How to Effectively Use Twitter - The Basics Part I
Michlin Metals has gained valuable insight over the last 2 months that has helped transform our Twitter presence. We feel it's important to share how to construct an effective tweet over a 2 part blog post.
Having been on Twitter for almost (or only, depending on how you look at it) 2 years, Michlin Metals still has plenty to absorb. However over the last 2 months our follower base has doubled due to a few things learned that we feel could help others better utilize this amazing form of communication and engagement. Here's a quick snapshot: Twitter is only 6 years old, it was formed in 2007 and currently sees over 400 Million unique visitors a month. Those users now generate 1 Billion Tweets every 2.5 days. That's a ton of traffic both in and out.
Here is why we had only 300 followers after using Twitter for almost 2 years.
- We Tweeted AT people, not WITH people.
-Effectively yelling at our followers to look at what we were posting.
- We put barely any emphasis on actually engaging with our community.
- We simply pasted article titles/links thru a daily tweet via facebook that auto posted to Twitter
- We didn't shorten links, therefore never saw retweets or favorites.
These are some reasons we had only achieved a somewhat modest following of about 300. Then about 2 months ago, we did a little research on what makes an effective Tweet and how to Tweet properly. That knowledge was transformational. Our presence on twitter is now almost 600 strong and that's after only 2 months of applying knowledge gained from tweeting properly and engaging w/people. Let me add this...The sheer number of followers isn't the point, it's the value that you add and get by engaging. It's imperative that in order to draw people in, you reply, comment, retweet and engage w/other people's content in a thought provoking way.
Michlin has doubled our follower base in that short time frame by listening to what people are saying and by replying to their tweets. We are shortening our links to a specific character length to allow for a retweet w/out the need to change our copy. We use hashtags to reach out of our community to draw others in as new followers and lastly, we started using more relevant information in our Tweets. Such as social media, new technologies and current events. So let's break down the previous paragraph and discuss what some of those terms mean and HOW to Tweet properly.
First and foremost, even before you create an account it's best to have a strategy or a goal in mind (if you are using Twitter for Business) so that you can Tweet with focus and stay on track. Once you build a follower base they are going to hopefully come to you expecting the same content for which you garnered their follow in the first place. However, let's not get ahead of ourselves. First you have to create a username and password. Once you have created an account, viola, you can now use Twitter. From the home screen you can search for relevant or interesting topics and start to follow people that tweet about things you enjoy reading or learning about. Once you have followed a few people your home page (time-line) will start to fill up w/their tweets and you can begin to see what all the fuss is about. In the Tweet entry field at the top right of the screen (if working on the desktop) you hit the compose Tweet button. This is where all the fun starts, and you have a maximum of 140 characters. You might think that 140 characters isn't many letters/characters to use and you'd be right, it's not. However, it's not the limit of characters that defines the tweet, it's the value you place w/in those characters to craft small, micro-blog statements that define the essence of your message.
There are many ways to actually tweet, most Social Media platforms offer the ability to post your sentiments to other networks thru their own, but in order to ensure you are getting the most out of the 140 characters you have, it's best to either tweet thru twitter directly or to use a Twitter client like HootSuite or TweetDeck. These clients are amazing tools but their purpose serves a slightly more advanced user who is following and is followed by many people, has lists, (Lists are ways to separate people into categories that are of interest to you, they are needed b/c once you follow more than a couple hundred people you will see that keeping up w/your timeline is nearly impossible...and that's only a couple hundred...imagine a couple thousand, or even more) and a client also allows you to pre-schedule your tweets for anytime you see fit. If you start tweeting regularly it's best to space your tweets out to about once an hour. There have been studies that show once an hour is a good frequency when tweeting often. However it's not recommended to tweet 10X in a few minutes and then wait 24 hours or longer b/c all that does is clog a persons timeline for a minute which is not a great idea b/c again it's almost like yelling "Hey check me out, check me out, check me out!!!!" and then you vanish again no where to be seen. Best to be consistent and space the tweets apart.
Back to crafting the perfectly effective tweet. You will need to use a link shortener like Bit.ly or Ow.ly again there are studies that show the use of these 2 methods above any other option could garner you as much as a 6% better chance of people clicking that link. The opposite holds true for tiny.url. That same study says that people are 6% less likely to click on your link if tiny.url is used. So we have chosen to stick with Bit.ly. That takes your link from tens or hundreds of characters and makes them about 14 characters. Here is the infographic on the stats discussed thus far from @linchpinseo.
This wraps up the first installment, if this has been even slightly helpful, and you could, retweet this, favorite this (which is a click of the star under the tweet itself, comparable to a facebook like), share it, or give it a +1 on google+
it would be very much appreciated. So we have covered setup, following, lists, twitter clients, favorites and link shortening. Please stay tuned to Michlin Metals Blog for Part II of How to Effectively Use Twitter - tweets, hashtags, retweets, favorites, and hashtag searches will all be covered. Please comment if you want to share any thoughts or concerns. Thanks for reading.
Michlin Metals is a Woman Owned Small Business. Follow Michlin on Twitter @MichlinMetals, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ or on the Web at www.michlinmetals.com. More on the author on Google+.
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