3 Keys To Using Twitter Like A Champ. – The Ryan Holmes Interview
on Apr 16, 2009 - 7:00 AM PSTNo matter how good you think you are at using Twitter to grow your business, I bet you’ll learn something you never knew before from this program.
I recorded it with Ryan Holmes because he’s the Founder and CEO of Invoke Media, the company that created HootSuite. HootSuite is the Twitter tool of choice for power entrepreneurs like Steve Case, tech savvy teams like Google’s enterprise group, and “in crowd” companies like Revision 3.
Instead of pulling some quotes from our interview, I think it’s more helpful to give you this summary of the 3 keys we talked about.
Megaphone
When done right, Twitter can give you a megaphone for spreading your ideas.
Schedule your tweets – Instead of flooding your followers with all your messages at once, use a system that puts your tweets on a schedule and sends them out throughout the day.
Tools: do this on HootSuite or TweetLater.
Have multiple editors – Let your company’s Twitter account truly represent your entire company, by letting multiple people tweet from it. But be sure to protect yourself by not giving your Twitter password to everyone in the company.
Tools: I think HootSuite is the only service for this.
Use RSS to share links – If you want to be known as a leader on a topic, find the top publications in that topic and, using their RSS feed, automatically share their posts with your users. (Make sure to limit the number of tweets that are sent out this way so you don’t flood people.) Guy Kawasaki raved about this feature in his Mixergy interview.
Tools: do this on HootSuite or TwitterFeed.
Microphone
This is like letting the most passionate Twitter users have a microphone so their opinions could be heard.
Monitor your brand – Use search tools to monitor what people say about your company, its products and people. (In this video, I show you one way to do that.)
Tools: Use HootSuite or Search.Twitter.com
Monitor your competition – Listen to your competion’s customers to see what they’re happy with–so you can build it into your product–and what they’re upset about–so you can show them how your product might solve their issue. (Check out how Marcus of UserVoice does that well.)
Tools: Use HootSuite or Search.Twitter.com
Monitor influentials – Ryan told a story about how Zappos’s customers couldn’t come to a Zappos party because the location’s doorman said their shoes didn’t meet the dress code. Because the company pays attention to what’s said on Twitter, when the customers tweeted about the problem–and mentioned that they bought the offending shoes at Zappos’s–the CEO jumped in and addressed the issue. (Listen to Tony of Zappos talk about how he uses Twitter & other social media.)
Tools: Use HootSuite or Search.Twitter.com
Analytics
When you send out links on Twitter, use a link tracking service so you can monitor clicks.
Gauge interest – To see how intersted your tribe is in a specific subject, tweet a link about it and monitor click rates.
Tools: Use HootSuite or Bitly.
Test headlines – Twitter’s 140 character limit is great for sending a headline plus a short link. Try a few styles of headline writing, include a link with each and see how many clicks they get.
Tools: Use HootSuite or Bitly.
Test how viral your message is – It’s common for Twitterers to forward tweets they like. It’s less common for senders to monitor which of their tweets is forwarded most often. Track this and you’ll see which of your ideas are most viral.
Tools: I don’t know of a straight forward way of doing this. Try using this search and replacing my name with yours.
The full program includes:
- More ways to use Twitter to be heard & build a brand.
- Ways to listen in and learn from online conversations.
- What you can do with the data you get from Twitter.
- Andrew’s excitement that this program was live.
Give your feedback:
Your turn. Let Ryan and everyone else who reads this site learn from you. Teach us in the comments what you know about using Twitter to market or build a brand.
Get the full (audio or video) program:
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April 16th, 2009 at 10:50 am
Again – this is awesome, I have just signed up for Hootsuite, i hadnt heard of it until i saw this post and im surprised because its impressive.
April 16th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Thanks Scott.
I do too. I love the way it lets me schedule tweets so I don't have to
be on Twitter all day.
April 16th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
And the analytics will be so useful as well, really looking forward to getting stuck in with it.
Thanks Andrew.
April 16th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
I'm a big fan of the analytics part.
I just tweeted this post using HootSuite so I can see how many people
click to it from Twitter. I'll post the numbers here tomorrow.
April 16th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
Wow, great interview.
I had no idea this was done live. for some reason, im not getting notifications of the live events and my rss feed didnt pick it up
April 16th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
I'm still experimenting with doing the interviews live.
I'm not sure how to get the word out when I'm live.
Maybe I'll setup a twitter account that will let people know when I'm live.
Sorry you missed it. Glad I got a video at least.
April 16th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
ok.
I like the idea that we can ask questions live, so thats cool.
I wanted to ask you, what is your actual intended audience with mixergy where startups are concerned? Is it ALL startups or like one-two man bands? or companies that are like VC funded with 10-20 staff?
the reason im asking because my business partner and i were discussing today, and i was mentioning that its so difficult for me to keep up with the videos because theyre so frequent. Dont get me wrong i love every single one, and i love how good every single one is, but i just get to understand what to do with one video and implement that in our business and we're already onto the next video before i've even begun.
So i was wondering if im maybe beating myself up and i dont need to since they might be aimed at start-ups with a little bit more resource that CAN implement quickly?
I'd be grateful for any clarification. Thank you.
April 16th, 2009 at 7:57 pm
I'm aiming for all startups, as long as they're internet-based.
Don't kill yourself trying to keep up with all the programs. Pick the
ones that are the best match for you.
Meanwhile, I feel like I'm killing myself hustling for new interviews
and doing the research on each one ;-).
April 17th, 2009 at 10:45 am
Great interview (as usual) and outline of the 3 keys.
Twitter definitely represents a unique demographic. While it's getting closer to that tipping point most people don't use it yet. But it does represent unprecedented opportunities in community and communication.
I would add that CoTweet is another service that allows multiple users to tweet through a single account.
Additionally, I like cli.gs for shortening/tracking. They've got a pretty powerful feature set.
Looking forward to the Neil Patel interview today!
April 17th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
I posted a link to this on twitter yesterday. I had 4k followers. I got 80 clicks. Here's the HootSuite graph of my clicks.
http://ow.ly/36M8
April 17th, 2009 at 10:14 pm
I'm still trying to figure out the best way to use Twitter (aside from the ways listed above). So far, it seems like a great promotion tool (if you are lucky enough to have followers) and I LOVE the search.twitter.com – monitoring competitors, clients, brands, etc.
April 20th, 2009 at 11:50 pm
Just today I was talking about burgers at a place called The Counter, and
they tweeted at me. It was cool so I followed them.
Find conversations on search.twitter.com and engage.
May 4th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
What is the name of the tweet tool you were using when you recorded this. I think you said tweetism.com. You said you wish you had shares in this company. I want to check it out, but I can't find them. Thanks in advance.
May 4th, 2009 at 10:26 pm
It's tweetizen.com. I love it.
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