Twitter. They talk about it on the local news, they talk about it on ESPN… it’s mainstream. It’s almost a household name like YouTube, Facebook, or Johnson and Johnson. Businesses know that other businesses are using it, and they feel like they are potentially missing the boat on something big. Because it’s web related, they turn to us, their web designers, for guidance. What do we say?
“Sure, no problem”
The “getting on Twitter” part is trivial. It’s free to sign up and hardly takes any time at all. And the sooner the better, because like all services that require a username, the longer you wait the higher the chance is that the username you want is gone. This part is a no-brainer. It’s never going to hurt a business for having a Twitter account, it’s just not a golden ticket.
If the username you want is taken, try contacting the owner and see if they’d be willing to give it up or sell it to you. Or, get creative and pick a username that is interesting, has to do with the business, and isn’t a lame add-on to the username you actually wanted.
But Why?
This is the same question you could ask when it comes to having a website at all. Why? Just why is it that you want to be on Twitter? That nagging, visceral feeling of “missing the boat” doesn’t count anymore. It’s time to do some intellectual quantification of what there is to gain from this.
- Do you want to sell more widgets?
- Generate leads?
- Trying to put a human face on your business?
- Just want to have some fun?
- Keep an eye on competitors?
- Provide customer support?
Well guess what?
It’s all of the above
As a business on Twitter, you do stand the chance to grow your business, but that may not come as directly as you might imagine. You only control what you tweet, not what others tweet at you. If you want this to be effective, you need to manage that incoming stream as well. If someone has a problem, help them. If someone has something to say about you (good OR bad), respond to them.
Quick Case Study
With Are My Sites Up? (twitter), we subscribe to a few saved searches like “My site is down”. Anyone tweeting that phrase has a pretty high likelihood that a service like Are My Sites Up would be useful to them. We don’t get up in their grill and send them messages saying they should sign up, we just follow them. They can check us out for themselves and see if we can be of use (the name of our account helps in that way). Of course, we also use the service for status updates, talking with customers, and just for fun.
It’s a forum not a pedestal
The way Twitter works is that you “follow” people. The people you follow’s updates show up when you visit Twitter. People can follow you too, then your updates show up on their Twitter page. You can talk directly to each other with @replies and Direct Messages. It’s a community. It’s like a giant chat room.
If all you do is tell people things, that’s not a community, that’s just shouting. And when that shouting is in the form of “NEW PRODUCT, BUY NOW!!!!”, you are spoiling the party. Nobody will want to listen to you.
Important Note
When you tweet, if that message starts with @somebody, nobody will see that tweet except you, them, and anybody else that follows you that also follows them. That means you can reply to people often, even have a whole conversation, and not worry about flooding your stream with stuff most of your other followers don’t really care about.
It’s about followers
We don’t need to beat around the bush here. The goal is getting a lot of followers. And not just followers, but followers that really care to hear what you have to say. The more followers you have, the wider your messages spread, and the more “effective” Twitter is going to be for you.
If you build it…
…it’s still a ton of work to get anybody to care. Not as magical as Field of Dreams, I know. Driving people to your Twitter account, just like driving people to your website, is hard work on your part.
So how do you gain followers?
- You ask your audience nicely. Send out a newsletter? Ask them to follow you, because you’ll be engaging with people through there. Speak in public? Mention that you are on Twitter. Anywhere you already engage with your audience is the place to do it. It’s easier to convert the converted.
- Put it on your website. If people are already on your website, they are about two clicks away from following you. This is the best possible place to let people know.
- Follow people. Now don’t go ape-shit and follow a zillion people, because that ruins the usefulness of your own Twitter stream, not to mention you look like a spammy idiot. But follow your friends, your customers, your neighbors, people that interest you, other people in the same industry as you. Some of them will notice and follow you back.
- Talk. Just because someone isn’t following you, you can still talk to them. Reply to things they have to say that you have something relevant to say back. People follow people who engage with them.
How do you lose followers?
In general, your follower numbers will just rise. That’s because Twitter is growing and people are always finding new people to follow. The activity of unfollowing is far less common than following. But still, people will unfollow you if your messages are not the kind of thing they like in their stream. That’s part of the beauty of being a Twitter user, you can manage what the incoming flow to you looks like. Someone tweeting stuff you are sick of? Unfollow thetm. The most common offenses (in my opinion):
- Too many! – A few times a day may actually be “too few”, but some people go nuts and I see 10 tweets in a row within seconds of each other. Nope, not in my feed you don’t.
- Boring – I want to look forward to people’s tweets, not have another source of the mundane.
- Too sales-y – It’s really easy to turn people off with sales messages. You either better keep it light or make the messages incredibly interesting and seductive.
