Why Twitter?
Twitter can be an amazingly powerful platform for connecting to your community as well as driving traffic to the various properties you want people to go. Having an event? Tweet it out! Launched a new bag? Tweet it out!
The key to Twitter is the level of listening you do as well as talking. It is definitely supposed to be an interactive program. And, in fact, this is where you build the majority of your Whuffie (aka social capital). The more you interact on Twitter, the more people will interact with you, which attracts others to you as well.
One of my favorite quotes about the benefits of Twitter is from Tony Hsieh at Zappos:
You send an SMS text message to Twitter with your note, and your message will be automatically broadcast (like CB radio) to whoever is choosing to follow you (your friends). If people don’t care what you’re doing, they won’t follow you, so don’t worry about sending out trivial messages.
At first, it will seem really weird and unnatural for you to do this, but just trust me on this one. You will find that it’s actually a really good way to stay in touch with all your friends and know what’s going on in their lives.
…I was flying in to the Vegas airport, and I twittered “Just landed in Vegas airport.” I would have never texted anyone that message, but in the Twitter culture, that’s exactly what you’re supposed to do. It just so happened that someone on my Twitter network was about to fly out of Vegas, so we met up at the airport bar and had a drink. I would have never known otherwise that this person was at the airport, nor would I have ever sent him a text message or called him that I had just landed.
I love that story because it is exactly what Twitter does for us all of the time: it accelerates serendipity.
What are Some Good Examples of Corporate Tweeters?
What kinds of interactions are beneficial? Well, take two very popular Tweeters: Zappos and JetBlue. Here are a few examples:
@ZAPPOS:
Some photos of our company picnic are up now at: http://blogs.zappos.com – I think we had 1000 people show up!
I want to meet more customers. On Monday, I will select a random @zappos follower for free trip for 2 to Vegas for office tour & lunch w/ me
At Vegas airport now, waiting a couple of hours until my flight to San Jose, CA.
@wisekaren I’m wearing Donald Pliner shoes to the wedding.
Finished photo shoot w/ Forbes. 4 hours & they choose 1 photo. Behind the scenes: http://www.facebook.com/pag…
@bryanbartlett now says he can’t make it. Anyone else want 1 ticket to van halen at 830 tonight at mandalay in Vegas?
Just landed in Vegas. Got lots of twitters about our new beta site http://zeta.zappos.com Thx for all the feedback, keep it coming!
—–
@JETBLUE:
@laughingsquid Thanks! Just wait until our new terminal at JFK opens! http://t508.com/ (Hope you had a great time in NYC)
@BookingBuddy We’re happy to support Runner’s World, but don’t worry, you can still channel surf and eat blue chips if you want!
Two days left to win two trips on JetBlue to “The Simpsons Movie” premiere in LA. Enter now! http://tinyurl.com/2x6ql3The term ‘Interwebular Chronicle’ makes me laugh.
View this month’s selection of first-run movies from Fox InFlight Premium Entertainment: http://tinyurl.com/2o8q46
To all of our Twitter friends: enjoy your weekend!
As you can see from these selections, both companies are really great at balancing promotional tweets (“View this month’s selection of first-run movies from Fox InFlight Premium Entertainment” and “Got lots of twitters about our new beta site http://zeta.zappos.com”) with personal tweets (“The term ‘Interwebular Chronicle makes me laugh.” and “At Vegas airport now, waiting a couple of hourse until my flight to San Jose, CA.”) with conversational tweets (“@laughingsquid Thanks! Just wait until our new terminal at JFK opens!” and “@wisekaren I’m wearing Donald Pliner shoes to the wedding”). They also have fun contests (“I want to meet more customers. On Monday, I will select a random @zappos follower for free trip for 2 to Vegas” and “Two days left to win two trip on JetBlue to “The Simpsons Movie” premiere in LA.”) to help increase their follower numbers and keep people reading.
Stuff to Tweet About
There are no rules about what you should tweet out, here are a few suggestions for you. It is important that you balance the ‘outbound’ with the ‘inbound’. In otherwords, the announcements with the conversations:
- Personal thoughts and reflections that suit your brand – this helps people feel more trust towards you and your brand and strikes up conversations
- Events (both your own and other events your audience may find interesting) – this makes things interesting and, perhaps, gives you a way to meet your followers
- Contests (“The first three people who answer this trivia question get….”) – they drive more followers and interest in what you tweet
- Replies (@twittername) – this comes from listening to your followers (you have to follow back to see their tweets). The more personal the reply, the higher the impact.
