Getting Acquainte With Your Neighbors - Twitter Best Practices 3/3
Part 3/3
Because social media operates based on connecting via common interests, every re-tweet, mention and direct message becomes insight into your audience. Developing new content based on prior re-tweets, mentions and direct messages helps develop relationships with the people you want to talk to by targeting posts specifically to their interests.
When you re-post a person’s content with added commentary, not only do you promote their ideas, interests, organizations, and brand, but you also give them the opportunity to engage you in relation to ideas they are already comfortable with, ie. their own.
When you help people promote their brand information, original content, and support their personal goals, you also promote loyalty. You never know who is going to be your most vocal supporter. A CEO may spurn you, but being on close terms with their digital neighbor can be an easier way in the door.
Common Courtesy
Engagement requires a certain level of etiquette. Remembering to reply in a timely manner is important if you want to keep the momentum of your engagement opportunities going. It’s also important to remember never to identify your emotions with your digital persona.
If you identify yourself with your digital persona you might find yourself in situations, conversations and exchanges that can quickly lead to arguments. Always keep yourself a bit distant from your digital alter ego. Never start, continue or support arguments. When a conversation takes a negative turn, find a way to reach agreement as soon as possible and move on. Everything you say, post and promote is recorded in the digital environment; keep in mind you’re leaving a trail that will define you for years to come.
What You Put in the Pie
Your content should promote relationship development. The purpose of digital media is to engage others, not to promote your brand. Success in digital media relies on allowing the other person to choose engagement leading to successful interactions. In sales, marketing, networking, developing contacts, whatever your end goal, providing an opportunity for the other person to engage you is more effective than trying to force the issue. When the other person makes the choice to engage there is always a greater level of success.
Define your content approach ahead of time. Focus on general themes so that you allow for spontaneity and can approach a wider audience. Post “around” your topic to create a sense of depth. This means covering every aspect of your topic. For instance a graphic designer would not only post on current industry trends, but also theoretical pieces, historical information, kitsch phenomenon and all the attendant areas affected by graphic design.
On Twitter most of your content will be based on comments directing people towards links. It is best if you have a blog or dynamic website that you can direct people to that continues the themes developed by your Twitter posts. When posting a link to your blog or website write unique tag lines that further develop your brand.
Rather than just posting the article title or a flat explanation, try being creative. Avoid generic statements like “New blog post” . Your Twitter feed should become more than just a link dump.
Focus on:
- Surprising juxtapositions
- Unique word play
- Kean cultural observations
- Novel insights
- Attention to detail
- Direct contact/engagement
- Interesting questions
Keep personal posts to your Twitter account on topic and infrequent; it’s more important to add value for your audience through additional comments to the posts you re-tweet from them. This develops your persona, while simultaneously developing relationships with key members of your audience.
Define your posts through commentary. Commentary develops the atmosphere of your persona. Use the kernel of information provided by the person you are re-tweeting, and when possible, add original content around the specific link or idea; to give the original source credit while adding new material use “via @originatorstwitterhandle” after the post.
Color and Tone
In all of your digital interactions keep your tone personal, but professional. When replying to a mention, RT or direct message be friendly, positive, and personal. Remember that formal language can sound stilted. The days of strict, formal interaction are fading fast. There is a time and a place for formality, but in most of your digital interactions you’ll find greater success erring on the side of the personal.
There are no hard rules when it comes to tone and it’s best to remain agile in your approach; reply based on the tone of the message received. Remember that your personality is going to be gauged on the tone of your posts. Your audience will get to know you, and to form a sense of intimacy, based on your digital persona, not your flesh and blood person.
Use humor rather than sarcasm unless you are working with a sarcastic brand. Sarcasm has a way of falling flat in digital communications. If your audience is not expecting to be met with sarcasm it can end up being offensive. Humility, honesty and integrity are better engagement tools than vicious satire, and with the stress of contemporary living, good-natured humor is often more effective than sarcasm.
Remember too, a good neighbor is one who is relevant to the community. If you’re not bringing value to the table, your taking someone’s time that could better be spent elsewhere.
