Lee Stacey - Musician / Geek / Thinker
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November 30, 2009

How To Get Retweeted

One of the best ways to improve your reach these days is by way of a retweet but with so much social media noise and so little meaningful signal, how do you make that happen?

Make It Interesting

Nobody is going to retweet a post about you doing the ironing because that's just not interesting.  Not that it's a bad thing to tweet about the mundane things in life, it isn't because the mundane things in life help your followers relate to you on a personal level but it's just not going to wow anyone.  However, if you can turn that tweet into something funny or interesting (with a creative mind anything is possible) people might feel like passing it on.  If one person passes it on there's a good chance others will.

People Like Funny

Funny is good.  If you find something funny, people like you will probably find it funny too.  If you're not just a follow whore it's likely that a good percentage of your followers are into the kind of things you're into.  People also like seeing other people make fools of themselves so if you do something really silly and tell other people about it, it's a win!  Tweet something that makes you look like a complete idiot, if it's crazy enough it will fly.

Newness Is Goodness

Breaking news is always good.  If you can give people compelling or interesting news before anyone else does, your value to them will be enormous.  Again, if it interests you it will interest people like you so throw that stuff out there!  This isn't always easy because there's a chance that those people like yourselves will get that news pretty quick anyway so you've really got to have a good nose for these things and the ability to think and react quickly.

Retweet A Retweet

Something that has already been retweeted is probably good to retweet.  If it's been retweeted already that means someone has already found it interesting.  Also, if a tweet has "RT" in it twice, the eye of the reader is instantly drawn because it MUST be interesting.  Those two letters "RT" are like a knife that cuts through the social media noise.

Make It Easy

If your tweet is 140 characters in length it will need to be edited down in order to be retweeted.  This means that the retweet will either look a complete mess made up of horrid nuspk abbreviations or it just won't be retweeted because the retweetist can't be bothered to edit before sending.  As a general rule of thumb I always make sure I leave 20 characters free on every tweet I think is worthy of a retweet.

Please RT

If something is genuinely for the greater good then don't be afraid to put "(Please RT)" at the end of your tweet.  Of course, if it's just self promotion or you're selling something it won't work and may even annoy people... Especially if you do it all the time!  When used wisely and carefully this is a useful tool.

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Filed under  //   funny   interesting   noise   reach   retweet   retweeting   retweetist   signal   social media   tweet   twitter  

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November 20, 2009

Marketing On Twitter... So Many Still Getting It Wrong

So you've got a business, you're on Twitter and you're auto adding people based on keyword searches in the hope that they will follow back.  Some do, some don't.  When they follow back you hit their DM inbox with a link to your product/service and you can tweet all day about your awesome things, right into their stream.  Perfect, right?

WRONG

Sure it's very low cost and due to low cost if it only works occasionally that's fine and dandy but you could and should be doing much better.  I'll ask you one simple question: What happens to spam if it ends up in your inbox?  You delete it, am I right?  I know I'm right.  The same thing happens with tweets but users are also blocking these days and enough bocks can lead to exclusion from search and in some cases an account suspension.  Great plan.  How's that working out for you?

So what's the right way?

Successful marketing is about communication so that's what you have to do.  Keyword searching is still a good place to start and with tools like Twitterfall you can even refine your search to a geographic location.  So let's say you fix thingies in London and you've set up a search that will highlight people with broken thingies in the London area, that's a perfect start but what next?  Simple, when someone in London has a broken thingy you can respond by letting them know who you are and how you can help.  It's always good to strike up a little bit of a conversation and show that a) you're human and b) that you have the knowledge to help them out.  Once you've done that they will probably ask you for more details on your service.  That's the trick, making them ask you!

So you've made a new customer and they are happy with what you've done.  They will probably now follow you on Twitter and because you made them happy they are going to tell other people.  By engaging with that person you have just extended your potential reach to everyone they know too.

Building a fanbase

So you're getting followers and making new business left right and centre.  Good work but you can still do more and expand further on this.  Now that you're building a fanbase you can start publishing information to your feed that they will find useful and informative...  No, I don't mean spamming them with links to your products but you can inform them of any special offers and/or promotions and depending on your demographic link them to things they will want to see or read.  Now would also be a good time to start a blog if you don't have one.  If you're a local business, people like to know how and what you're doing.  If you're investing into their community or taking part in something fun in the area, that's exactly the sort of thing they will want to read about.  Publishing your blog posts (once is usually enough) to your Twitter feed keeps them in touch with you on a more personal level.

Blogging is easy these days and with sites like Posterous (what I'm using right now) it's as simple as sending an email.