- Direct replies (d twittername) – this isn’t in the public timeline, but it helps build deeper bonds to talk directly to someone like this. This is helpful to answer people when it is a private matter or when you want to show concern (i.e. someone reports an accident, etc.)
- New blog posts – you should keep these to one per day at the very most and you should also promote other people’s blog posts that are of interest
- Announcements – if it is interesting, tweet it
- OH’s (overheard) – someone say something in the office or when you are out and about that cracks you up? Type OH: “well, if you don’t mind, im trying to work on my love life” or something else funny (sometimes used to offset potentially racy comments…if you didn’t say it, but are just REPEATING IT, then it’s okay)
- Rickrolls or other fun internet games – this shows you are a bunch of fun and has people trying to do the same for you. Spreading as many internet memes as possible is good.
- Lyrics and quotes – especially fun are the lyrics: ♪Never give the game away | Try to keep me entertained, baby | Don’t make it too easy | Leave something for me and my imagination♪ as the musical notes make for lots of questions
- Links to media you create – video is fun, podcasts, perhaps interviews that are posted online about you, etc.
- Shout outs – @twittername rocks! Thanks for the great link: http://insertlink.com These make people feel great, too.
Tweets that make people laugh are awesome, but tweets that make people think are even better.
How to Tweet Without Losing Your Soul
So, before you even ask. Yes. Twitter takes time. It takes a bunch of attention and love and care. There ARE ways to minimize the work and keep up to date, though:
- Run a twitter client on your desktop and connect it to Growl. For desktop clients see: http://twitter.pbwiki.com/Apps My favorites are: Twhirl, Snitter and Twitterific
- Take twitter on the road! If you have an iPhone there are great sites like Pockettweets or the twitter mobile site. You can also just send your text messages to 40404. That’s pretty simple. Check out the apps page again for more options on other phones like Blackberries.
- Keep a good track of who is talking about you, so you can reply back! With Tweetscan you can track all sorts of keywords there as well as watch who is replying to you (there is also a tab on the main website for your replies). You can always plug the results into your RSS feeds…
- Put a twitter widget on your blog!
- Hook it up to your Facebook page! Only update your status in one place at a time and have it show in multiple places! Details here: http://explore.twitter.com/
There is also a great listing of fun apps to use with Twitter here. Watch out, though. It’s totally addictive!
How to Talk Twitter
There is a glossary of terms over here where you will find that MOST terms used on Twitter start, not surprisingly, with ‘Tw’. Like tweet, meaning one post on twitter, and TweetUp, which is a Twitter Meetup. But the basic terms you need to know are the commands to put in front of what you are saying. Like:
D twittername – direct message (not public, goes right to the Tweeter in question)
@twittername – public reply
Follow twittername – start following someone
Leave twittername – stop following someone
on – turns your notifications on (on your phone or however you are receiving tweets)
off – turns notifications off
help – accesses the other commands as you may need them
there is more here: http://twitter.com/help/lingo
There are also some things that have come out of the community like:
hashtags or # – put a hashtag in front of a ‘tag’ for easier tracking (i.e. This speaker is really nailing it. I think her slides are brilliant! #web2expo). This is really useful for conferences, events and specific topics of interest. You can read a little more about the history here You can track hashtags at Twemes.
A Couple of Extra Things
Before I wrap this up, there are a few other ‘Tweet like a pro’ ideas:
- Shorten your URLs at Tweetburner where you can also track stats on these links!
- The mother of all places to find everything awesome Twitter is: http://twitter.pbwiki.com/
- Want to set up a ‘group’ tweet? This is way cool: Grouptweet (have multiple employees send messages to d companyname with a message that you can aggregate at @companyname)
- Give people beer for good deeds with Foamee
Now you are ready to tweet like a pro!
Twitter 101 PDF for download – specifically prepared for Timbuk2
April 21st, 2008 at 10:39 pm
Great article with awesome advice. Thanks, oops, I should now follow your advice
/
April 22nd, 2008 at 3:43 am
Just wanted to say what an excellent writeup on Twitter this is. You’ve packed a _ton_ of great information into one blog post.. even for individuals, this is pretty rich!
April 22nd, 2008 at 4:43 am
I’ve been getting more active on Twitter but still trying to assess if it’s a good use of my time (good being defined in a number of possible ways). Your post offered me about the best list of ideas I’ve seen and I think you nailed the value point for me in your words, “accelerates serendipity.”
Thank you!