You have to actually do it
It’s tempting to go all Field of Dreams here again, but you get the picture. If you want this to work, you have to actually do it. It becomes fun and addicting, so once you get going it’s easy to keep going, but that beginning is tough. Part of it is…
Finding the right tools
Actually going to Twitter.com might feel like a hassle all the time. Fortunately, there are tons of different ways to interact with Twitter without using your web browser. If you have any kind of “smart phone”, chances are there is a Twitter application for it. Use that. It’s always in your pocket and will allow you to be more spontaneous and human about your tweeting. There are also some seriously great Twitter applications for your computer. This isn’t intended to be an article about Twitter tools, but just for the record Tweetie is an excellent app for both the iPhone and the Desktop that is superb. See this wiki for a big listing of all kinds of apps.
Schedule it
Make it part of your day. Or, make it part of someone else’s day. That young intern you hired, she’s probably all over this Twitter thing, have her to it, just make sure she has the tools she needs within the company to be useful to your customers.
What should I say?!
This might be the hardest part for a new business on Twitter. Plus you’ve heard that Twitter is a bunch of people that just got back from a run and tweeting about their breakfast and you don’t want to go there. First and foremost, if something major is going on at your business, that’s an appropriate thing to Tweet. Launch a new website or new major section of the website? Have a new CEO? Now offering service in Canada? All good things you might want to let your followers know about. Your own gut instinct will tell you if the news sounds interesting or mundane (skip the mundane stuff). But it’s not every single day there is major interesting news that happens at a business. Here are some other ideas:
- Offer a special deal to your followers only. Maybe a contest?
- Share industry news. People following you might be interested in your industry as a whole, not just you.
- Be a human. Just see a movie that you absolutely loved? You can share it. It’s OK, not every single thing you tweet has to be 100% on message of your company. We’re all humans here, with a variety of interests.
- Tell a joke.
Preview the future. If the business is working on new things, share the progress, do teasers, make people guess.
You might want to peruse other businesses on Twitter as well, and see how they approach it. Although of course copying exactly what other people do is no way to innovate.
So ultimately what can we do as the designers?
- Educate them. As in, the points made in this article.
- Design a background for them. Fairly trivial compared to how they use it, but we are designers after all. Remember, don’t put links in your background. It’s an image, so the links obviously won’t be active. Twitter backgrounds with links all over them are incredibly ridiculous.
- Integrate it into their website. Whether it’s actually displaying recent tweets, or just placement of links/buttons to get people over to their Twitter account, that’s our job.
I should say that I’ve never single-handly taken a business from zero to Twitter super-stars, but I have had some success on Twitter myself, and feel my common sense in this is fairly sound.
Too few? There’s no such thing. If a business sends more than ‘a few tweets a day’ they start to drown out my friends, and they get unfollowed, even if I really wanted to know about their specials, etc.
Also, when I follow a business to learn about their specials, I don’t want anything else on there. I don’t care about their kids, or their site outage, or anything. Business things (like the site outage) I can understand and put up with. Their kids? Forget it. I’m gone. (Google actually had a bout of this recently and after a few days, they quit… Guess they saw the light there.)
I think with business twitter accounts anything non business related shouldn’t go much beyond, “hey we were discussing this in the office” type of stuff.
I agree with WC. I’m the same way.
I actually want to hear stuff like that, otherwise stuff gets boring but anyone can definitely go over the top with things too personal
By the way, nice fade effect on the input fields Chris!
I have the same attitude toward bots. What could just as well have been an automated update is crappy and I feel no compunction toward dropping that. It’s a nuissance. Even if I want to know about specials, I don’t consume every single day.
The human touch can be applied properly (see meebo) and when it’s done properly, it’s actually quite nice. It lends personality to your enterprise and makes it more interesting.
While that’s a valid opinion, you’re kind of in a minority. Then again, regularly active tweeters are a minority group too.
The most successful “brand” Twitter accounts are a blend of business and personal.
@zappos, @garrettpopcorn, et al…
It goes back to engagement and preference. I follow neither @zappos or @garrettpopcorn but I’ve got to respect their success.
Practically spam levels of tweeting is very annoying and it often comes from people who know better – I don’t want to look at twitter after a few hours away and have it filled with 100s of re-tweets and messages from the same person.
A few webbys I’ve unfollowed because of this!
Man, I have needed a guide like this for a long time. Now I think it would be interested to see what people think of Ashley Morgons Genius Rocket scheme for twitter. Anyone here actually tried/used it?
http://www.upstartblogger.com/genesis-rocket/
Chris, I enjoy your tweets a lot. After reading this post I think you really apply what you preach. This is actually some really valuable input and it’s probably going to change how I will approach Twitter use with some of my “clients”.