“I’m eating a hot dog…” - Twitter Best Practices 2/3
How often you speak is as important as what you say and how you say it. Digital media offers the ability to remain constantly in view of your market, partners and competitors. This availability should be used as a strategic asset. The temptation to seek complete control, to over think and over edit, needs to be tempered against the potential to overflow with information, especially on a platform like Twitter.
There’s a lot of give and take when it comes to how many posts are appropriate to put up in a day. Complaints abound over Twitter feeds filled with “hot dog” posts; those posts that announce some innocuous detail of daily life like “I’m eating a hot dog…” and do very little to with communication or relationship development.
Your Time in the Room
Think of Twitter as one big room and your posts are your presence in it. 1-2 posts every 2 hours seems to be ideal for keeping momentum and development going on personal accounts. This can be adjusted depending on the goals of the Twitter feed. For example a business account can continue momentum with fewer posts. 1-2 posts every 3-5 hours seems to be ideal for keeping momentum on business or organizational accounts.
If the account is merely targeted towards providing a point of contact for PR or news updates 1-2 posts per day or per week is possible. Keep in mind, unless you are representing a business, organization or brand that already has a loyal following, remaining quiet will limit the development of your presence on the Twitter platform.
Setting It All in Motion
This may seem overwhelming, you may be thinking “I can’t even update my blog once a month…1-2 posts every 2 hours!” But that’s where reciprocity comes in. You’ve heard it’s better to give than to get? Well on Twitter this motto helps you maintain an active presence and develop relationships while mitigating the amount of time you spend on the platform itself.
Applications like Hootsuite and Tweetdeck allow you to schedule and monitor your posts, as well as create sets of key word searches to find other accounts posting within your target audience. Set a specific time during the day to schedule posts for the upcoming day/week/month. This takes as little as 15 mins–1 hour, depending on time period you will cover.
Everything that happens in digital media builds precedence for future activity. When dealing with media that has immediate global reach and can be logged, searched and accessed in the future it’s wise to have a plan for what you’re putting out.
Keep It Focused, Keep It Loose
Setting aside a block of time to schedule posts helps support a cohesive focus for your account and also helps you strategize. Make sure to leave room in the schedule for posting “real time” information as needed. Keep blocks of time open where you can post free form information or responses while keeping your feed uncluttered.
It’s best to check back and monitor every 1-2 hours for re-tweets, mentions, and direct messages. Each event is an opportunity to engage. If someone re-tweets your posts, it’s an opportunity to thank them or strike up a conversation; a mention where someone asks a question or comments on a Tweet presents an opportunity to begin a conversation. Direct messages are the most ‘intimate’ form of engagement on this platform and allow for private conversations.
Key word searches can also provide areas for engagement. By conducting regular key word searches on brand related or interest related topics you can conduct business intelligence, monitor mentions of your brand, company, or organization, and develop relationships with new people through targeted conversations.
One Spark to Start a Fire
“Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must first set yourself on fire.”
-Fred Shero
At XNet we have seen the future of how business and consumer communicate. We are currently developing new best practices to take advantage of this new model of communication. Our focus is on the strategies that one must put in place for this new mode, not necessarily how to use the latest Internet tools to accomplish this. However, we have been using Twitter quite successfully the past few months, and we thought it was time to share our experience on how we use Twitter to not blab about how great our products are, or what we are doing at anytime of the day, but how it can be used in a larger strategic sense of mutual communication and the building of relationships.
Part 1/3
Twitter is the easiest digital media platform to build relationships on and many companies are wasting the opportunity by thinking of it like a forum for PR and company news.
Do you use Twitter as a sounding box?
A place for conversation?
Do you even use it?
One Spark to Start a Fire
Digital media has loosed the bonds of business communication. In this new found freedom many find themselves in a topsy turvy world, “condemned to be free” as the existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once described the human condition.
While larger corporations remain mired in questions regarding digital media’s efficiency, small and medium sized businesses have an opportunity to jump ahead and accept the responsibility, and opportunity, to immediately engage their market. Platforms such as Twitter provide immediate insight into the interests, needs and opinions of over 17 million persons in the US[1] alone.
