helpful stuff, but has nothing to do with my core businesses, I still might re-‐tweet it. This makes it a lot more easy for people to re-‐tweet my stuff in the future too. © Nick Bowditch 2009. All rights reserved.
www.twitter.com/nickbowditch
34 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started on Twitter 18. Thank Re-Tweeters. Some people will argue against this as it clogs up the timeline and is superfluous, but I totally disagree. If someone did something nice for you in the real world, you would thank them. I reckon it is no different on Twitter. Be courteous.
19. Include your original link. If you, like me, think that people who re-‐tweet your stuff should be thanked, I also think your original link should be included in your thankyou tweet. For instance, if I tweeted something like: “New Blog Post: How to use social media to make your small business big http://bit.ly.smallbiz” and Mary Smith (@marysmith) saw the post, thought it was interesting and then re-‐ tweeted it, I would reply to her with something like: “@marysmith Thanks for the RT about my new blog post http://bit.ly.smallbiz” In this way, my thankyou doesn’t just seem like random rubbish but instead a sincere thankyou but this also gives a second chance to promote your blog post to your (and maybe Mary’s) followers.
20. Start a ‘thankyou’ account. Further to that point, I found that I was having to do this a lot (which was great) although it was potentially annoying a lot of my followers with what some could see as spam. If your thankyou chatter becomes quite a bit too, this suggestion could work for you. As suggested to me by Guy Kawasaki, I set up a separate account which I use for thanking those who re-‐tweet my stuff, or mention me in a group shout-‐out like #followfriday or #traveltuesday.
© Nick Bowditch 2009. All rights reserved.
www.twitter.com/nickbowditch
34 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started on Twitter The account is called @nicksanswers and it allows me to thank the person who is promoting me or my work AND include the original link, but all of the followers of my primary account are not subjected to it over and over.
21. Use Direct Messages (DMs) for more personal or ongoing conversations. There is nothing worse on Twitter than this: “@boringperson1 hey, how are you going?” “@boringperson2 yeh great, how are you?” “@boringperson1 yeh not bad, just heating up my lasagna” “@boringperson2 oh ok. Did you make it yourself?” “@boringperson1 no no its leftovers. Was takeaway last night.” Right... who cares? I mean it’s fine if you want to use Twitter like MSN Messenger but don’t subject all of your followers to it or they might not be your followers for very long. If you are engaged in a long conversation or something of a more personal nature, use the direct messages!
22. Beware the not-so-direct direct message! This has happened to me a couple of times and although I am sure you are far more switched on and attentive than I am with these things, I thought I would share it with you anyway. Be VERY careful that you don’t try to send a ‘direct message’ to a friend or follower but accidentally tweet it in the public timeline instead.
© Nick Bowditch 2009. All rights reserved.
www.twitter.com/nickbowditch
34 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started on Twitter Particularly if your tweet is of a sensitive or private nature (as both of mine were!) it can look really bad – not to mention unprofessional. Think twice before clicking the send button…
23. Tweet your photos. Use applications like Twittergram and Twitpic to share your photos with your Twitter following. This can add real value to your tweets especially if you are tweeting about breaking news or something where you can share a relevant on-‐the-‐spot photo.
24. Don’t push your own agenda. Similar to the above point, it sounds obvious but a lot of people on Twitter don’t really get it. Be generous and understand other people’s motives – it’s not all about you.
25. Don’t do the hard sell. This might also seem obvious but a sure-‐fire way to turn people off is be one long infomercial. There is no reason you can’t use Twitter for commercial reasons but be tactful about it.
26. Start local networking groups and “tweet-ups”. This has been something that has worked really well for me. Convert the online interaction into offline interaction, particularly as a lot of people on Twitter are also small business owners or employees of larger corporations, these tweet-‐ ups might actually be good business networking as well. © Nick Bowditch 2009. All rights reserved.
www.twitter.com/nickbowditch
34 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started on Twitter 27. Incorporate Twitter into your other online presences. Add your Twitter feed to your blog or other social media, especially Facebook as it has quite a large crossover following of Twitter users. There are many badges and widgets available and services that automatically change your Facebook status to read your most recent tweet.
