Anatomy of Twitter - Establishing Yourself

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Anatomy of aTwitter Account15 steps to optimize your prole

Presented by:

Julio Fernandez ~ @SocialJulioVP Enterprise Search & Social SEOwww.GlobalStrategies.com

www.GlobalStrategies.com

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Presentation to WOMMA.org

• Twitter Basics

• Social Listening

• Identifying Inuencers

• Engaging the Community

• Message Distribution

• Reputation Management

• Action: Optimize your Prole,help Google nd you!


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More than “Geeks”

@aplusk 1,827,199 followers

@BarackObama 1,206,284 followers

@Oprah 1,095,704

@The_Real_Shaq 1,028,347 followers

@NYTimes 898,295 followers

@RickSanchezCNN 90,088 followers

@2DrinksBehind, 3,834 followers

Users

• 4 to 5 million users (Nov. 2008) Current estimates: 31 million

• After the “Oprah effect”, 43% lift. 17 million users (May 2009)

• 5 to 10 thousand new accounts per day

• Average number of followers is 70

• 35% of Twitter users have 10 or fewer followers

• 9% of Twitter users follow no one at all

• Top users tend to have more followers than the number of people they follow

• Bottom users tend to follow more people than follow them

• 0.6% of all Twitter users have more than 1,000 followers

Twitter Basics

SOURCE: Twitter & HubSpot TwitterGrader, which has information on over500,000 Twitter proles.


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Prole

• 80% added a bio to their prole

• 63% have uploaded a photo to their prole

Top 5 “locations”

• London, USA, San Francisco, New York, Chicago

Tweet Stats

• 30% decrease in activity over the weekend.

• Wed & Thur are the most popular days of the week to Tweet

• Trafc to Twitter.com has grown over 800% in the past 12 months (Compete.com)Does not include phones or Twitter clients.

• After the Oprah's show, Hitwise reported a 43 percent spike over the previous Friday.Though much of that critical mass could be attributed to Ashton Kutcher’s and CNN’spublicity stunt race to a million followers, 37 percent of visitors to Twitter were new onFriday.

SOURCE: Twitter, Hitwise &HubSpot Twitter Grader, whichhas information on over 500,000Twitter proles.

Twitter Basics


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Hudson River Twitter photo


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http://search.twitter.com

• Real time feed about your brand and related topics

• Track keywords related to your brand

• Understand how the community talks about you orcompetitors

• Identify trends ofpositive or negativeconversation early

• Understand thelanguage and tonethe community uses

Twitter ~ Social Listening


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http://twithority.com

Search by “Rank”


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Twitter “keyword cloud”

http://tweetcloud.com


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Wefollow Directory

http://wefollow.com


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• Identify individuals talking about your brand or related topics

• Determine their authority

• ReTweets?

• # of followers?

• Are they afliated with other channels – a blog linkedfrom their prole, for example?

• Engage the user if possible on the conversations they initiateor participate in

• Develop credibility to raise the odds that inuencers will helpspread your message

Twitter ~ Identifying Inuencers


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• Engage in conversations that you identify as related toyour brand or product

• Answer questions that you see if you are able to

• If you need to nd the answer, let them know you heard thequestion and will go nd the answer

• Make statements of agreement when community membersmake a good point

• Allow personality into your accounts

• Let the other users know that it’s a real person

• Effective to allow some personality messaging alongsidebrand / product-driven messaging

Twitter ~ Engage the Community


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• Once you have people “following” your Twitter account,they can help you distribute your messages

• Cross post from other publishing channels

• Announce blog posts

• Announce new videos

• Announce news articles, etc.

• Other users can “ReTweet” and pass along content into theirsocial networks – this expands the “reach” of the message

• The more often you present valuable content, the moreoften your users will push your messages out further

Twitter ~ Message Distribution


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• Identify threats to your brand

• Respond quickly

• Engage with respect

• Provide information

• Establish what the account owner should /shouldn’t respond to

• Establish a chain of command if the accountowner is unsure of response strategy

Twitter ~ Reputation Management


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• Be a user – a member of the community,not an exploiter

• To attract worthwhile followers you mustprovide value

• Quality over quantity (though quantity isnice & will help you with some tools)

• Followers who value your engagement willbe your advocates within Twitter

Twitter ~ Must Proved Value


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Brands & People!


