I was lucky enough to be invited to the Sydney round of Twitter Boot Camp last week. The half day 'mini-conference' format explored how businesses in the real world are using Twitter, and how this can be transferred to your organisation. A large number of the attendees admitted they had never used the micro-blogging service before and the speakers did an excellent job of covering the basics whilst providing a strong business case for Twitter engagement. Over the half day we heard many first hand accounts of how brands can navigate in the (almost) uncharted waters of the microblogging service.
Four lessons from the afternoon stood out:
- Social media engagement takes significant effort which must be maintained.
- Different business goals require different approaches - define yours before you start
- Scheduling tweets is a great way to increase your Twitter ROI
- Tools can significantly improve the interaction and measurement of Twitter
Resources RequiredMark Pollard from McCann gave an overview how he first engaged in Twitter, to be used as a guide for those considering joining in the near future. A point that would be reiterated throughout the afternoon: like any other social media you have to commit time to maintaining Twitter. Whilst SEO can be a a bit 'set and go', social media requires constant interaction.
Twitter is a real time medium and as your tweets dry up, so does any benefits from using the services. When asked, RaboPlus's Digital Marketing Manager Tarnya Bahom noted that her small four person marketing team devotes around an hour a day maintaining the @raboplus Twitter profile. Jye Smith noted that this could be significantly higher in his experience at Switched on Media.
The message is: if your business is not prepared to devote resources to Twitter, rethink engaging at all. Despite this caveat, the speakers made a compelling business case for utilising the platform.
Business Goals
Before entering into Twitter you need to develop a clear goal of what you want twitter to do. Andy Jamieson from Switched on Media detailed possible objectives which can drive revenue for a business:
- Brand - consumer sentiment tracking for brand and competitors
- Network - building a network valuable to the organisation
- Traffic - driving visits to websites and stores
- Direct Response - sign up, download or sell
- Awareness - growing mentions and sharing of the message
- Feedback - let people tell you what they think
But Twitter is only part of the suite of tools that can be used to implement your social media strategy. Recent research of the Top 100 brands showed that the companies who were heavily engaged in many forms of social media showed strongest revenue growth. The important factor is how engaging with people will help your business.
Tools
Twitter is unique because of the large number of tools which offer enhancements not available on the Twitter.com. website. Twitter tools can monitor and automate many tasks. However just because you can use a tool doesn't mean you should, and the mix should be specific to what you are trying to achieve.
Some of the favourite tools were:
- CoTweet - A web based twitter client with support for multiple users on the multiple accounts. Features include tweet assigning, scheduling, search and more
- HootSuite - Popular client known for its usability in search, scheduled tweets and integrated ow.ly link shortening. HootSuite has released its 2.0 beta which features stacked and tabbed streams which can then be embedded into any web page.
- TweetDeck - This Adobe Air application is the current leader in Twitter clients. The stacked interface and notifications is well suited to the 'always on' crowd. Saved stacks can also be syncronised to the iPhone application.
Scheduling
A major part of maintaining a successful Twitter presence is ensuring that you reach your target audience. The medium brings with it a number of nuances. Darren Rowse drew from his experience building a 75,000+ Twitter following and was a big fan of scheduling tweets.
Scheduling tweets to suit the peak times allows access to greater audience. The peak times of use for twitter are different depending on market and time zone. However 9-11am and 6-9pm were generally considered the peak times for Australians.
Rowse said a good rule of thumb was leaving least 8 hours apart and to change up your tweets to avoid annoyance whilst increasing the number of people who see your messages. You can schedule tweets using a wide range of programs including CoTweet, HootSuite, PeopleBrowsr and Twuffer.
The next Twitter Boot Camp is running on August 27th in Melbourne - Details here