Great article Chris. I have been thinking some of the same things. Thanks for putting this together.
Thanks for this post. I’ve never really jumped on the twitter bandwagon yet… never really felt a need to use it. But I like how you use tweetie. I think many businesses don’t know how to effectively monitor tweets about their industry/product.
tweetdeck seems like an effective PC alternative to tweetie, btw.
Also, is it bad taste to follow competitors on twitter? I suppose they have an option to deny the follow request, right?
Good article, all valid points. Exactly what I advise my clients when they’re starting up in social networking.
I use tweetdeck and I’m on a mac. I’ll have to go check out tweetie. :)
It was a pleasure to read, thanks!
Twitter is something that I’ve just not been interested in engaging. Honestly speaking this article kind of makes me want to get on and at least get registered and explore a little.
So yeah, well done :)
Just as a side note, I see that under the “How do you lose followers?” section, the word “them” is misspelled: “…Unfollow thetm”
Great article Chris! I think it’s important for businesses to involved in all aspects of social media.
Love the article! It’s brilliant.. I agree with you: as designers it’s our duty to walk our clients through, educate them, and “rescue” them from the old and static 1.0 world.
Twitter is massive, and it’d be a shame not to use it.
Cheers
I think the best followers come naturally, as your site and brand become more well known people will naturally start to follow you if you have interesting tweets as well.
great article Chris, i will make it essential reading for my “we want to be on twitter” clients :)
Hey Chris.
Just FYI, based on Twitter’s Terms of Service, no one can sell a username: https://twitter.com/tos. Just thought I’d clear that up in case you didn’t know that. I’m sure people are doing, this is the internet after all. Alright well I just thought I’d let you know. Thanks for all your great information and relevant content.
I loved your last three screencasts, btw.
Awesome. I expected to be getting questions about Twitter in the future from clients and this is great info for clarifying and explaining the practicality.
very well put Chris. Thanks for sharing
Nice article again. I just love the subtle South Park joke you used :).
Hehe, that was the first thing I noticed too
Love it too. Soooo funny. :D
Somewhat twittelated/related: video screencast #19 is not working-I tried downloading high quality-ends about 3 minutes in- and then tried streaming in browser-neither worked-thanks.
Helpful article. Actually I came across it through through a tweet. I am new to this stuff and one of my clients was actually interested in this Twitter stuff. Now I have something to explain to him. Thanks.
I think you hit the nail on the head as far as educating the client goes. Too many people think that Twitter is the end all be all now for businesses online. This is so far from the truth it’s not even funny. I mean think about this: Twitter itself has still ye to make any money. Twitter is about community, not selling or making money. Lot of people don’t seem to understand that.
I think Twitter is great! I go on it most days really just to keep up with friends but also to help out people in the web design field, you make a lot of good relationships and get loads of fantastic help back.
I usually only post 1/2 things a day if that and I agree it has to used wisely to be effective, im going to start using it a bit more to try and promote the company i work for and also my own freelance work.
I think Twitter is a waste of time, people will get tied of it, so I see it fizzing out within a couple of years. This is my personal view of course and knowing my luck it will only get stronger and prove me wrong.
I can’t believe no one has commented on choice of profit imagery. She is FINE…
I think Twitter is a great tool, if used properly. None of us like the spammers, and unfortunately in the quest for followers we sometimes forget quality over quantity… if we’re tweeting to a bunch of people who don’t care, what’s the use? Well, there are some limited uses, but not what we want.
I agree that following interesting people and engaging is important, and then waiting for the process to grow with your engaging tweet work and organically can yield the best results.
Great guide to follow with the clients) Thank you Chris!
Excellent points which remind me that it all comes back to content. No one likes spam, or shouting… you really have to think about the core objectives of your business or agenda and respect your audience first and foremost.
Thanks!
vice nice and very useful information, thanks for share…
and i m also subscribe for future… articles.. or post…
Enjoyed your article. Twitter is all about followers, but stay away from the follow farms, and don’t automatically follow back someone who follows you. Pick your followers carefully. What’s 10,000 followers that don’t care about what you have to say!?
“When you tweet, if that message starts with @somebody, nobody will see that tweet except you, them, and anybody else that follows you that also follows them”
that’s incorrect, I went to your page for example and I see “@rfelix That sounds amazing”
The account that I’m logged in with does not follow rfelix nor you.
It doesn’t show up in YOUR stream. It does show up on MY twitter homepages though, yes. As you actually use twitter, your stream is what you actually read and what matters.