Blog Post: Making Twitter a Two Way Street

There’s a lot of ideas out there on how to best use Twitter on behalf of an organization. I’ve seen numerous companies (including our own) utilize Twitter to push the messages we want out to our ‘followers.’ What I am realizing is how Twitter does not have to be a one way street and in fact provides a much greater return on my time when I make it a two way street!

We are finding that to effectively ‘be’ on Twitter, we have to view Twitter as a chat room, an email system, and an RSS feed…in that order. I view twitter as a great social media tool in developing relationships, giving praise to colleagues, as well as sharing specific things I want to say or offer to the communty about our business.

The rest of this blog post teaches us how to truly develop our online tweeting relationships (compliments of Brett Farmiloe, Jobing.com Social Media Manager).

There’s some Twitter lingo we want to share with new Twitterers out there who are just venturing into the space. It looks a little something like this: @, D, RT, & the follow button.

DEVELOPING RELATIONSHIPS

@- This symbol is how we get people’s attention on Twitter. It’s how we can reply to someone. Simply put the ‘@’ symbol into the big box that says ‘What are you doing?’, followed by the username you’d like to reply to, and then the message.

Here are 3 typical uses for @replies:

1)  Publicly comment on someone’s status update.  This is great to let your clients, potnetial clients, partners, community friends, etc. know that you read what they wrote, cared about what they wrote, and took the time to write back.  It’s the same thinking as commenting on a blog. It’s especially important that we do this because more and more we are finding that companies are paying very close attention to Twitter activity   

2)  To reach out to people that aren’t readily accessible.  We can do this by including the @username.  This is an incredible way to immediately reach out to decision makers, authors, or whomever we want to network with.  

3)  To thank people for Retweeting what we tweet, or say :) (RT’s are explained later)

Remember the @replies are publick public, so whatever we say will appear to everyone who is following us.   To send a message that’s private, we can send a DM- a direct message.

SENDING A DIRECT MESSAGE (SIMILAR TO A ONE-ON-ONE EMAIL)

D- This symbol is how you send a direct message.  Remember that with direct messages the person we want to send a direct message to has to be following us. Otherwise, it will have to be sent via an @reply mentioned above.     

GIVING KUDOS

RT- RT stands for ‘retweet.’ It’s the best way to give kudos on Twitter.  A retweet is like a bibliography- we cite the source along with what was said and include the letters RT at the very beginning of the sentence.

A retweet is about as flattering as it gets on Twitter. It lets the person being retweeted know that what they said is something that we found to be valuable enough to share with all of our followers.  People really appreciate this, especially when the person being retweeted is trying to spread the word about something.  

Two common uses for RT:

1)  A useful link with a story, informative blog post, or other piece of valuable information.

2)  Big news.  Marriage, babies, business accomplishments, awards, etc.

FOLLOWING

Following someone on Twitter is simply letting the person we're following know that we’re paying attention to them, and that we’d also like to be paid attention to as well.  In addition, following someone lets us see everything that person is saying as they say it.

Great people to follow could be clients, competitors, employees, partners, community friends, and of course potnetials for any of the preceeding. 

A couple ways to find people:

1)  Use the “Find People” button on Twitter and type in the name of the organization or person you’re looking for.

2)  Use Twitter Search and type in the name of the organization or person you’re looking for.  Oftentimes, this option is more successful.  

This is generally a new phenominom for most of us and we aee finding that  following people and paying attention to what is being said in the Twittersphere by using RT’s, @’s, and D’s, affords us opportunities to use Twitter for something more than just another RSS feed.

BETTER UNDERSTANDING THESE TOOL HELP TO MAKE TWITTER

"A TWO WAY STREET"