Twitter for Dummies (27 page)

If you cover both business and personal stuff on your account but aren’t an official “for the business” twitterer, it can be good to go easy on how frequently you tweet about business-only stuff. We get asked for a specific ratio all the time, and it’s really hard to say. As car ads say, “Your mileage will vary.” Try a mix that’s comfortable to you and then just see whether you’re getting the results you hoped for. Also, please remember, the number of followers is much less important than the quality of the conversations. For long-term sustainable value, true engagement beats tonnage any day.

If you’re updating under your business handle (for us, it’s
@dummies
), followers probably expect that nearly all tweets from that account will relate to that business. After all, they’re following that account for business info! If you’re really inconsistent, off-topic, or overboard personally all the time, and violate your followers’ expectations too much, you may find your audience shrinking. Everyone needs to strike a balance, but most successful brand accounts stay relatively on topic. If you’re an individual twitterer, followers probably want to hear about you and how you’re going about your business. It’s a subtle difference but an important point to establish yourself as genuine, and not a selfish peddler of goods.

Your goal should be to permit your followers to get a good understanding of what your business offers and come to trust you as who you are. Make the bulk of the content that you add to Twitter about you and the value that you provide (as a person and through your work). Think of some updates as “give” and other updates as “take”: When you share or talk about things that are genuinely useful and helpful to customers, you’re providing something they want. That sets the stage for occasionally promoting the goods or services that you sell, because you’ve earned the trust and attention of your readers. Just remember that promotional tweets that aren’t framed from the perspective of your customer’s needs too often come across as a “take” because you’re asking for followers to buy what you’re selling.

Want to know if the balance you strike is effective? Re-read your tweets at the end of the day or the end of the week and keep an eye on replies, re-tweets, the numbers of people clicking links you share, and, yes, follower growth. If you feel that your update stream comes off as too sales-y, then back off on the selling and stick to providing value. Twitter’s about being a genuine individual. Over time, Twitter gives your followers a lot of information about you, who you are and what you represent. That builds trust, confidence, and interest in you. Be real.

Be yourself

Like with the individual and business-only accounts, be sure to give your name in your bio. Transparency about who you are and what you do can go a long way toward growing your Twitter foundation. And a good Twitter foundation is key to establishing a stable and growing Twitter network. Using your real name adds to your value as an individual.

Just as in other business interactions, you need to be genuine on Twitter and establish yourself as a trustworthy, multidimensional person.

At the same time, think carefully about how much of your private matters you want to share. Occasional mention of your love life, health, and other more personal stuff can be very funny, very humanizing, and very honest, but being really negative, self-indulgent, or tedious about the same will put people off. When you really need to talk about those things, it’s very possible you’ll find supportive people on Twitter. Having found something in common or someone who wants to help, you may even get into a more in-depth conversation with a twitterer via DM or leave Twitter altogether via e-mail, IM, or over your favorite beverage. You can also definitely connect with people on more public personal topics like sports, TV, books, movies, or politics without revealing all your deepest secrets.

As a person on Twitter, you might find value in talking about your business problems in the open. Many fellow twitterers are willing to give you advice about how to overcome a business challenge or situation. If you’ve spent time cultivating a network that works for you, you have many resources at your fingertips. Ask them!

Identifying Your Audience

Whether you’re a business or an individual on Twitter, if you want to grow your Twitter network, it’s helpful to think about your audience. If you haven’t transplanted your existing social networks onto Twitter, it may be a good time to do that and to put a bit of time and effort into expanding your network.

Think about the kinds of people you’d like to talk to or the subjects you’d like to discuss through Twitter. Trying to build up business? Target your customers. Want to communicate with other avid cyclists on Twitter? Search keywords and look to see who tweets about major cycling events. Send updates that are relevant to whomever you’d like to reach or about the topics that interest you and engage yourself in that conversation. Yes, it’s that easy.

When you start using Twitter, it’s pretty hard to determine who your audience will be — your followers grow based on what value you can provide for other users. So, if you’re trying to reach other cyclists to talk about racing, the Tour de France, or the latest in derailleur technology, start talking about it and search for other users already chatting about the subject. (You can find out about searching for users and topics in Chapters 5 and 9.)

You don’t have to be one-dimensional in your Twitter chat — if you want to engage cyclists, you don’t always and only have to talk about cycling. People understand that you have more to you than a single activity or idea (unless you’re a company or targeted Twitter account, for which the implicit rules are a little different — see “Your business on Twitter,” earlier in this chapter), so don’t feel that you need to talk about only one thing to be of value to your target audience. Be yourself and talk about the things you like; but, if you want to engage other cyclists, just talk a bit more about cycling than anything else. That’s all. Over time, your cycling network will grow.

Viewing your network

Although you have little direct control over who follows you, you can easily see what sort of user you’re attracting. Browse through your list of Followers and click through to open some of their profiles to get a general idea of who’s following you (on any Twitter screen, click the Followers link under your name in the sidebar).

When you look into who’s following you, you might realize that you’re drawing unexpected people as followers. Reaching people and businesses you never expected to reach is most likely not a bad thing. If you’re a business, unpredicted followers could show that you’re increasing your business’s social reach, meaning a sign of successful Twitter use. If you’re twittering as an individual, you’re broadening your horizons — and other users consider you and your tweets interesting.

Diversifying your network

You can help guide who tends to follow you by talking about a myriad of topics. People aren’t one-dimensional, and no one really expects you to be on-point all the time. Although you may have interests that you talk about more than others, getting a sense of what you’re talking about and whom you’re talking to can come in handy — it enables you to target your tweets to topics that are most interesting to your followers.

One of our favorite tools for understanding how often and what you’re updating is TweetStats (
www.tweetstats.com
). This tool enables you to see who you’re talking to, when you’re talking, and what you’re talking about — all in graph form. Figure 10-2 shows an example of the type of information TweetStats reports.

Figure 10-2:
You can see a graph of your tweet density.

Targeting specific networks

If you’re targeting specific people with whom you want to interact more regularly, find a way to add value to the interactions for them. You can target these types of people by searching keywords and hashtags for that topic and seeing who uses them and who the real leaders appear to be. Once you’re following a few key people within that interest area, look for whom they talk to, listen to, and value. For example, if you’re a gardener, check to see who Martha Stewart (
@MarthaStewart
) follows and talks to about gardening topics. Click through any appealing @replies and consider following those people. You can also use this information to get a sense of what’s important to any given twitterer and what types of information they like to receive. With Twitter, you can essentially browse not only the connections between people, but also between topics of interest. You can also easily drop into active ongoing conversations about specific themes. One or two key people can lead you to an entire subject matter landscape on Twitter.

In a very real sense, an individual or Twitter account that represents something can become the foundation for a community. Likewise, if you’re trying to target a specific type of individual, go to the Twitter streams of those individuals and see what they’re tweeting about. Join the conversation that they’re having with other people and engage those other people, as well. Over time, if you’re adding value to that conversation, then other people look to you as a person who’s involved and relevant in that community, whether it’s computer programming, baking cupcakes, or cancer research.