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.