April 22nd, 2008 at 5:08 am
Smashing write-up.
Here’s one other suggestion to tweet about: Fantastical things — e.g. “At the market buying figs, I think Queen Bavmorda is in line behind me…she has 20lbs. of pork in her basket.” or “Just fell down a flight of stairs and landed in Narnia. Aslan says this is my last visit.”
Fun stuff.
http://twitter.com/jfhscribbles
April 22nd, 2008 at 5:23 am
I’m pretty new to Twitter…these tips helped enormously! I’ll be sure to show this to my friends who insist Twitter is a complete waste of time.
April 22nd, 2008 at 5:40 am
Great article. We also have our own Twitter, where we try to connect to our customers. See us at http://twitter.com/piuxm_support
April 22nd, 2008 at 6:10 am
Great article! I wrote on a similar idea, but from a different perspective. My thought is that corporations can use Twitter for 3 main uses: brand tracking, feeding information to ardent supporters, and to generate news. More can be found here:
Thanks!
http://www.gbrandonthomas.com/2008/04/twitter-tools.html
April 22nd, 2008 at 6:26 am
I initially dismissed Twitter and moved onto other things but after a number of friends Twittered me into submission I took another look and decided I was being a little rash in my earlier decision.
Its an awesome tool for interacting, researching and marketing but needs to be used in the correct manner and not simply spammed. I was recently following a tweet and all I got every 5 mins was a posted url to follow, that simply meant I no longer followed that tweeter!
My Twitter on…. http://twitter.com/MikeRalph If anyone is interested in my inate ramblings ;o)
April 22nd, 2008 at 6:33 am
I learned more about twitter reading this article than I had in months of using it. Thanks for the writeup. I may be taking on a role where I do twitter for a company and this article will be one of the first places I come back to. Even if I don’t tweet professionally, this will still help me with the tweeting I do for fun.
Thanks, Martin
April 22nd, 2008 at 7:05 am
Twitter is wonderful. Appreciating the additional info rmation to help folks utilize its great benefits. The Podchicks at Podchicks.net love it too!
April 22nd, 2008 at 7:25 am
Thanks for a useful set of tips. You should probably make sure companies are aware, though, that hashtags make many tweeters frowny
(http://www.icanhaz.com/nohash)
April 22nd, 2008 at 8:12 am
Great piece. I’m just getting into Twitter, more so for a client than for me. But I must admit it to be addicting.
The potential to use it as a marketing vehicle is phenomenal. It’s just one more step in new media marketing that one generation completely loves, one generation thinks is completely stupid and one generation is completely ambivalent about. Got to love it!
April 22nd, 2008 at 9:49 am
This is an awesome resource thanks so much for sharing!
April 22nd, 2008 at 10:36 am
Love the Sophie Ellis-Bextor reference. Oh, and good article too!
April 22nd, 2008 at 10:58 am
you should check virgin mobile india’s twitter profile. I like what they are doing. I think its http://twitter.com/thinkhatke
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:35 am
great intro to Twitter
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:41 am
Great post, Tara. I recently re-posted my slides from last year’s BarCamp Vancouver presentation on how Ma.gnolia has used Twitter as an extension of our customer support system. The slides can be found at http://corvusconsulting.ca/articles/2008/04/18/slide-sharing-ma-gnolia-hearts-twitter
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:46 am
Good stuff Tara. I recently wrapped up a semester-long research project around Twitter and lot of the things you’ve mentioned came up. I just published the ~30 page paper if you’re interested: http://paulstamatiou.com/2008/04/21/versatility-made-twitter-what-it-is-today
April 22nd, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Great post, thanks.
As always, the early adopters are individuals who are thinking beyond the obvious. With the interest and dedication of the few who see the potential we are led to what later seems self-evident.
We are at this phase with Twitter. As companies begin to see the value (literally) of connecting on a personal level, first with brand loyalists, and later with “average” customeres, they will begin to resource Twitter.
Whether Twitter can leverage such interest as a revenue model remains to be seen. But it does suggest that cost-benefit analyses will support the role of Twitter-like apps in marketing and PR.
April 22nd, 2008 at 9:31 pm
Thanks so much Tara for this post! I get it and it makes SO much sense. When I see balanced tweet streams — similar to what you describe — it definitely keeps me interested.
In the same sense, I think that blogs that do this well can keep readers engaged.
April 23rd, 2008 at 7:24 am
Great post. Twitter FTW!
