I am repeatedly asked by friends, family, and colleagues about the proliferation of social networking tools (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.) I admit – I am a fan since working at Prodigy.com in the 1990’s and encourage folks to open their minds and try. A simple conversational explanation of the value of these interactive tools is challenging. Possibly I do not provide the best rationalization of the benefits – it always ends-up in the same place… just sign-up and try it – it’s free.
If you go to the Wikipedia explanation of Twitter you will read all about the nuts and bolts of Twitter. Another social networking, micro-blogging, text messaging tool to communicate with others. All of this is right-on, yet unfortunately many folks still don’t “get it,” nor does it answer the real value-based questions about Twitter. More importantly, many folks that actually take the time to sign-up for Twitter don’t spend the time using it to realize the full value. This challenge is faced by many interactive social and community tools.
- Who is really using Twitter?
Just like all interactive social communities – they start small and, if successful, they hit points of real growth. The active Twitter community at the end of 2008 is moderate (estimated five million users,) yet growing rapidly.
Below are some statistics outlined in this Q4 2008 linkable PDF report on the State of the Twittersphere
- Primarily a new audience of users as the majority (70%) joined in 2008
- 35% of users have 10 or fewer followers (average amount of followers is 70)
- Estimated user base is 4-5 million with 30% not engaged
- Roughly 5-10k new accounts per day
- Most active time is during the work week (especially Wed/Thurs) with a 30% decrease in activity during the weekends
- What value does Twitter provide ME or MY Company?
Given the sheer growth and SEO external link value, Twitter provides a timely way for folks to directly communicate (and disseminate messages virally) with an interested audience. In other words, a great way to stay in touch with key individuals around meaningful topics. It’s the “push concept” from individuals that you value and want to learn about new things from.
Unfortunately, with the good there is noise – and I find this on Twitter. Some folks like to use Twitter to update everyone on less than meaningful information (“I spilled coffee on my shirt today,” or “I am tired today.”) These less than interesting posts are not the intention of Twitter, yet exist. You will find your engagement levels increase when posting topics and concepts that thought-provoke your Twitter followers. My humble suggestion is to focus on that.
Sign-up, personalize your account with your picture/background color, and use the Twitter tools to find folks to follow. They provide an easy way to check your AOL, Yahoo, Gmail, and Hotmail/MSN contacts to see if they have Twitter accounts to follow. My suggestion is to keep company and personal accounts separate. Assuming someone is responsible to manage the account, using Twitter to communicate directly with customers is a great way to promote transparency and solve challenges. Better yet, I like the idea of companies listing each employee’s personal Twitter accounts as another way to communicate directly with customers. Its a personal touch that goes a long way (see the Zappos employees)
Once your all setup on Twitter and have folks you are following – join the conversation and post you insights. Resist the urge to post anything ‘boring’ and resist your urge to ‘hold back from posting your inner thoughts’ around interesting insights and breaking news.
- How can I understand and measure the value of Twitter?
Twitter is all about engagement and that is the key metric to improve upon. Following a ‘bazillion’ amount of Twitter users may seem fun at first – being followed is even more exciting, yet these are raw distribution numbers. Focusing on @replies is a measure of true engagement as this is where folks read your posts and have something to say about them. There are many new services that have begun to track metrics on Twitter (Ex. Twitter Grader, Twitter Influence Calculator with the Top 100 Twitter Users, TwitterBuzz, or TwitStat for a cloud view of popular ‘tweets’.) It is also important to analyze the traffic and sales funnel patterns to your websites from Twitter. More specifically, looking at visitors, leads, and resulting conversions.
Some other questions I’ve received:
What is TinyURL?
Many folks include website links in their Twitter posting and since there is a 140 character technical restriction (and some website addresses are VERY long.) TinyURL (or others services like it) is a URL shortening service that converts those long URLs into something short. Also, long URLs are hard to remember and pass along as they sometimes break in email.
Is Twitter on the iPhone?
Yes and No. As of this blog posting there is no single Twitter iPhone application. However, there are many iPhone applications (such as Tweetie, Twinkle, Twitterrific, etc.) that extend your twitter experience to your iPhone.
