Twitter My Way

I love Twitter.  Not only is it your ever-updating news service, it is one of the most powerful SEO and Marketing tools available.  If you believe Twitter only tells you what people had for lunch, get ready to learn something. These are 4 ways I use my 140 characters.

Learn
We all love to consume information and the internet provides a most awesome buffet. By following authors, columnists, bloggers, public figures, etc – the content comes to you and is always updating in real time. In short, twitter can be your personal library or newsstand. All this data is difficult to manage: utilize hashtags and lists to search for and sort information quickly. A Dashboard like Hootsuite allows you to digest the data by sorting it into multiple columns. Your dashboard gives you a snapshot of data: who is talking about you, who is talking about your company, what are the latest news stories, etc – all continuously and immediately updated.  

Share
It is as easy to share data as it is to consume it via twitter; don’t keep all the good stuff to yourself. If you read a tweet you find interesting, retweet it so your followers can enjoy it too. Maybe you visit a website or wish to share your latest blog, take the URL and tweet it. Sharing through Hootsuite or Buffer make this easy by allowing you to schedule tweets ahead of time as well as automatically shortening the URL so it can fit within the 140 character limit and help you track the activity on your link.

Engage
This is the best part of Social – engagement. The days of pushing information without conversation are gone. Twitter gives your customers an in-road to you, don’t be afraid of it: listen to what they say and respond. Reply directly and thank those who retweet your content and them know you like what they are tweeting.  Ask and answer questions – Twitter is an ocean of thought leaders no matter the subject. 

Social conversations, called TweetChats are virtual Town Hall conversations that cover topics from cooking to customer service. Idea-share, focus groups, and feedback sessions: it’s all about conversation.  Utilizing a tool called Tweetchat makes it easy to follow and participate in the conversation. 

Promote
Sharing information or engaging others promotes yourself and your organization. People can see who shares what and the twitterverse responds favorably to those they like; if your followers find your content interesting, they may also research what company employs such an interesting person.

It is fine to talk about yourself or your brand, but don’t brag or over promote.

I hope you were able to take away something new – I look forward to your comments, questions, and feedback.  Please let me know if I can help you with your Social Media

Cheers,

Toby

@Toby_Metcalf

@TMetcalf44