April 24th, 2008 at 7:48 am
Love articles on how businesses are using Twitter. The term I like is “engaged”. Lots using it; few engaged. I also singles out JetBlue a couple times.
http://danperry.com/wordpress/companies-engaged-with-twitter/
http://danperry.com/wordpress/jetblue-and-twitter/
April 24th, 2008 at 8:30 am
There are still people who don’t ‘get’ (or want to get) Twitter. Perhaps they’re going through what we did back when it launched in 2006.
April 24th, 2008 at 8:31 am
What got me hooked was looking for names of people I admire (writers, business leaders, respected bloggers – they’re usually on Twitter) and follow their comments. I get comments from my friends about amazing web links, news items, and more.
April 24th, 2008 at 8:33 am
The nearest thing I can compare Twitter to is one big chatroom where the only people in the conversation are the ones you’ve invited. It gets interesting when your comments are sufficiently engaging enough to attract hundreds of followers from around the globe.
Despite all this, people still don’t feel Twitter is genuinely valuable – they get its purpose? But does any site have a valuable purpose? What defines a valuable website exactly? One that lets you pay your bills or one that lets you stay in touch with friends? This is what the facebook and Twitter debate seems to revolve around – just how valuable are these websites to daily life. Value is personal and unique.
[sorry for the multiple posts, but the site wouldn't let me post all at once].
April 24th, 2008 at 8:50 am
[3rd attempt here - I keep invoking your team of squirrels]
Tara,
The timing of this post is perfect. There’s debate going on over at Eric Peterson’s blog (which is about web analytics) about weather or not companies should be using Twitter, and to what end.
http://blog.webanalyticsdemystified.com/weblog/2008/04/now-i-too-am-a-lazy-blogger.html
April 24th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
Great post. Good info in here.
April 25th, 2008 at 10:01 am
Great post and great info. You rocks!
April 26th, 2008 at 8:17 am
Now this is something worth noting, and also worth turning into an e-booklet. Thanks for sharing!
April 27th, 2008 at 4:27 am
Great intro to Twitter, Tara. I’m a newbie and you brought a lot of cool stuff to my attention. Thanks for taking the time to put this together!
- Joel
April 27th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
Wow Tweeting for companies 101 has finally cracked it.
It has got some great information and a lot of what you said would only picked up if you were actually to spend hours of chatting or should I say “tweeting” time to learn all of the lingo.
good post.
April 27th, 2008 at 6:12 pm
Wow Tweeting for companies 101 has finally cracked it.
It has got some great information and a lot of what you said would only picked up if you were actually to spend hours of chatting or should I say “tweeting” time to learn all of the lingo.
good post
http://www.secretpiggybank.com
May 2nd, 2008 at 7:32 am
Tara,
I describe Twitter as the world’s virtual water cooler. I love how it amplifies the possibilities for “Accidental Discovery” or as you and others term it – Serendipity.
http://ekive.blogspot.com/2008/04/twitter-and-art-of-accidental-discovery.html
May 4th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
nice write up. I convinced my client to start using twitter and they are doing a great job. They aren’t tweeting any personal/company related stuff…just bits of info that would be valuable to anyone interested in their industry.
http://www.twitter.com/hickox
May 10th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
great tips on using twitter in the corporate world!
http://jeroendemiranda.wordpress.com
May 11th, 2008 at 11:01 pm
Yep, this is a really great set of insights! I’m looking at how companies can make use of Twitter/Pownce here in London, and with some tweaks I think they could be made into a valuable corporate tool. The worry is that ‘corporates’ just don’t ‘get’ these services, or their users, but increasingly the corporate world is made up of niche firms who are always dealing with the huge firms of yesteryear (!) and those niche firms need to find niche ways to get their messages out.
May 27th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
I wish I would have read this before I started twitting!………:)
June 29th, 2008 at 10:31 am
Just got back from WBENC Convention in Atlanta. Met a lot of great business women.
July 7th, 2008 at 2:48 am
Twitter+1
July 14th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
The National Holiday of Alaska is 7/4. Comments on the ‘o8 parade and years past in Juneau, the capitol city.
August 1st, 2008 at 6:36 am
Thank you for the fantastic article. This is packed full of great information for the twitter-aware as well as the twitternoob. I’ve twittered it and will continue to reread to remind myself of all these great ideas, thank you for the twitter-inspiration!
December 13th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
Well here I was thinking Twitter was a waste of valuable time but you have shown there is a bit more to it than that. Must get the old figurative “pen” out and start tweeting or twittering a bit more than once a month.
Thanks for the thumbs up !