Just the basics

Those are just a few basic tips on how to push your business or service on Twitter but there is still more that you can do but that all comes down to your own entrepreneurial spirit and creative mind.  There are many more social media tools out there that can help you out and Twitter is a good place to be looking for them.  The most important part (and I've said this so many times before) is engagement.  Make friends with people and talk to them!  One human being to another... Just like we used to do but digitally.

Of course there are automation tools out there that can make your life easier but you're talking to human beings (mostly) and they like to know that you are one too.  If your information stream is purely robotic people will soon lose interest.

If you're looking into promoting your business on Twitter, I hope this information is of some use to me.  Feel free to comment on the post or shout at me on Twitter ( @LStacey ), I'm always happy to help if there's anything you don't quite understand or if you're struggling to make it work.

Happy Tweeting!

Lee Stacey

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Filed under  //   blog   blogging   business   engage   engagement   fanbase   lee stacey   lstacey   marketing   posterous   pr   promote   promotion   spam   tweet   tweeting   twitter   twitterfall  

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January 14, 2009

Actually You're Probably All Wrong

You should use twitter this way if you plan to do this...

As the title suggests, you are all probably wrong.  Twitter is far too new and not far enough into its evolutionary process for us to know how we should be using it as a business tool.  There are lots of these so called "social media consultants" in the twitterverse and blogosphere telling us how we should be using Twitter to get results and improve our brand identity...  Or Whatever...  What a pile of utter balls.

Twitter is on the verge of going mainstream.  When that happens (and it will happen really fast) the entire dynamic of the application and its global community will change.  I don't know how it will change and I don't believe you do either.  Please correct me if you have a crystal ball.

If you follow my twitter stream (thanks by the way) you will have noticed me harping on about follower counts lately and the fact that the number of followers is unimportant if they don't genuinely have an interest in what you're tweeting about.  This is all part and parcel of the same thing.  I'm seeing a lot of relatively new tweeters out there with ridiculous UFF ratios (updates to Followers to Following) indicating the use of what I call the followback method.  A method popular with spammers where you follow lots and lots of people and hope some will follow you back.  A lot of people are using auto follows so they are guaranteed easy meat.  You can rack up thousands in days using this tactic...  Not for much longer though.  I think people are getting wise to this now, probably because they are getting spammed into oblivion.  Eventually it will just be spammers following other spammers.  Well, we can hope I guess.

It wouldn't be right to leave you mulling this over without telling you how I use Twitter and what I get out of it.  I'm not suggesting that this is how you should use it.  I am not a "social media consultant" nor do I profess to be.

How do I go about getting followers?

I don't go out of my way to.  I don't employ any tactics.  My followers are mostly people that have found me through my content or conversation.  Sure, there are a few rogues in there but they don't hang around long.  I don't have a massive follower count but I know most of them are valuable because they are following me for what I consider to be the right reason.  My follower count is growing slowly, organically and with high value.  I like it that way.

Who do I follow?

I follow various types of people who use twitter in many different ways.  I generally follow people that interest me.  That's all really.  I tend not to follow anyone that doesn't engage unless their stream is really interesting.  I like conversation.  For me it is a huge part of what Twitter is.  More often than not I'll follow you if we get a good chat going too.  I like making friends!

Do I follow back those who follow me?

I quite often do actually but I always try to look at the profile of a new follower.  If they look spammy I don't follow back.  The first thing I generally look for is @ replies.  If there aren't any on their profile I don't consider them very social and generally won't bother.  I also look at the UFF ratio.  If they are using the followback technique, forget it!

What annoys me most on Twitter?

I hate automated DM's when you follow someone.  To me it just says "Thanks for joining my spam list, I can't be bothered to talk to you in person.  You're just a number to me".  If it spams me with a link it REALLY gets my back up.  Saying that, I always give a second chance and usually DM back to see if there's really a human there at all and if there is will they engage and win me back?  Sometimes they come back to me and save themselves.  Those that don't get binned.

So there you go.  That's pretty much Twitter and I in a nutshell.  I have nothing to sell so no agressive techniques here.  However, if I were selling something I have a feeling that could work for me too because I would have people following me that want to buy my stuff...  Something like that anyway...

Sorry about the composition and terrible construction of this post.  I have no concentration tonight whatsoever and as it is not a professional blog it doesn't matter that much so I won't lose any sleep over it.  If by some kind of miracle you got this far, thank you for reading it!  I hope it is in some way useful to you.

Comments as always are welcome and encouraged!

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Filed under  //   consultant   engage   followers   growth   human   lee stacey   ratio   social media   techforce   tweet   twitter   UFF  

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