Twitter for Dummies - Laura Fitton [75]
Keeping Your Tweets Authentic
Because of the frequency and personal nature of what people share on Twitter, any twitterer absolutely must be genuine and real, whether she’s representing a business or tweeting as an individual. Joining Twitter as a private citizen is the route many users take, even if they have business to promote. Twitter is ideally suited for personal connection, and you can often more easily make yourself accessible and personable when you use Twitter as a person, not as your business.
Joining the conversation
You see the phrase “join the conversation” bandied about a lot on Twitter. If you’re representing a business, you can get a dialog going very easily: Just search for users who have mentioned your products or the types of problems you solve and follow them. If you have something relevant to say, engage them in conversation using the mention they made as a starting point.
We go over how businesses should approach using Twitter in Chapter 11, so read through it to avoid any complications or Twitter faux pas. Singling users out and asking them questions may be appropriate for some products, but that approach may be completely inappropriate for others. Twitter’s just another engagement point for your communications, marketing, and public relations, so know the rules of the road before you start driving too fast.
If you’re representing a business, mentioning little-known facts or interesting things about what you do or sell can start a conversation. You can also talk about your staff; tell interested twitterers how you (or someone else) make what you sell; or take the easiest route of all and ask your fellow Twitter users what they think of your product or service, and how they think you can improve or expand.
Sharing links
By way of getting started, many new users start sharing links with a bit of commentary on their Twitter stream, as shown in Figure 10-5. For many users, sending a link provides a great way to get a commentary started about something you find interesting. Give it a shot and see what happens. Here are the basics for sharing links. (You’ll probably want to use a link shortener most of the time, though. Review Chapter 9 for a refresher on how to do that.)
1. Copy the link’s URL and paste it in the What Are You Doing? box.
2. Type a comment about the link in the What Are You Doing? box (either before or after the link).
3. Post your tweet by clicking the Update button.
Usually after you post the tweet, Twitter shortens the URL for you using TinyURL.
Some users post a lot of links — some users like to use RSS or other tools to automatically update their Twitter streams with links to interesting articles that they’re reading. Others just post links by hand.
Figure 10-5: This update comments on a link and includes that link.
Linking to interesting articles changes the way that your Twitter audience perceives you. Remember, people follow you because you add value to their Twitter streams; but if you flood your stream with links that aren’t relevant to your audience, you may start to annoy some of your following. By adding a link to a tweet that you post, you draw attention to the targeted Web page, photo or video, and you’re implicitly endorsing it as a good use of your followers’ time. Abusing that assumption will erode the interest and trust your followers have in you and reduce the effectiveness of your network.
If you do a lot of linking, review Chapter 9 so that you can track links like a pro. By using tools such as bit.ly (http://bit.ly), you can find out which Twitter users are linking to the same articles, which is a great way to start a conversation.
Image is everything
Your update stream is by far the most important part of your Twitter profile. However, your profile’s presentation also needs to reflect something about you. In the same way that you wear a nice set of clothes to a job interview, you want to dress up your profile so that it reflects the image that you want to convey to the world.
Although you