Twitter Guide Part #3: Using Twitter Properly
Twitter Technicalities
140 Character Limit / Plain text Only
Twitter updates have a limit of 140 characters. This is to allow them to be easily sent over mobile SMS systems. Twitter has since been coined a ‘micro blogging’ platform due to this reliance on short updates. The updates have to be plain text. You cannot embed HTML or any kind of control codes. The only exception to this rule is links, which I mention below.
Embedding Links into Tweets
Updates must be plain text but the one added bonus that Twitter provides is that it will turn links into hyperlinks. These are no-follow so don’t think you can get backlinks from these! Most links are long and so to keep the tweet size as small as possible Twitter automatically uses the TinyURL service to shorten them. This is automatic - you paste in a full link and Twitter will do the rest.
Starring Your Favourite Tweets
In the picture above I show a snippet from my Twitter page that shows where I have seen somebody else’s update and decided that I would like to save that one. I have blotted out the personal details for privacy reasons. To the right I have circled the star button. Simply click this to mark that update as a favourite. This will be shown on your stats panel to the right of your home page:
Twitetiquette
Image Source: Amazon.com
Yes I just made up that word! This section is about the etiquette of using Twitter. People can stop following you at any time and you will not know about it unless you manually track your followers.
Don’t be Too Noisy
In Part 2 I explained some ways in which you can keep the incoming Twitter noise to a minimum. Turning that around, you need to make sure that you are not one of those noisy people otherwise you’ll find yourself either being ignored or losing followers. Either way, you will no longer be getting your message across.
What is a good number of tweets? There is no absolute number and it varies according to your audience. Generally speaking, I would try not to update more than once per hour so in a standard day, that’s probably no more than a dozen.
Occasionally something interesting might happen that tends to cause many more - like the recent fires in California, but dont tweet all day long about mundane stuff.
Don’t be Too Quiet
Let’s not go to extremes though. Twitter is not a service on which you should lurk. If you want to get followers you have to have something to say, and it needs to provide some kind of value - interesting, entertaining, controversial etc. Basically there has to be a reason why people would want to listen to you.
Remember that your personal profile shows a history of all your tweets so if somebody comes to it and it’s just empty, or you only post a mundane update every day or so, why should they bother following you? Yes this can be difficult to do in the beginning when you don’t have many direct followers but stay tuned to this guide because I will show you how you can get your voice out there without followers!
When To Break all the Rules
The problem with writing guidelines about how active to be is that they are highly subjective. Some people will think that my figures are way too high, and of course others think they are too low. Twitter is a personal communication tool and everybody will have different preferences and tolerances.
Some people are always able to break rules. Robert Scoble breaks all the twitter rules yet he is the most followed Twitter user on the planet! Steve Pavlina breaks all the rules of blogging and brings in over $40k a month from his blog. John Chow just breaks every rule he can find, yet his income just grows and grows.
Like anything else if you are going to change something it’s always best to test it. Note down your followers and then change your Twitter pattern for a week and see if you lost any in that time (minus any new followers you got). If it goes down you did something wrong. Change it and try again. Let your results dictate your actions.
Using Twitter for Marketing
If you are using Twitter to market something, whether that’s a business, a blog, organisation, etc then in addition to the previous guidelines you also need to read this section. This stuff can be the make or break on your Twitter success so pay attention!
The Tao of Twitter by Ed Dale
Ed Dale knows Internet marketing and he knows how Web 2.0 works. He has put together a little video showing what he calls the ‘tao’ of Twitter which is worth watching a few times until it really sinks in.
Twitter is not an IM Client
One of the points that Ed talks about in his video is the danger of using Twitter as an instant messaging system. I would like to show you how somebody did this recently, albeit accidentally. Look at this image (click to expand):
If you read the messages from the bottom up you’ll follow along a conversation between two people. If you have your Twitter updates coming in real time, this is very distracting. In all fairness, you can see by the top tweet that this member noticed his error and corrected it shortly after.
At times you will get caught up in a conversation that requires a personal response. If you need to do this then do it sparingly. Placing the @ symbol in front of somebody’s name indicates that this message is for them. For example, @cmiddlebrook <blah blah>. Some tools will even help you out with this by incorporating intellisense so that once you type the @ symbol it will help you find the username of the Twitter member.
However, here’s the thing - personal tweets are still public! My Twitter client gives me intellisense and highlights personal tweets in a different colour. This makes it easy to forget that it is still public. When you are sending a personal tweet bear in mind that some people who are following you, may not be following the person you are talking to. This means they get only one half of the conversation, and that’s why it can seem so rude.
To offset the problem, if you are going to do this, try to word your tweet in such a way as to allow spectators to have some idea of what you are talking about. That way, they can feel more included in the conversation and it doesn’t seem so rude.
You might also want to try using the direct message system that Twitter provides instead. This allows private messages (still limited to 140 characters) between two Twitter users who are following each other.
Fly on the Wall Conversation
In the tools section of this guide I will show various ways in which you can get other people’s updates from Twitter. Whilst it is possible to get them sent directly to you via email, due to the volume of messages that can generate, most people prefer to use something that is less invasive. For example, I see updates as popup notifications. I’ll also see a little number in brackets (6) that shows me there are six new tweets to see. But I can choose not to read these if I want to.
Most people do not read all the tweets that come in. Many of the people I personally follow are not in the same timezone as me so I miss a lot of their tweets anyway. I usually load up the Twitter home page in the morning and have a quick skim through the nightly activities but I do not feel compelled to actually read them all.
This is how Twitter differs from direct communication methods like email. When somebody sends you an email you feel somehow obligated to respond if it is a personal message. If you are receiving an email from somebody because you are on their ‘list’ then as Ed says in the video, your defenses are up. But when I see people like Ed twittering about his latest Internet marketing products I can choose to completely ignore them if I want to. There’s no pressure.
The True Value of Twitter for Marketing
Of course, another key point is that just seeing Ed’s tweets come up now and then just lets me know that he’s out there, he’s doing something. Sometimes he’s out swimming with his daughters. This shows me that he’s a human too and not just some guy trying to sell me something.
Trust is such an important factor in today’s markets. We hate sales letters, we don’t trust salesmen and marketers. We think most advertisements are full of hype. Twitter allows you to expose the person that you are. It slowly allows you to build trust with your audience and this can have a massive impact further down the line.
This is the very essence of the value of Twitter from a marketing perspective. I’ve touched on these points several times in the guide but I think the repetition is important to really ram home the point. If you are still thinking, What’s the point of Twitter? then I can only assume that you have nothing to market and you are using it purely as a personal toy.
If you have anything at all to market, Twitter helps you build your brand and promote yourself without direct email, without a sales letter, without any kind of sales pitch at all. If you don’t like the hard sell, then start using Twitter!
Don’t Use Twitter Only for Self-Promotion
Of course, there are some people who DO like the hard sell and they will try to use Twitter as another avenue for selling. This is a big mistake folks. The beauty of Twitter is that it is personal, it can be fun and hard sell messages can interrupt the experience and seem incredibly out of place.
Even if you promote yourself in a gentle way, don’t overdo it. You need to intertwine your promotional messages with the rest. Sometimes I click on people’s profiles and all I see is a stream of ‘New Blog Post” tweets. Really, I can get that just from their RSS, their Twitter account becomes pointless.
Remember that even though Twitter is real time, your personal history is saved on your profile. It’s worth looking at it now and then to see how it looks to an outsider. Would you follow yourself?
This post is just one part of the larger Big Juicy Twitter Guide. There is reader discussion post and you might also want to follow Caroline on Twitter.
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