Marketing Monday: Twitter

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So a few months ago I posted on Facebook that I was thinking of starting these posts, for those who missed it and don’t know my professional background but want to be sure I’m qualified, I spent 15 years working in Marketing and worked up about as high as you can go on the corporate marketing ladder. I have a Post Grad Diploma in Marketing, and while I was working I was a member of all the relevant professional bodies. In the last five or so years of my career I specialised in Digital Marketing, taking time out in an SEO agency to learn the tech side of things, I then worked self-employed as a consultant which only ended when my Bipolar decided to have a really bad turn three years ago.

So, I thought, why not share some of my marketing knowledge with you guys, it will help the bloggers and authors who read my blog and hopefully give you some ideas on how to do things on a more professional level. Now how I suggest to do things isn’t the only way, and other marketers will certainly tell you differently, but these are the ways I’ve found that work when I’ve been working on campaigns. I’m a strong believer in not paying for advertising, or to boost posts and things like that. I believe that good old fashioned hard work pays off.

So today I’m going to start with Twitter, because so many people use it and I see so many people make small mistakes which could cost them. Plus it is my favourite social media platform so why not start there!

Twitter started in 2006, I set up my first account in 2008, it was a pretty quiet place back then and people were still getting used to how to use it. Over the next few years people realised it could be used for commercial gain using hashtags and twitter chats and the platform started to BOOM! So here are some top tips for you as a new and existing user.

  • When you set up your account think about how you want to be seen, consider your brand and incorporate that into what you are calling yourself. Whether you are a blogger or an author your brand is really important and your twitter handle is a permanent reflection of that brand.
  • Your picture should also be a reflection of your brand, either a nice personal image (I will be doing a post about author images in the future) or your blog logo. Remember the image represents your brand and what you are putting out into the world, don’t let it be shoddy.
  • Be natural in your tweets, try to show your own personality, I know it’s not easy in 140 characters, but being yourself is key on Twitter. Letting people know the person behind the brand is what will unlock their interest.
  • Work out which hashtags are most appropriate to you and be sure to use them, you don’t have to use every single hashtag on the planet, just use a few which are appropriate and be consistent.
  • Tweet every day, a few times each day if possible, Twitter moves fast, 10 minutes after you tweet, what you’ve said is gone, lost in a sea of tweets. Unless somebody actually goes through your timeline on purpose to see what you have been saying it’s lost forever.
  • Use lists! Lists are a great way to pull your favourite accounts together so that you don’t miss anything. You can make them private if you want so that nobody knows you have a list for “Hot Bods” but it just means that when you are following a few thousand people you can pull out those accounts you don’t want to miss and keep track of them.
  • Share links to what you consider useful content, other books/blogs, as well as your own. People appreciate the shares and your followers will appreciate the variety. But don’t feel you have to spend all day every day doing this. We are all busy people so if you only have time to do this occasionally it’s not the end of the world and nobody is going to judge you for it.
  • You can search for people that might be interested in your blog/book and that engage in conversation with them. My reminder when you do anything like this is to get involved in conversations and ensure you are part of things. Talking at someone is probably not going to get you very far.
  • Look out for people who share your blog posts/mention your book and build on that, get in touch with that person and cultivate a relationship. You never know what can come from getting to know someone who has shared some of your content. Always remember that it’s good to talk.
  • Try to ensure you find ways to engage with your audience, whether you have 100 followers or 10,000 you want to keep them interested so try and make sure you remember your voice (going back to the beginning of this list) and you keep giving them interesting tweets to respond to.
  • Use a tool like Hootsuite to help you manage your promotional tweets. This will help you with scheduling your tweets so that the promotional tweets go out at regular intervals and you aren’t sending them out 5 minutes apart. I saw an author send out 10 promos for their book 5 mins apart recently, my timeline was flooded which was super annoying and with a tool could have been easily avoided.
  • Finally, there are lots of really good tools which will make Twitter use easier for you, YAY! A lot of them will offer to send out a Direct Message (DM) automatically when someone new follows you. No, Just Say No! These Auto-DM’s are the work of the Devil! They are annoying, intrusive and some of them require the recipient to action something before they are allowed to follow the person they want to follow. My rule of thumb is if I receive one I automatically unfollow the person it came from, and I know from numerous discussions I have had both on and offline I am not alone. So if you have these set up TURN THEM OFF and if you don’t, don’t go there!

I hope you found this useful, let me know your thoughts, ideas etc, is there an area of your marketing you want help with, let me know and I will try and make sure it’s worked into one of the future posts.

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