Critics cite usage statistics to draw questions on Twitter’s efficiency, failing to realize that it only takes one spark to start a fire. Connecting to one person in a community can lead to engagement across the board. Those most active on Twitter are also active in other areas of their profession, and a targeted approach can lead to dramatic results.
There are no easy solutions. Valid arguments exist on both sides of the issue, pro and con, for business use of platforms like Twitter. With so many voices on this errant ship of fools sometimes you just have to dive in and see what sinks and what floats.
With that in mind, let’s talk about Twitter…
What is it?
Twitter is a digital platform where individuals and organizations can post 140 character messages that are visible to anyone following them, visiting their Twitter homepage, or monitoring applicable key words through a 3rd party platform.
What’s the point?
Despite its flaws, and beyond any hype, Twitter is good for a number of things, including:
- Personal Expression
- Business Intelligence
- Content Aggregation
- News Feed
- Topical Discussions
And most important…
- Engagement.
Finding successful ways to engage the market is a key ingredient in a good business development strategy. Twitter gives you direct access to individuals and companies. For this reason alone SMB’s and entrepreneurs should take a serious look at developing a presence on the platform. Twitter is a backdoor into the market, a social gathering to display your company and skills, and a convenient way to host links to content that develop the market’s perception of your business. Most importantly it’s a place to develop the relationships and conversations that allow all of this to happen without forcing hackneyed one way messaging down the market stream.
Let’s be honest
We often get stuck in black and white thinking.
Sometimes we can’t resist the “new thing” for no other reason than its crisp and shiny packaging. We’ll go and grab whatever has 10% more shine, rather than sticking with an old stalwart, because it makes us feel like we’re keeping up with the best and brightest. The same thing happens with digital media, the whole process is so new that it leads people to grab on without thinking things through first.
On the flip side sometimes we pass up new opportunities because they don’t fit in with our preconceived notions about how to get things done. We’re used to doing things the old way and we’ll keep plodding along the well worn path until something comes by to dig up the ruts.[2]
Over the next few posts we’ll go through some of the ways that we’ve started to think about Twitter, and digital communications in general.
[1] http://www.edisonresearch.com/twitter_usage_2010.php
[2] The reason for this is neurological. Our brains form familiar patterns of neurons and it takes less effort to move in familiar patterns than it does to create new neurological connections. Innovation requires us to avoid becoming victims of our brain!
It was a perfect game
It was a perfect Game
Armando Galarraga is in my opinion one of the greatest players in recent baseball history. He needs to be in the All-Star game, he needs a parade in his honor in every town, and schools and first born children should be named after him.
Why? Not for the perfect game that he officially did NOT throw, but because of a decision he made…and his attitude.
I’ve always been a huge believer that your attitude determines how you react to a problem. Deciding how you handle a problem is the key, and more often than not, the harder choice is the right one.
Let’s follow along what transpired:
After being officially denied the status of being one of only 20 other baseball players in history to throw a perfect game, the highest honor baseball can bestow upon you, all because of an error on the umpire, and not even a close call mistake, a mistake that is so clear that you could listen to the play on the radio and hear that the runner was out…Armando Galarraga forgave the umpire!
What is amazing in this ordeal is Galarraga’s attitude. Later in the locker room, after the game, still in shock from having his perfect game taken away, Galarrga “had started to celebrate,” when the umpire came in, “I looked at him. I thought, ‘OK.’ I thought, ‘I can smile or punch this guy.’ “
Joyce called Galarraga to the umpire’s room and made a heartfelt 100% honest apology for the bad call, an act in baseball that is practically unheard of.
“He really feels bad — probably more bad than me,” Galarraga said. “But nobody’s perfect. I give a lot of credit to that guy because he needed to talk to me and say, ‘I’m sorry.’
“His body language said more than a lot of words. His eyes were watering. I gave him a couple hugs. There is going to be a couple more — I hope so.”
Smiling and winking Galarraga finally added, “Nobody’s perfect”
Maybe not Armando, but in my mind, the way you handled yourself was in fact, “perfect”.
Can you only imagine this scenario if the player was the likes of Milton Bradley, Barry Bonds, or Albert Bell ? (for non baseball fans, these guys are all jerks to put it politely). Screaming, yelling, fighting, more screaming, yelling, and then we would hear over and over again how the player is right and the demand to be recognized for their “entitlement”. And after that, the lawsuits would come out. And so on, we would never hear the end of it.
