I work with guiding clients through the social media jungle and there is one platform that seems to fascinate everyone more than anything… Yes you guessed right – it’s Twitter. Some find it a big time waste and/or frustration; others can’t see how they would live without it.
So what’s the lowdown here? Well there are a few rules of engagement, I have come up with three that you should know before launching into the Twittersphere.
1. Twitter takes time (in two respects)
By time I mean both time spent on it actively as well as time having a presence on Twitter. You may know that identifying and following the right people in your industry, be they influencers or authority figures, takes time. It could take weeks of searching, reading, replying and retweeting to realize what topics and people are important to you. There are ways of reducing this time by using social media marketing software but it is still a bit of a project.
Once you have set up your shop on Twitter and you are following the right people, the other aspect of time kicks in. Other tweeters aren’t going to follow you unless they see you regularly contributing to the community. When you do this right and keep a high profile, you will noticed more experienced people notice and follow you.
2. It’s all about sharing (and givers gain)
If you look at your home feed of tweets you’ll find that 95% of them contain links of shared blog posts, events, news articles and so on. If you are following your favorite celebrity you’d want them to not only tell you what they are up to but also link to any relevant TV show they are shooting, restaurant they are visiting or beach they are sipping cocktails on. This lets you probe deeper and really understand what is going on.
Next time you tweet about a convention or seminar you are going to, be sure to add the link to your tweet and allow your followers to see what is happening. A lot of events will have their own hashtags (#SxSW for South by South West) and you can throw in your own hashtags (e.g. #socialmedia or #networking) depending on the topic.
By sharing what you are doing, you are bound to come across other tweeters going to the same event. You can now meet up offline and further strengthen your Twitter relationship. When you use an official hashtag you also help promote an event and the organizers will thank you for it.
The other side to sharing is retweeting the content of your fellow users. The more you share of others’ content, the more your content will be shared. Call it karma, the law of reciprocity, givers gain, whatever – the fact is that it works.
3. Always mention others (ok, make them famous)
One of the best features of Twitter (which Facebook has now copied) is that you can mention anyone in your tweets by putting the old @ in front of their username. This means their followers can see you mentioning them and they will be notified on their profile.
Any mention that isn’t from a very obvious spam robot is an endorsement. The Twitter stars got to where they are because they have been mentioned over and over again by the average Joe Tweeter. Imagine if someone with 50,000 followers mentioned you, I would guess that you’d gain heaps of new followers in an instant. By mentioning fellow tweeters you are vouching for them and your followers will be interested to see who the mentioned users are.
Now why on earth would you want to keep making others famous? Remember the givers gain, keep making others famous and they will make you famous. Just like in any life situation, you tend to look after people who have helped you in the first place.
Bottom line
Twitter isn’t really that hard but as with everything it takes a bit of time to get used to. I was a long time skeptic myself but once I got into the swing of things I would now say it’s the best social networking tool out there. The simplicity of Twitter is really its strength and as long as they keep it simple it’s only going to grow in popularity. I urge you to hop on the Tweetin’ train today and enjoy the ride.
Be sure to check out my earlier posts on how to Breathe Life into your Profile.
Any questions about Twitter? Just ask me in the comment section below!
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