The Serious Tweep (Part 7)

Time for a few more wise words from others on being a Serious Tweep.

Sunday I was cleaning out my email and came across this article from Advertising Age:

Digital Marketing Guide: How Do I Increase My Twitter Following?

By: Irina Slutsky

It's important to remember that chasing numbers can be futile, since even those with envied Twitter followings may not have as many followers as the numbers indicate they do. Even so, the first thing many people do when they hear of a name, a company or a brand is search for it on Google and Twitter, so there are benefits to a robust following, especially if they are organic and engaged.

1. Tweet about stuff you know and love. Your passion and expertise will show and people will recognize it.

2. Make sure your Twitter account name reflects who you are and what you do. For those whose name isn't a brand in its own right (like, um, @irinaslutsky), pick one that's short and to the point. When third generation NYC journalist Jonathan Mandell decided to tweet about theater, he picked @newyorktheater.

3. Related to No. 2, make sure you fill out the bio that shows up under your account name. In case your name is your account name, put your city and description.

4. Follow people. Yes, some of them will follow you back and many won't, but to participate in the Twitter economy, follow. This goes for individuals and companies.

5. Read other people's tweets and ask questions, clarifications and followups. If you're a company, take the complaints offline -- but take them for sure.

6. Unless you're @nytimes or @cnn, don't just hose us with links to your stuff. Throw in observations, funny things you see during the day. Go ahead and break the unofficial rule and tweet what you're having for lunch once in a while. Because someone's going to say they also had a $5 footlong. And that someone could be your next big client.

7. Don't link and run. Even when you post links to your work and intersperse them with links to things you find interesting, stick around for the discussion. Attend to everyone who messages you and especially those who @ you. People remember if they didn't get a response.

8. Tweet consistently. Nothing is more depressing than looking up an account with one tweet from 2010 and two from 2009. Total. (Hi, @redlobster.) Hire someone!

9. If you hire someone to tweet for you or your brand, make sure you trust them. Because if you trust them, they'll be able to have a personality.

10. Remember the Murphy's Law of Twitter is (thanks to @kevinmarks) that being retweeted gets you more followers, but tweeting loses them. So be sure to say things that get retweeted!

Bonus tip: Only tweet drunk if your name is @louisck.

The Serious Tweep (Part 6)

Time for some more basics.

First of all, my advice is to not use Twitter.com to tweet.

Twitter.com has many limitations that are overcome by using some of the other software applications.

Favorites include:

Hootsuite

Seesmic

and Tweetdeck.

I have used the last two and have never really been a big Hootsuite fan, due to the fact that most of the features I want are free with Tweetdeck and I'd have to pay an upgrade fee to use them with Hootsuite.

Check and compare.

I do use Twitter.com to do some organization like build my lists, and check Twitter profiles, but when I'm tweeting, I'm using Tweetdeck.

The current version of Tweetdeck allows you to post to multiple social media account at the same time. Everyday I post on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. I only have to write it once, and then I can select which account I post it to.

Tweetdeck also allows me to schedule updates on all of these social media accounts.

Yesterday I checked out another service called Postling at Postling.com . My initial reaction was I don't like it. They want my money to do stuff that I am able to do already on Tweetdeck without it costing me anything. Yes they have a free option, but it is limited, more limited than Tweetdeck.

About once a month, I will do 24 hours of #FF or #FollowFriday. Once an hour I tweet a #FF recommendation. The only way to do this, at least for me is to pre-schedule them.

I also don't want to overwhelm my followers with too many tweets in a short period of time. Sometimes I'll schedule a tweet or RT for a later time.

One other basic about Twitter. As a Serious Tweep, I want to be able to respond when someone mentions me. Last summer I bought a droid phone which has enabled me to tweet when I'm away from my computer.

Currently I use a program called Tweetcaster on my droid and I have the audio settings to alert me when I get a direct message or a mention. I can check and respond if it is necessary.

What do you use to manage your social media?

The Serious Tweep (Part 5)

Today we're going to look at different types of people on Twitter.

(Tweep is a nickname for a person on Twitter).

Billie Egli is not a Serious Tweep.

The profile is not filled out, we have no idea what this person is all about and the tweets look like stuff that would end up in your spam folder:

These are the ones that make the Serious Tweeps look bad and the nay-sayers see crap like this and say "Twitter is worthless".

Let's look at a Serious Tweep:

Immediately you see a difference. There is a picture and a profile that is complete:

Andrew doesn't have thousands of followers, but he is in the top 5%.
95% of all tweeps have under 500 followers. Also look at his ratio of following to followers. It's pretty even which leads us to believe he is using Twitter as an engagement tool, to have conversations and to be social.

More on the ratio in a moment. But let's also look at the left side of his Twitter page:

He's not hiding anything. He has information on what he does, email addresses, and website info to encourage us to check him out.

