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Advancing by Retweeting: The Next Steps in Using Twitter
August 4, 2009
Twitter, the 140 character micro-blogging platform, is all the rage among social media lovers. Using Twitter and a range of ancillary services, businesses of all sizes are quickly disseminating and responding to information and misinformation, sharing special offers, recognizing employees, recruiting new workers, responding to crises, and joining the conversation with naysayers and lovers of their products and services.
Are you new to Twitter? Take a look at this short informative video "Twitter in Plain English" to learn more.
As the Mashable Guide to Twitter explains "As a Twitter user you can post updates, follow and view updates from other users and send a public reply or private direct message to connect with another Twitterer."
Tweets (the name of the 140 character message) are proliferating and impacting businesses both positively and negatively as consumers generate a wide range of messages and questions from smartphones, Wi-Fi enabled netbooks/laptops or broadband connected desktops at homes or in offices. These tweets can be mined for trends, opportunities, problems; and by adding your own tweets you can join the conversation to support your corporate, marketing, communications and customer service strategies.
If you haven't discovered Twitter yet, the only way to appreciate what it does is to jump in and set up a Twitter account so that you begin down the path of making sure that your company is ready to use the service. Make sure to select your company name or other brand identifier as your Twitter feed address before someone else "hijacks" the name.
Local Use of Twitter
I was curious to see what a sample of local organizations were doing with Twitter including their main Twitter address, how many followers they had, how many other feeds they were following, how many tweets they had generated since starting with Twitter and whether they had customized the background of their Twitter feeds to help support their brand. In conducting my mini-audit, here's what I found:
National and International Organizations
Organization: Promega Twitter URL:http://twitter.com/promega Followers/Following: 55/241 Tweets: 38 Branded Background: No Last Tweet: August 4, 2009 Promega Tweet Example:
Organization: American Family Insurance Twitter URL:http://twitter.com/amfam Followers/Following: 175/0 Tweets: 1,278 Branded Background: No Last Tweet: July 3, 2009
Organization: Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board Twitter URL:http://twitter.com/WisCheese Followers/Following: 1893/1811 Tweets: 324 Branded Background: No Last Tweet: August 3, 2009 Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board Twitter Bio:
Local Companies Organization: Jon Lancaster Toyota Twitter URL:http://twitter.com/WeSellToyotas Followers/Following: 228/181 Tweets: 423 Branded Background: Yes Last Tweet: August 2, 2009 Branded Background Example:
Organization: Liberty Towing Twitter URL:http://twitter.com/LibertyTowing Followers/Following: 516/178 Tweets: 39 Branded Background: No Last Tweet: July 31, 2009
Organization: Planet Propaganda Twitter URL:http://twitter.com/plntprpgnda Followers/Following: 268/293 Tweets: 228 Branded Background: Yes Last Tweet: August 4, 2009
Organization: UW Health Twitter URL:http://twitter.com/uwhealth Followers/Following: 92/2293 Tweets: 260 Branded Background: No Last Tweet: August 3, 2009
Organization: Union Theater Twitter URL:http://twitter.com/UnionTheater Followers/Following: 1990/1186 Tweets: 201 Branded Background: Yes Last Tweet: August 3, 2009
Next Steps in Using Twitter
Determine your Twitter strategy.
If you're a larger company, consider multiple Twitter feeds to serve different conversational needs and interests — special offers, president chats, customer service, jobs (see TDS), business milestones, new products, new hires, history, industry insights, customer service responses, etc. Develop a list and examples of tweets that you'll be generating to meet your selected objective.
If you're a smaller company, you can probably go with a single Twitter account. For some creative examples of how small businesses around the country are using Twitter see "Mom & Pop Operators Turn to Social Media."
Select an official "tweetmaster" and approved staff who can use Twitter for business purposes.
Set up Tweeting guidelines, much like you would for other public communications and conversations. Remember that if you have multiple people tweeting, you want to make sure that they are doing so appropriately and in line with your objectives and culture.
Decide on the style for your tweets.
Go for warm, friendly and personal if possible. Remember it is a conversation.
Make sure that you are listed in Twitter directories.
A couple to consider are Twellow — the Twitter Yellow pages and Twibs.
Customize your Twitter background to support your overall brand strategy.
See Wisconsin Union Theater and Jon Lancaster for examples of custom backgrounds.
Monitor what people are saying about you.
For example, Za's Restaurant in Columbia, South Carolina; found that they were on the winning end of popular basketball coach Dawn Steeley's tweets until she tweeted about a bad experience on July 5th letting her followers know she was never going back there again according to the State.com. Suddenly this restaurant found itself hurt by social media feedback from a powerful local celebrity.
To help you track what is being said about your company or organization, you can search Twitter on keywords like your company name, competitor's name, product and brand names etc. and use conversational monitoring tools like TweetFeel, Twendz, Monitter or Tweetbeep for an aggregation of tweets.
Benchmark against the big boys and others in your industry.
Among national business leaders using Twitter as part of their social media strategy are Zappos (now part of Amazon) (following 403,553/ followers 1,042,854 and 1,738 tweets) and Whole Foods (following 495,113/followers 1,093,307 and 3,652 tweets).
For example, in the credit union industry, a new centralized resource called CU Tweet Track has been launched to track and share Twitter best practices and feeds among credit unions around the country. CU Tweet Track is currently following and sharing information with 342 credit unions and leagues including locally-based Wisconsin Credit Union League (78 followers, 55 tweets), UW Credit Union (357 followers, no tweets) and Heartland Credit Union (244 followers, closed access to tweets). Not to be left behind in the credit union sector, Madison-based associations CUES - Credit Union Executive Society is also using Twitter (202 followers, 144 tweets) and so is CUNA - Credit Union National Association (387 followers, 135 tweets). As you can see by the number of tweets and the followers for each of these feeds, the use of Twitter in this sector is still in its infancy.
Follow other Twitter feeds.
The more Twitter feeds that you follow, the more followers you are likely to get in return.
Retweet (RT) the good tweets that support your business philosophy, strategies or marketing initiatives to spread and validate your message.
Promote your Twitter feed on your Web site, your blogs, your business card, your e-mail signatures and other promotional activities.
Start tweeting and try to tweet a couple of times a day and multiple times a week.
Have fun and keep learning and trying new things with Twitter.
Interested in finding out more about e-business and marketing, including Twitter? You can follow me on Twitter @thewebchef
COMMENTS
Great article! I think Twitter is especially useful for lifestyle business. I really like Sconnie's Twitter presence and posts (@sconnie) – Joey, Madison
Great tips. Alice.com has a great Twitter presence (and we're located in Middleton)! Check us out at @alice. – Rebecca, Middleton, WI
These are fantastic tips and explained very well - thank you! Not only are local companies getting involved - but also employees who help strengthen the branding bonds!! (@JennStinnett) – Jennifer Stinnett, Madison, WI
Thanks for the positive feedback. It is nice to know that readers find the information valuable and useful. Paul J. Gibler, the Web Chef – Paul Gibler, Madison
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