Tag Archives: Twitter

In this second post of a series on marketing via social media, we will discuss how you can use Twitter in your community development efforts with potential clients and business partners! Though some of you may think everyone is on Twitter in 2011, it is still only about 13% of adults in the U.S., and roughly 300 million people worldwide. Still, for a business, using Twitter is the ideal first step on building your online community in a low cost effective matter. It is great to connect with people and organizations, which you might not otherwise have the opportunity to engage with. Unlike Facebook, Twitter has a lower barrier of connecting with those whom you don’t already know, due to the nature of the network. So that said, let’s look at a few things we can all do to improve our standing in the Twitterverse.

First, make sure you know who is following you, and that you are selective on who you follow back. Just because someone follows you, does not mean you should follow them back, since they can be spammers or something worse, like a congressman! Instead make sure you are following high quality Twitter accounts with real people behind them, not robots. By following and hopefully being followed by reputable Twitter accounts with a good engaged following, you will get a better return on your social investment.

Another key element to improving your reputation on Twitter is monitoring and improving your Klout score, which is one of the most popular ways that people gauge your online reputation. Klout provides a score based on their own algorithm to determine how you rank against others whom you follow and who follow you. The average Klout scores of your followers/followee will impact your score, so if possible, try to connect with people who have a higher Klout score than you do. Klout also takes into account Facebook and LinkedIn activity, so linking all of these elements together can provide a fuller picture of your online reputation.

Another great tool for Twitter is their built in search site (http://search.twitter.com). You can use this tool to keep up with the latest topics trending on the network. By entering specific keywords, you can keep up to date with what is going on in your industry, or even what is being said about your own company or account. You can also use what are called hashtags, which signify specific keywords that can be tracked using Twitter’s tools. For example, if you search for #social media, you are bound to find a lot of information on that topic. You may want to do the same with keywords close to your industry, to make sure you don’t miss any important new developments. To make it easier to aggregate the content from your searchers, you can also take these searches and create a syndicated feed (RSS feed) from them, and connect that feed to your RSS reader. A great free RSS tool you can use to track these feeds is Google Reader. Not only can you log into your Gmail account to view your feeds, you can also see them on your phone, if you have the Google reader app installed on your smart phone. This is great way to get up to date news and information from your favorite sources, as well as to obtain content sources for future tweets!

To generate your own content, it is important to develop some form of content calendar and put together a plan of action when it comes to publishing your posts. To do this, you can use a simple spreadsheet to manage your upcoming tweet activity, and then a tool like Hootsuite or Cotweet, to schedule out messages ahead of time. This can free you up from having to send tweets manually all of the time. You can then feel free to supplement those scheduled tweets with your own dynamic tweet activity, for the most up to the minute information and commentary. To promote your content, you may want to use Promoted Trends and Promoted Tweets, which are a form of advertising used on Twitter, that is not as intrusive as a banner ad. You can purchase these “ads” similar to an Google AdWords, by paying fees based on costs-per-engagement (or clicks). Twitter also allows for large companies to create Promoted Accounts which are basically official corporate Twitter accounts which can be placed in front of specific users based on their “tweet interest” and who they follow.

Now, with all of this Twitter activity going on, it is also important to know if what you are posting is having an effect or being consumed. This means you need to track your tweets to see who clicked on them, or any related links. I find it very useful to use a URL shortener service like Bit.ly, so you can make your Twitter posts URLs (i.e. website addresses) both shorter and trackable. You can also use the service to create a QR code, which can be with mobile phones with barcode scanners. Hootsuite provides this ability, but that also integrates with other social networks including; Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, and even your WordPress based blog. There is also a built-in URL shortener and analytics tool in the system which offers many template and customized reporting options. Twitter also has a URL shortener called T.co which offers similar functionality from within Twitter itself, but the tool still lacks many of the features of Bit.ly and Hootsuite.

Finally, a great way to start connecting to people on Twitter is to start retweeting their content. People tend to be more engaging and interested when they are being promoted for free. Of course, when you start tweeting more content, it is like that you will be retweeting the content from these different accounts more than they are retweeting your posts. However, when you start sharing useful content with others, you can be sure they will share that great information with their followers, and so forth and so on. By engaging with the community in this way you can start building social capital, and hopefully your followers will return the favor when you tweet out something important as well. The Aday Interactive Twitter feed usually tweets about digital marketing strategy, social media, and on occasion content related to mobile marketing strategies. So if you are interested in these topics, please follow Aday Interactive, Inc. on Twitter @adayinteractive. We will also be tweeting out whenever we post a blog post, so if you have found this useful, be sure to follow us and of course feel free to retweet our content and we will likely do the same to yours