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Brands & People!


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Brands & People!


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Brands & People!


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Brands & People!


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Anatomy of@Ford

Twitter Account


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Learn from @Ford


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Twitter Account Optimization

1. Twitter Handle

Optimize your user name• Related to brand / product

• Short, easy to read

• Avoid underscores ( _ ) and numbers

• Understand what happens if you change your handle


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2. Prole Photo

Choose a good photo• Preferably a picture of

a person, perhaps with alogo superimposed over the corner

• If there are multiple branded accounts, link them by usingsame logo, border design, and / or photo style for each

• If the picture is just a corporate logo it is too impersonaland gives no information about the personality manning theaccount – Twitter is a social tool


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3. NameName, different than youruser name• This is the actual name of the

person using the account

• You can make the handle abranded or product name and use the person’srst and last name here

• Use full name with spaces; add corporate info or job title

• Google indexes this information


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4. Location

Don’t leave it blank• Use a city or something else

relevant if you can

• Integrates with Brightkite.comand other services toautomatically change location as you travel


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5. Website

Link to your site• You should link to your Web

site, or to a specic pagerelated to the objectives ofthis account

• Use a personalized tracking URL (http://cli.gs or http://bit.ly)to track the number of clicks from your Twitter bio

6. Bio

• Use all the space to describe the person, their position, aswell as the brand / product / organization


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7. Following

You must interact with people• Search for people using your

keywords and follow them

• Don’t auto-follow – you mayend up following spam accounts

• Don’t auto-reply – anything too generic or automated willreduce your authority and you’ll lose followers

• Welcome followers if you have the time


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8. Followers# of followers is not equalto authority• Authority and trust are not

related to the number offollowers you have

• Offer value to your followers through your messages

• Valuable messages will be pushed out further into thecommunity through “ReTweets”

• Participate in ongoing conversations


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9. Updates

Send out regular updates• At least 3 posts per week is a

good minimum, offerinformation regularly

• Correct frequency dependson the account, your goals, your target audience, and theinformation you’re sharing

• It’s OK to Tweet more at rst – you need to practicemessaging in 140 characters, and users will see you’ve beenusing the tool on your prole


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10. Favorites

“Favorite” the things you like• You can “favorite” a Tweet that

you like by clicking on the outlineof a star next to the message

• Easy way to archive messagesto nd later

• Other users can see what your marked – good way to letothers know what this account is all about, by “favoriting”messages related to your brand, product, & social goals


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11. Actions / Direct Messages / Block

A “DM” is a private message• Direct Messages (DMs) are

private messages fromone user to another

• DMs do not go into thepublic cloud

• To send a DM, the user has to follow you

• Users can also “Block” one another, then they cannotfollow or DM your account


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12. BackgroundOptimize the screenbehind your prole• You can upload images or have a

designer create a custom imagethat ts the screen area exactly

• Background can have text givingmore information about you /your brand – but it can’t be copied, pasted, clicked-on

• Same way you have a style guide for your Web site, youshould have a style guide for corporate Twitter accounts


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13. AboutInformation aboutthe posted message• When the message was posted

• Twitter is a global tool, rememberthat your AM is someone else’s PM

• A permanent URL to link tothe specic message

• As Twitter messages stream through time this is the onlyway to link directly and permanently to a message after itpasses through your screen


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14. Twitter Client

How was the message sent• This appears next to

the “About” informationfor each message

• Tells you what tool was usedto send the message, testdifferent tools as they havedifferent features

• Visit http://twitter.com/downloads andhttp://twitter.pbworks.com/Apps


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15. The Message

What you are saying• Optimize with keywords

• Each message should be ableto stand alone and makesense to a new reader todayand in a month.

• Messages should use hash tags (#tag) for relevant internalTwitter searches/trends/themes (http://tagal.us)

• Use personalized tracking URLs (http://cli.gs or http://bit.ly)to see useful metrics


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Next Steps

• Follow @SocialJulioVP Enterprise Search & Social SEO

• Twitter addict for over 2 years

• Visit our Web site: www.GlobalStrategies.com

• Twitter: http://twitter.com/SocialJulio

Thank You!

Julio Fernandez

Documents

Anatomy of Twitter - Establishing Yourself