Let’s get this out of the way–I get Twitter, I love Twitter, and Twitter is at the center of my social media strategy. Twitter provides me access to people, information, conversations, controversy, and yes, spam like no other social marketing tool. I do not spend a lot of time on Twitter. But, I find it fun, useful, and informative. Twitter helps me grow my business.
As I am so excited and committed to Twitter, let me share with you how I use this tool. I see Twitter as a resource for me in my business in five ways:
1. Information Gathering (inbound): The people I follow and my keyword searches (“#”) provide me with access to all types of general and targeted information. I enjoy and find valuable the tweets that offer access to articles, news, videos, general thoughts, clever sayings, and thought provoking comments. I easily pass over and ignore the incessant spam and blather. I know what I am looking for and I often find it.
2. Social Networking (inbound): No other social media tool allows me to follow or connect to anyone with simply a click. If they are on Twitter and I want to link myself to them, I can. That does not mean they follow me. I am okay with that. It is my job, if they look at my profile and my tweets, to be interesting and valuable enough to warrant the obligatory follow back. I can build a network of pretty interesting and influential people. Since, I am always looking for good information, I am pleased to be able to connect with the people I do.
3. Information Sharing (outbound): There are two components to sharing information here–the information that I bring and the information I have found (retweets or “RT”). I compliment the content of those I follow who provide good information by retweeting that information. It introduces my followers to other interesting people and ideas, while building credibility with those I follow by acknowledging good content. Note, the relationship building aspect of this approach.
4. Branding (outbound): The information I share from above goes a long way toward establishing my brand. Who I am, how I think, what I value, and my perspectives on this information provide my followers a better understanding of my brand. When I offer access to my blogs, videos, podcasts and articles, my followers are more likely to go to those sites as a result of the other things that I have done to build a relationship and develop my brand. The work that I do to share information, engage in conversation, and acknowledge others enhances my brand and grows my business.
5. Promotion (outbound): This one is easy. In fact, too many people do this way too well and way too often. This is the part about Twitter that bugs and confuses those who don’t get it or don’t do Twitter well. I am all in favor of gratuitous self promotion. Promotion helps build your brand and raises awareness. That said, in Twitterland your promotional activity needs to be limited to less than 30% of your tweets. Do more than that and your followers will simply be your existing fans, the people who already know you. You will not build up a valued, viral and organic following with a lot of gratuitous self-promotion.
Note that my Twitter strategy is very much about relationship building. I focus on establishing credibility, building rapport, and finding cool and interesting people to follow. It is like a networking event. I am looking for interesting people to meet. I am definitely not trying to jam my business card in someone’s face. I love Twitter. If you get it, it works!