So what can you use Twitter for
30th January, 2011
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I have dozens of things I should be doing other than writing this piece on my Blog – But I’ve already said that 2011 is going to be about making Social Media more of a community driven experience and I want to put that into action.
With that in mind I have been trying to expand the numbers of follow on Twitter I have and have some interesting observations to report. So I’ll start with these and then go on to what exactly you could be using Twitter for.
- I have now noticed that within specific areas we all follow each other, working for a lawyer audience I found the same old law companies all following the same old law companies. The same was true in the Garden Centre world and for my own Tweeting the same is true for the Social Media and Web Design world’s. In every industry there seems to be a hard core of Twitterers who have followed everyone they can.
- I have noticed enormous growth… I was cleaning up a clients Twitter email box and they had some very old ‘follow’ messages – these are the messages Twitter sends out when someone starts to follow you. I noticed many had stats like, 8 people following and 27 followers (low numbers), but when revisited most had 1000’s of followers and were following even more. Thee lesson here is that with work you really can get to thousands of followers. It’s totally doable.
- I had thought that it is important to limit the people you follow because you should really read what they are saying! – But this seems irrelevant, who reads anyone’s tweets? 99% of Tweets were useless. it’s not the point. The point of Tweeting is to show people you’re alive an well and that is about it.
I had tried to avoid following people who send out dozens of tweets per hour, but that too is pointless, because if I dilute and follow A LOT of people then it does not matter how many tweets people send, they will be spread out.
- The rise of the Retweet – this is where you repeat someone else’s tweets to share it with your followers. It’s lazy and in less than a click you’ve done it… But this is what makes it so powerful and it’s how the ideas get to the forefront in Twitter. I’ll see links to the same item maybe 20 times (and I’m only following 200 people?) – What this means is Twitter is actually more stagnant than we might think. It’s not about how you had a coffee by the machine this morning, but more about sharing something that may be interesting. Now imaging if that ReTweet was actually yours, that would make you proud.
These are just a few of the clear patterns I have seen develop – there are probably many more, but hopefully you as readers will point them out to me as we go along.
So what can Twitter be used for? You need a purpose as with all these services… you need an idea and strategy. I had hoped to use Twitter for customer service and to let people know what I was working on and doing at any given time. But my Tweets have digressed. I now tweet anything that I find interesting, I mix personal with business and ReTweet lots as well. I have in the back of my mind, you my clients, but general my friends haven’t taken up Twitter because my Facebook is bad enough.
- Customer Service – because you can share your Tweets on Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo and every other social media system know to mankind, in theory if you just allow your customers to follow you (ignore and block the rest) and you follow only things that interest your customers you should be onto a winning solution here Twitter is perfect; you might want to post Service Status updates, welcome a new person to a Chalet, announce a new telephone number, update all customers with your location. It couldn’t be better. BUT beware of expanding outside this role.
- News Service – Twitter makes a brilliant news service – there are so clear two type of Twitters out there, people (small businesses mostly advocating social media) and Business and in particular News. It seems every journalist in the land is onto Twitter… So set up your Twitter to follow the Guardian Sports column and the Foreign Office Afghanistan Magazine and you’ll be totally up to date in 140 characters. The main advantage here is that Twitter is without a doubt the most customisable news service you’ll have read, without the adverts.
- Expansion – you could just go for it and get numbers – follow everyone you can be followed by all and sundry, there will be a point of critical mass where your followers just expand. No one is reading anything of course… but you have to pump out information constantly… What’s the advantage – no-one is really sure it – I’ve seen small website designers with 30,000 followers, does it mean there producing 1000 websites per year – probably not… but maybe one day they’ll find a way to make use of all those people.
- Authoritative – become a publisher and reach your audience – the aim of the aim is numbers again, but supported with real content this time… this is probably the most difficult of all uses for Twitter, you’re trying to become the Stephen Fry of your industry and you’re trying to be influential within industry. Whew… what will that mean for your sales?
Finally, I’ll finish on a note about DMs (Direct Message) – as I have expanded my own use of Twitter to be a sort of mix of 1 & 2 above, we should treat DMs liek email – I hardly ever get a DM, it seems while large publishers are willing to pump out loads of content, if I interact with them the response is virtually zero.
However, this should be where all the action takes place. If my webhosting goes down, why can’t I send a support request via Twitter and get a response… can’t be that hard can it? OK – so the space to watch in my opinion is DM’s people have to work out how use them in a productive way.
Comments and opinions welcome, I know I’m missing things here.