Thank you Armando for bringing back some level of honor and integrity to baseball, and to life itself. Your actions will serve as a shining example of how one can choose to react to a problem in a positive fashion. And a thank you to Jim Joyce as well, you should be commended for accepting responsibility, and saying you’re sorry.
TEDxNaperville Teaser Video
The good people at Animoto have generously offered their services to the TEDx community. They have a nice website that makes it fairly easy to create videos like this.
Here is my finished “sizzle reel” for the next TEDxNaperville. Check out Animoto.com, I’d love to say that it took me days to put this together, but thanks to Animoto, it took much less.
Good example of viral ad embracing a products reality
It’s only been since the first mini vans rolled off the assembly line that consumers immediately knew that the mini-van was both a great utilitarian vehicle for the family, yet also a four wheel stigma for men and women losing their “singles days” identity.
Seems that for years marketers would highlight the safety and convenience of the mini-van, and ignore the 800 lb gorilla in the room… until now.
I firmly believe in marketing, you meet the objections of your product/service head on, instead of ignoring and shoving aside what everyone already knows as fact. Toyota has done this. Not only in an entertaining way, but in way that even re brands the concept of a mini-van into the more hip definition “swagger wagon”. Brilliant.
Thank you Toyota for not ignoring the stigma, but meeting it head on and marketing it into a concept of acceptance and possibly even, dare I say “cool” in a nerdy way.
Is TED elitist?
“I’m a TED alumni (they call us TEDsters) and TED is a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. I recently write some comments on a TED oriented discussion that I thought I would share in this blog.”
Once in awhile people ask me if TED is elitist. My answer is similar to the official TED stance, of “partly”. Then I highlight how TED is “partly” elitist, but in a good way.
The problem I have, is that every time the topic comes up I seem to be on the defensive where I shouldn’t have to be; spending a lot of energy on why TED is the good part of elitist rather than discussing the positive things that TED does and the changes it’s already helped bring to our global society. When I see public discussions on this, I see the same thing happening.
Why is that?
Could it be that just the term “elitism” itself is to blame?
Proper definitions aren’t my strong suit, so I decided to check the term ‘elitist’ in the dictionary, and this is what came up:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/elitist
Definition 1:
- The belief that certain persons or members of certain classes or groups deserve favored treatment by virtue of their perceived superiority, as in intellect, social status, or financial resources.
This TED is not. I have yet to read, see, or hear anyone associated with TED itself, or a locally hosted independent TEDx event, exhibit this behavior. I’ve been to TED Active and the entire experience was quite the opposite of this definition.
Definition 2:
- Control, rule, or domination by such a group or class.
This is the part where TED is “partly” elitist. I highlight the term “control/rule.” To foster the positive environment of TED, or any community, there must be some level of control or rule. TED does this very well. And it must have it in order to continue the incredible community that it nurtures. There’s really no room for argument or discussion there, it’s an open and shut case.
Is the reason I always feel like I’m defending TED and elitism because the person I’m arguing with and I have different interpretations of the definition? Just to make sure, I plugged the term “elitist” into a thesaurus to get a better idea of what people could be thinking when they hear the term “elitist”.
http://thesaurus.com/browse/elitist
Yikes!
Snob, pompous ass, stuffed shirt, snoot, braggart, parvenu, stiff, uppish, high and mighty, snotting and on and on and on. Just to name a few, and the list goes on, and it doesn’t get better!
Is this what most people think of when they hear the term elitist? I really think so. When is the last time you heard the term elitist in a positive light?
TED’s official stance to the question is a resounding, “partly”. Which of the above definitions are we only “partly”? Partly pompous or partly snotty? Ouch!
I think it’s safe to say that many people not familiar with TED believe that the term elitist is defined by the first definition “Perceived superiority…”, while most TED fans define it by the second definition “control/rule”. So person to person discussions and Internet comments and articles go back and forth debating who’s right, and countless posts go out with TED people defending all the good that comes out of TED. All this without anyone really making sure they are arguing over the correct definition!
