Tweeting 101 | Social Media Optimization | Six Pony Hitch

11/08 Tweeting 101

We were talking with our good friend, Andy Commons the other day and the subject of Twitter came up.  The subject of Twitter, actually, comes up quite a bit in lots of conversations that we have with people.  “Why should I tweet?” people ask.  “I have no idea what to tweet about.”  Here’s Andy’s take on it.  He says that he thinks of Twitter as his personal news source.  So, for example, if I’m totally into knitting (which I hope one day to be) but I don’t have hours to spend cruising the web for the best knitting sites, I can find the person on Twitter who does the cruising and follow him or her.  Say that person is Jim the Knitting Man.  Then I can just pick and choose the things that Jim the Knitting Man finds and likes and save loads of time and energy while still getting all the info that I crave.

So how does that translate back to people who are wondering whether or not they should tweet?  In the land of business, it makes sense to position yourself as the expert in your field.  If you own a knitting shop, make yourself the equivalent of Jim the Knitting Man.  Find a following of people who truly want to know what is going on in the knitting community, or what the best new yarns are for 2011, or who just came up with a pattern for knitting a hockey jersey.  Whatever.  Then you can sprinkle in a few things about your own store.  Are you having a sale on Friday?  By all means, tweet about it.  It won’t seem disingenuous if you already have a great reputation for giving super valuable general information most of the time.  The trouble occurs when businesses only tweet about things relevant to them.  If all your knitting shop did was tweet about your sales and events, it might get old.  There are, of course, exceptions.  Businesses that have almost a cult following are expected to tweet about themselves.  An ice cream shop here in Missoula has built quite a sub-business with its traveling truck simply by only announcing the day’s location on Twitter. 

Still, not everyone is a celebrity or has an automatic following.  For most business owners, the answer is to find our niche, the thing we are passionate about and become the experts at it. Pick a topic.  But if it’s a broad topic, then figure out how to make it more specific.  Twitter is just like any form of communication you have for your business - you’re looking for what makes you different.  So, don’t just pick knitting, pick knitting odd things like hockey jerseys and beer koozies.  Once you get recognized for a small niche, it’s much easier to build out your brand.  And once you pick this niche, stay on topic.  If our little knitting shop suddenly starts tweeting about nuclear proliferation, I’m going to get confused and maybe even a little angry. 

Finally, remember the “social” in “social media.”  People are looking to connect on Twitter.  They want friendly interactions and they want to feel like they can relate to the person or business that they are following.  Let your personality shine through.

On a practical level, try and schedule time each week to keep up with your tweeting.  Give yourself an hour a day to stay on top of your niche and then to send out tweets about it.  The biggest rule of thumb for Twitter?  Keep doing it.  Practice makes perfect.

• Posted by Spider McKnight
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