Earlier this month, I reviewed who I was following on Twitter and reduced the number by roughly forty percent. In the process, I was shocked by how many talented and accomplished professionals had allowed their tweets to descend into a chronic state of irrelevancy. As an example, the vast majority of tweets from one highly regarded startup CMO were boasts of his accomplishments in an online game. Another senior executive’s Twitter feed was a litany of delight without any detail about how many interesting people he was meeting at various conferences.
Used wisely, a Twitter account can be a powerful tool in one’s professional arsenal. But too many otherwise business-savvy people tweet with little insight into how they appear to those who read those tweets. On the one hand, the guidelines below are merely common sense. But on the other hand, there is clearly significant confusion over how to leverage this social media juggernaut. Too many professionals seem to be following the guidance or behaviors of others without fully understanding what they are actually doing or why. The eight “rules” below provide basic guidance a professional needs to get back on track and to stay relevant.
Keep Full Control of Your Tweets. While the CMO in my introduction is an extreme example, hundreds of stakeholders want others to tweet about them. They want to make it easy and will even provide tools that will generate automated tweets. A good example is Klout. Every time someone tweets his or her Klout score, it serves as an advertisement for Klout. As such, Klout makes it very easy for one to tweet his or her new Klout score, and Klout encourages its members to do so. Ironically, the very act of tweeting one’s Klout score might actually harm one’s true online clout. Your followers on Twitter care what you think, not the score you earned somewhere. That doesn’t mean you should never tweet such information. But such tweets should be infrequent and most importantly be a pretext to share something relevant.
Be Relevant and Timely When Sharing Articles. Did you just read a great article in Forbes or a major business publication? Before you quickly fire off a tweet with a link to the article, stop and think. If the article was published online two days ago, your followers have probably seen the same article tweeted by others. Unless you have something relevant to say about the article, you need to accept the fact that it is simply too late to merely tweet a link to the article. But if you do have something relevant to say, take the time to articulate your unique perspective on the article into a well-crafted tweet that includes the link. Avoid the temptation to introduce the article with something bland like “Couldn’t agree more …” Alternatively, when you find a great article or blog post from an obscure source, the fact that you discovered something relevant your followers have not likely seen is enough to justify a tweet. (And on that topic, I absolutely encourage you to click on the tweet link at the bottom of this post or any of my other posts!)
Do not be a Corporate Stooge. The principle here is simple. If someone wants to know what your company has to say, he or she will follow your company’s tweets. If someone wants to know what you have to say, he or she will be highly disappointed if your tweets are merely copies or re-tweets of what your company tweets. This does not mean you should never include company tweets among your tweets. When you do tweet a company tweet, it should be clearly associated with you. A job posting for example should be in your office or in your department. If you tweet about your company’s main annual event, tweet to promote a session in which you will be involved.
Re-Tweet Intelligently and Sincerely. By definition a re-tweet is a form of flattery. But if your re-tweets are done with the primary intention of flattering, most people will see through your insincerity. Follow people who are thought leaders in your eyes, whose tweets are typically very relevant to you and your interests. When someone’s tweet is particularly on target, honor them and your own followers with a re-tweet.
Manage Responses to Stay on Topic. Public tweets directed to an individual must be composed with all of your followers in mind. When you get an occasional mention in another’s tweet, a tweet to thank the person is in order. But once mentions of you hit a certain frequency, you cannot respond publicly to everyone. Try to respond to a group if possible. As mentions become even more frequent, you will need to set boundaries. Occasional, highly on topic responses will do the job well.
Show Your Personal Side in Selective Moderation. While Twitter is a tool for professional interaction, its informal side cannot be ignored completely. The best way to manage this is to have just one or two personal topics that appear from time to time. A great choice is a favorite sports teams. Never make the mistake of overdoing it. But it is good to show you are human and have a personal life to your followers with an occasional tweet of purely personal interest.
Quality is Far More Important than Frequency. The easiest way to become irrelevant is to set a far too ambitious goal for tweeting frequency. Some people post a daily proverb. Others repeat what they have already said before in order to have at least a daily tweet. The cold truth is that it is difficult to have something fresh and relevant to say more than once per week. Keep your eye out for things that deserve a tweet but be comfortable with an extended period of silence.
Understand the Shelf Life of Your Tweets. Your tweets actually have multiple shelf lives. The first and shortest is the shelf life on your followers’ home pages. People will scroll down their home pages scanning for relevant content from time to time but they won’t go on forever. The maximum shelf life for home pages is probably around thirty-six hours. But there are two other shelf lives to consider. The first is on your personal list of tweets. If someone clicks on your name on their “following” list, they will see your most recent five or six tweets and perhaps scroll down to as many as twenty. Beyond that your tweets quickly get stale. On this shelf it is important to maintain enough variety while generally staying on topic. Lastly there is the shelf life associated with the hash tags on your tweet. Again, twenty is probably the maximum. If it is a highly used hash tag like #sales, the shelf life may only be an hour or two. If it is less common, you enjoy a longer shelf life for a more targeted audience of potential new followers.
Twitter is a powerful social media platform. While some merely dabble and others chronically stumble, you can execute a well-planned strategy to advance your professional objectives. The overarching message here is to use common sense and to understand why your target followers would want to follow you. Stay relevant to your target followers and Twitter will work well for you.
No comments:
Post a Comment