28. Promote your Twitter handle on your site or blog to prove you are the real person. OK, this is more if you are a celebrity of some sort I guess, but talking about your Twitter profile on your blog ensures that everything you tweet is actually your own work and thoughts and not someone who might just be pretending to be you. This is important with business accounts too.
29. Use a third party application so you don’t miss anything. There are many third party applications out there now, such as Tweetdeck, Twhirl and Destroy Twitter that I think are absolutely essential if you plan on doing a lot on Twitter. They let you keep up with not only the public timeline, but also when people either respond to you, or talk about or mention you, as well as when they send you direct messages. You can also use them to search keywords or other users and they are mostly all free.
30. Use a line in your blog posts to encourage users to “tweet this”. Again, this is about making it as easy as possible for users to re-‐tweet your stuff. If you write a blog post entitled, “How to use social media to make your small business big”, somewhere near the beginning and definitely at the end of the post, include this line: Click HERE to tweet this on Twitter Make the link people get sent to when they click on HERE, the following: © Nick Bowditch 2009. All rights reserved.
www.twitter.com/nickbowditch
34 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started on Twitter http://twitter.com/home?status=RT @nickbowditch Want to know how to make your small business big with social media? New blog post: http://bit.ly/smallbiz This forces the Twitter username plus the tweet you want them to send on to their following plus the link to your new blog post directly into their Twitter homepage for them to click on send and tweet out for you. This ensures the message that YOU want to send is sent by other people and your followers like it because it makes it easy for them to do so. It also shows you are very Twitter-‐savvy which could be important in your area of interest.
31. The most under-used function on Twitter: Search. I use Twitter Search a lot. You can use the search function within Twitter to track not only your own points of interests and your own name or service you provide, but also competitor’s names and businesses PLUS what people are saying about them. For instance, if you were the boss of Coca-‐Cola you could search for people who are saying (either good or bad) things about Pepsi and communicate with them on Twitter also. Search can also be important after you have just posted a blog about a certain person, company or topic. If people are also talking about the same thing and you can find what they are saying through searching, you can add value to them by directing them to your new blog post about the same subject. But be careful – you don’t want to come off as an eavesdropper or commercial vulture – very poor form.
32. Use hashtags. People use hashtags on Twitter for all sorts of things, and you can basically make one up yourself and use it as long as it isn’t already being used for something, or by someone, else. I use the hashtag of #familytravel a lot for my core travel business and it makes it easier for my followers and also others interested in family travel to keep up with my tweets. © Nick Bowditch 2009. All rights reserved.
www.twitter.com/nickbowditch
34 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started on Twitter They are also useful if there is a topic of current affairs people want to stay abreast with such as political protests somewhere or a celebrity’s death and so on. Recently, ‘live tweeting’ has become very popular for seminars or symposium days where people attending tweet in real time about what is being presented while using a designated hashtag. Everyone who can’t make it to the day can just follow that hashtag along as if they were sitting there listening to it.
33. Use Twitter as your business’ help desk or customer service portal. This is perhaps one of the best uses of Twitter and can save a lot of man hours and time spent on the phone also. Companies like Dell have been doing this really well for a long time, in fact Dell has reportedly earned $3 Million from Twitter posts since 2007. Could you help your customers by getting them to tweet you for a direct and immediate response rather than sending an email or calling?
34. Promote your Twitter account offline too. Include your Twitter username and URL on your business cards and other offline marketing as well. Putting my Twitter URL on my business card early on has definitely helped me get a lot more traffic to both my Twitter account and my webpage.
© Nick Bowditch 2009. All rights reserved.
www.twitter.com/nickbowditch
34 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started on Twitter OK, so now you should be off and running. With your new following and with the knowledge of how to tweet effectively to best participate in your new Twitter community, you should soon see the benefit of doing it properly. I wish you well in your use of this exciting and powerful tool. I am sure it can add a lot of value to your business, in particular in how you interact with your customers. If you have any questions, please email me at nick@thebowditchgroup.com and I will reply personally to you. You can also follow me on Twitter (obviously) at www.twitter.com/nickbowditch. Nick
© Nick Bowditch 2009. All rights reserved.
www.twitter.com/nickbowditch