Now let's look at his actual tweets:

Just by looking at these 4, I see that he is conversational.

The first tweet is to Cancer Services of Northeast Indiana, making a correction but in a friendly town of voice. The second tweet is joining a conversation about how to leave a voice mail message.

The third tweet is promoting an event that he is co-hosting. Note that there is a clickable link that we can click on and get more info.

The fourth tweet is a link to his tumblr.com blog, with an interesting headline that might pull you in to read more.

I know Andrew in real life. I met him via social media and support the work he is doing.

Let's take a moment and look at another type of Tweep, this one is on my newsmaker list:

The twitter account for TechCrunch has a lot of the features that the previous twitter account has, except two very obvious differences.

First they are not conversational. They are sending out lots of tweets, but not engaging in conversations or retweeting others.

But look at how many people are following: 1 million 588 thousand+

How many do they follow? Less than 1000.

The purpose of this Twitter account is to get technical info out to the masses. Tech Crunch is a website that has a pretty big following.

One more to look at today. In several cities in Indiana there is a restaurant/tavern called Scotty's Brewhouse, owned by Scott Wise.

Scott is a Serious Tweep. He mixes it up on Twitter by promoting what's going on, specials, links to things unrelated to his businesss and he also responds to you when you ask him a question.


Scott Wise has embraced Twitter and in return his followers have embraced him and his restaurants. If you are in a consumer based business, follow @brewhouse and learn from his example.

The Serious Tweep (Part 4)

Before I go any further on the subject of becoming a Serious Tweep, a couple of side notes.

You can use Twitter any way you want to use it. I don't care. I may not follow you, but you may find others who will.

All of this, and everything else on this website is opinion. There are very few hard and unbreakable rules. What I write and post is simply from my own experience and observations. Oh, and my opinion will change from time to time. I'm flexible like that.

The concept of a Serious Tweep is not a humorless person. Quite the contrary. The Serious Tweep lets their personality shine through.

The Serious Tweep is a person who wants to get serious about using Twitter.

Instead of dipping their toe in once in awhile, the Serious Tweep is ready to jump in and needs a few tips and hints.

Everyone of us has our own motivations for using Twitter, writing a blog, connecting on Facebook and these individual reasons are different for each of us.

Yesterday Allison Carter wrote about this on Roundpeg.biz:

I Ain’t No Follow Back Girl

Posted by Allison

Recently, my coworker Taylor asked me how I decide whether or not to follow someone back on Twitter. While this process might seem simple, for many, it can be a confusing process. While everyone’s different, here are the steps I use to determine whether or not I want to spend quality time with someone in the Twitterverse:

1. Check the picture: It’s true, they’re worth a thousand words. If someone has the default Twitter avatar picture of the egg, beware. It’s possible they’re new to the service, but at the same time, it takes approximately ten seconds to upload a photo. If they do have a photo, ask yourself if it looks like a real person, or a model. Unbelievably pretty people or the scantily clad are usually good tip-offs that they’re spam bots.

2. Check the bio: Is their bio devoted entirely to telling you how you can make money fast working from home, or does it actually talk about their job, their family, their hobbies, or something else remotely of interest? Did they even bother to take the time to fill out the 160 character bio? If they’re too lazy to do that, they’re probably too lazy to tweet anything of interest.

3. Check their location: Twitter is wonderful because it’s a global community, but at the same time, if someone is always tweeting about restaurants or events in St. Louis, it’s not of much use to me here in Indy. So I do discriminate based on location: being from Indiana significantly increases your chances of getting a followback from me. That’s not to say that I don’t follow people from Australia, England, Hong Kong, and all over the US, but keeping it local helps me keep Twitter manageable.

4. Check their stream: This is, undoubtedly, the most important step. There are many people with real pictures, real bios, and in my geographical location who just don’t interest me. Maybe they only broadcast messages without ever interacting with anyone. Maybe they only tweet about something that I’m just not interested in, like sports or inspirational quotes. Whatever the case, I can usually tell within 5-10 tweets if it’s a good match or not.

The most important thing is to never feel obligated to follow someone just because they followed you. You’ll wind up cluttering your stream with items that don’t interest you, and just being generally irritating.

How about you? How do you decide who to follow?

A few more Twitter Tips are coming next week, starting Monday at noon.

The Serious Tweep (Part 3)

First the links to Part 1 and Part 2.

Now (drum roll) Part 3 of how to be a Serious Tweep.

Twitter is a communication tool.
It usually works best as a conversation tool.

There are a few exceptions and I'll mention them in a future article.

Let's begin with real life. Face to face relationships.

The best conversations involve two or more people talking back and forth.

Each takes turns speaking and listening.

Twitter has limits of 140 characters per tweet. Similar to Text Messaging which usually has a 160 character limit.

So Twitter is by design a conversational platform.

