Getting Started on Twitter

If you’re ready to check out Twitter as a business tool, here are some tips to get you started.

As with all social media initiatives, remember that transparency is crucial. At this point in the evolution of the Web 2.0 environment, having brands and brand representatives participating in relevant online conversations is both expected and welcome when it’s done correctly.

Find Your Community

A good first step is to start searching for mentions of your brand, products, services, vertical market or even your competitors. See who is consistently talking about topics relevant to your business. You may find reporters, analysts, bloggers, other industry professionals, interested consumers, or no one at all (yet).

Next, start thinking about what kind of communications you want to put out. A business to business brand might want to tweet about industry news, new product developments, research, or just general thoughts and ideas on multiple topics. A B2C brand will want to think about what kind of communications would be interesting to its “followers”, such as tips, links to interesting articles, advice, news, jokes, etc. Whatever your communications strategy is, it should always be valuable to your audience by being informative or entertaining.

Before you start following people on Twitter, post a few tweets so that users can see what you’re about in order to decide whether or not to follow you back.

Take It Slow

Don’t jump right in adding hundreds of follows, or you’ll be pegged as a spammer and Twitter will remove your account. A good rule of thumb is to have at least a 1:3 ratio of followers to follows. Doing so shows that you’re an involved participant, not just an advertiser trying to rack up a high volume of followers so you can blast out your messaging. In addition to posting your own tweets, respond to those posted by others. These conversations have the added benefit of being viewed by many of the users following whomever you are conversing with, possibly resulting in more followers for you.

Give and Take

The real value of Twitter is that the communication goes both ways. Utilizing it as a means to listening is every bit as valuable, and in some cases even more so, than simply utilizing it to send out your own messaging. Set up RSS Feeds to discover, in real time, what is being said about your company, brand, industry or competitors. Follow other leaders in your market to get up-to-the-minute news on your industry that’s already been vetted by people with interests similar to your own.

The ways in which Brands can take advantage of social media outposts like Twitter are diverse and always evolving. Talk to whoever manages your social media program to plan out a Twitter strategy that works for your brand.

Google & Gasoline

If there was any question what the result of Microsoft’s unsuccessful attempt to buy out Yahoo would be, we got the answer this past Thursday. That was when the Inside AdWords blog announced “improvements” to the Quality Score system.

Ostensibly, the major improvement is the introduction of real-time calculation of Quality Score. I don’t see how that really changes anything. Advertisers should be tweaking ad copy, adding negative keywords, managing bids, improving landing pages etc. regardless of the frequency of scoring. If you’re properly maintaining a campaign, this doesn’t affect you.

Tangent: Of course, having the proper tools for improving quality would be nice. I’m looking your way, Search Query Performance report. The theory behind it is great, a report showing all the search queries that triggered your ad. The problem is that it only shows you what works, the queries that resulted in clicks (so you can add them to your keyword list and spend more money). Even then, most of those get lumped into “487 other unique queries.” Thanks for narrowing that down. Anyway, they don’t tell you what queries didn’t get clicks, which would be really helpful in adding negative keywords.

Google super-awesome change #2 is where the real intent of their “improvements” starts to become more apparent. “Keywords no longer marked ‘inactive for search.’” Oops, someone clued Google in to the fact that no matter how bad an ad is, they can still charge for it if someone clicks on it. Plus, advertisers have to pay more when there’s more competition. Unfortunately, this is just common sense, so it was bound to happen eventually. Google really gets flagrant with the last one, though.

#3: “‘First page bid’ will replace ‘minimum bid.’” There are a couple goodies when you dig into the FAQs about this change. There IS still a minimum bid requirement, but Google just can’t tell you what it is because it’s calculated on the spot (i.e. real-time Quality Score). More importantly, Google claims that the first page bid is not “expected to make advertisers bid more or to raise prices.” Yeah, and the Chinese gymnasts were all 16 years old.

Raising prices is exactly what this change is meant to do. If an advertiser knows what it will cost to be on the first page, and can afford it, of course they’re going to increase their bids. Then their competitors have to increase bids to maintain position. Further, if you know the minimum, you can bid the minimum. If you don’t know the minimum, you have to bid enough to exceed the minimum.

Of course, if Google wants to raise prices, who’s going to stop them? Yahoo is now partnering with them. MSN is a distant third in volume. New search engines like Cuil have been introduced to a resounding thud. With no real competition, why wouldn’t Google improve their bottom line? Much like gas prices, the cost for advertising on AdWords will rise until it’s too expensive and advertisers find new outlets, or return to traditional media. Besides, I thought titling this blog “Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200” was a little too cliché.

Twitter in the Business World

The social media word of the day:

Twebinar (noun)- A twebinar is a webinar and Twitter mash-up where conversations take place in real-time before, during and after the webinar, on Twitter.

I just finished up my very first Twebinar, the third event of its kind ever created. While the concept isn’t so much innovative (after all, any decent Webinar software has text chatting capabilities), it is inherently social in that Twitter not only facilitates the dialog, but builds peer-to-peer connections as participants follow one another long after the event is over.

Hosted by Chris Brogan of CrossTech Media and David Alston from Radian6, the topic of the Twebinar was “The Importance of Listening”. A lineup of brand managers, PR folks and social media experts discussed the importance of being attentive to brand – and market – chatter on the Web. While these discussions were going on, those of us listening in were furiously tweeting away with questions, answers and comments on the subject.

While it was a tad tricky to pay attention to two screens simultaneously, the overall experience reaffirmed why I love Twitter as a professional communications tool. I was able to cram the thoughts, ideas and opinions of hundreds of my peers on a fascinating topic, like listening to customers online, into my brain in under an hour. Yes, I have a slight headache, but I’m also near giddy with the anticipation of sharing it all with my team.

It’s Social Media – for Adults!

Many people are surprised to hear that Twitter is catching on as a tool for networking and business applications. Since the format lends itself particularly well to B2C brands, it tends to get lumped in with consumer-friendly social media spaces like MySpace and FriendFeed, which can cause B2B brands to shy away. But Twitter definitely has value for business to business professionals as a means to participating in conversations relevant to specific business areas.

To use my area of interest - social media - as an example, I follow several well-known social media gurus on Twitter, along with the social computing analyst at Forrester Research, editors who write about social media, online PR professionals and other industry experts. And they follow me. We all tweet about the latest news, site and application launches, upcoming events and career moves. It’s a fast-paced, cutting edge forum for learning and sharing, and by being a part of it, I become aware of new developments faster, I get to know the big players, and I get to actively participate in industry shaping conversations.

While I realize that the community built around this interest falls into the category of “early adopters” when it comes to using Twitter to network and share ideas, other communities have also been established. Technology-related fields like software development have particularly active communities on Twitter and I predict more professional communities will come together in the future.

Next week I’ll share some tips for professional networking on Twitter. In the meantime, to hear more about the ways in which Twitter can be a valuable tool for business, check out a recent video blog from SEO specialist Pam Abbazia.