So here is my idea worth spreading, is it time to official say no, we are NOT elitists?
Maybe we need a new dialogue. “No, TED is NOT elitist, we are ___________. “
Busy with TEDxNaperville
It has been a while since I have posted anything on my blog, I apologize. I’ve been very busy running a TEDx event, TEDxNaperville. www.tedxnaperville.com. What TEDx is well, you really need to go to the website to find out more about it.
The busy part is the fact that I am still working on getting all the videos from all the speakers involved enabled for viewing from the website. So for everyone that is waiting to see the speaker videos, I ask that you please be patient, and I should have everything up by the end of April, if not sooner.
I would like to thank all the speakers, volunteers, sponsors, and attendees for making the TEDxNaperville event a success. It will be posting information soon, on some activities that I will be hosting to continue the discussions and “ideas worth spreading” in the area.
Thank you.
A Personal Buying Experience On-Line?
I’m a huge fan of making buying a personal experience, in physical stores, this is not that hard to do, as long as the store has the right people handling the customer the correct way. But what about on-line purchased? Can you make a quick transaction over the web, just you and your keyboard and monitor, a more personal experience? Can you actually buy on-line and feel special? Yes!
I was just at TED Active in Palm Springs and saw the most amazing performance from a band called String Theory (www.stringtheoryproductions.com). I went to CD Baby.com to purchase their CD’s. Now, purchasing a CD online is not that personal, and I really don’t think that you can MAKE it personal. But CD Baby figured out how to make part of the process personal.
How does a typical order status email look? Pretty common.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Mr. Zards - Order ID 1234
Thank you for your order, it was shipping on Feb 15th 2010, tracking ID 233445thdk3.
We value your service.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Not too impressive.
Now lets look at what I received from CD Baby. (this is an actual cut/paste)
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Subject: CD Baby Loves You
Arthur-
Thanks for your order with CD Baby!
USPS
(1) String Theory: Blue Sky
(1) String Theory: 9 White Orchids EP
Your CDs have been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow. A team of 50 employees inspected your CDs and polished them to make sure they were in the best possible condition before mailing. Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CDs into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy. We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved “Bon Voyage!” to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day, February 15, 2010. We hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. In commemoration, we have placed your picture on our wall as “Customer of the Year.” We’re all exhausted but can’t wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Sigh… We miss you already. We’ll be right here at http://cdbaby.com/, patiently awaiting your return.
–
CD Baby
The little store with the best new independent music.
http://cdbaby.com cdbaby@cdbaby.com (503)595-3000
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Impressed? Maybe not completely true, but the impression it leaves you is quite different then the typical thank you-we-shipped-your-order response. Does it show that they actually care? I would say so.! Will I shop there again, and more importantly tell people about this experience? Of course. Does CD Baby actually love me? I think so!
Save a Life this Christmas
The spirit of Christmas is of giving. I received a correspondence from a friend that’s copied below. I ask that you please read it, and make the small effort to potentially become a donor. There is no cost, and all you have to do is swab your cheek with a q-tip. How hard is that? The potential upside that you could be saving a life. So please consider doing this. Thank you and Merry Christmas.
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A few days ago, we learned that a friend and business school classmate of Dan’s is dying of leukemia and is in dire need of a bone marrow transplant. Dan was asked to register as a potential donor and did. Bill is signing up too.
We had no idea registering was so easy. Now that we know, we’d like to invite you to join us.
Registering is not the same as donating. About 1 in 1000 registered donors match with a patient each year, and you can always decide at the time if donating makes sense for you. Still, if everyone who receives this message signs up, together we could save a life or two every year - maybe even the life of our friend Alan Cohen.
It’s the Season of Giving, and it’s hard for us to imagine a better gift than life itself. So we hope that you’ll join us on the donor registry. To sign up:
- Visit https://www.giftoflife.org (or click the image below) and click on REGISTER NOW AS A DONOR. Completing the registration pages takes about 2 minutes.
- On the last registration page, enter the code: SAVEALAN (This will waive the $54 registration fee, so your registration will be free.)
In a few days, you’ll get a test kit in the mail. You just brush the inside of your cheek with a couple of Q-tips and send them back. This takes about 3 minutes.