Here's an example from yesterday, I asked my friend Kevin a question:

@ScLoHo: @kmullett I want to find a tweet I sent on Feb 26th... Is there a quick way to find it?

Kevin responded:

@kmullett: @ScLoHo if you know a phrase in it you can try tweetreach or you can use tweetreports


Two minutes later, I sent Kevin a message:

@ScLoHo: @kmullett Thanks, Tweetreach found it. I called someone the wrong name. Oops!

Now, you may be asking, why don't you just send a text message?

Because if Kevin was not available to answer my question, maybe someone else would. And they did:

@kristofcreative: @ScLoHo Can also do conversation search like this http://bit.ly/elERgD /@kmullett

Now I had not met Kristof before, but he saw my question and chimed in with another answer which I also checked out.

(I also decided to check Kristof 's Twitter Profile and discovered he is friends with others I know, and I added him to the people I follow on Twitter.)

Twitter has an additional feature called ReTweet or RT.

RT allows you to send a tweet to your followers and gives credit to the source.

I RT'd to my 1500 followers:

@ScLoHo: RT @kristofcreative: @ScLoHo Can also do conversation search like this http://bit.ly/elERgD /@kmullett

And Alan, I just met a few days ago on Twitter, retweeted it to his 2000 followers:

@aknecht: RT @kristofcreative: @ScLoHo Can also do conversation search like this http://bit.ly/elERgD /@kmullett

And Kevin also retweeted to his 2900 followers:

@kmullett: RT @kristofcreative: @ScLoHo Can also do conversation search like this http://bit.ly/elERgD /@kmullett

One question was asked, two people answered and the message reached potentially:

Kristof: 2900 followers
Alan: 2000 followers
Kevin: 2900 followers
Me: 1500 followers

Add it up and that's 9300 people. Now there is some overlap, and not everyone who is following is paying attention, but what if just 10% saw that. That would be 930 people.

930 people learned something, not just me.

More tomorrow. Your questions and comments are always welcome

The Serious Tweep (Part 2)

In January when I started this site I did a 5 part series on starting with Twitter.

Here are links to 4 of those posts:

What is Twitter?

Twitter Terms

An Illustrated Guide to setting up your Twitter account

And How I Manage Twitter

Recently I have been asked a few more questions about Twitter that I will take the next few days to answer.

I've titled this series The Serious Tweep because until you get serious about it, you'll never understand the potential and power you have.

Part 2

Yesterday I told you to fill out your profile completely. The less you fill out, the less likely you will attract people that you want to attract.

This is part of your personal brand. You have control over what you say about you and your life, your passions and interests.

There is one element of the Twitter profile that stumps some folks.


The web link.

In my example yesterday, Randy Clark has his web link go to his company blog.



If you are the spokesperson for your company, this might be the direction to go.

But what if you are on Twitter as an individual, or you don't have a company website.

You could link to your Facebook Page.

But Please Don't!

Not as your primary web presence.

Not if you want to be a Serious Tweep.

A lot of people will link to their LinkedIn profile.
You do have a LinkedIn profile right?

And it's completely filled out including a picture right?

I was advising my 27 year old daughter this week to get on LinkedIn, and my advice to you is the same.

There are a couple of other options too.

Flavors.me I am currently using a Flavors.me design for my home page for ScLoHo.net.

Click here to go there and design yours.



About.me This is another site that you can use to customize your own home page.

Click here to go there.

Here's the one I designed for myself.


And perhaps you have a blog that reflects who you are and your personal brand. If it is updated regularly and with content that you want others to see when they are checking you out, you can use your blog as your web link.

Tomorrow, we'll talk about tweeting itself.

The Serious Tweep (Part 1)

In January when I started this site I did a 5 part series on starting with Twitter.

Here are links to 4 of those posts:

What is Twitter?

Twitter Terms

An Illustrated Guide to setting up your Twitter account

And How I Manage Twitter

Recently I have been asked a few more questions about Twitter that I will take the next few days to answer.

I've titled this series The Serious Tweep because until you get serious about it, you'll never understand the potential and power you have.

Part 1:

Fill out your profile.
Completely.
Including a picture.
And a website.

Let's look at the profile of Randy Clark.

The first thing I notice is his picture. Randy looks like a real person.


Randy does not have his company logo or a cartoon or a picture of a model, what you see is the real Randy.

Now you may wonder, like I did at first, "what's with the TKO at the end of his name?"

Take a look at his profile again.

The answer is in his Bio:

While I don't know what the TKO Graphix marketing team is yet, there is a link to find out more if I want simply by clicking on the Web link.

Randy is a Serious Tweep.

Wanna see someone who isn't serious?


There are so many things wrong with this, but compared to Randy:

No Picture
No Bio
No Website
and what's really important, NO TWEETS?

We'll continue on Wednesday.

In the meantime, take a look at your profile and see what's missing and fix it.