Help! My boss just asked me to start using Twitter… What should I do?

The Problem

Your boss hears that Twitter is a great marketing tool, or a great way to engage with potential customers…

The boss issues a demand insisting that you and your peers all use Twitter regularly – that’s an order!

But how?

First, think about what you want to achieve and what does the boss expect?• More sales by finding customers• Better customer relationships through more engagement• Positioning you and the team as experts in your field• Influencing the influencers in your industry

Create an account

• First, create your account• Use a sensible name, preferably something related to your real name• Do upload a photo – many people refuse to follow someone who still has the ‘egg’• Add a short bio and link to where people can find out more about you

Start following people

• Follow some people so your time line has some tweets that should interest you• First follow people you will be interested in… journalists, analysts, TV presenters, leaders in your industry• Then consider the “subjects” you are interested in and create searches so you can see what ANYONE says on these topics• Now your timeline will be filled with information from the people you are interested in and anyone talking about topics relevant to you

Consider the tools

• As mentioned before, you may want to create some searches by topic. This is not easy using the basic web interface• Use a free tool such as Tweetdeck or Hootsuite so you can view your personal timeline as well as tweets on all your saved subjects• Download the IOS/Android app so you can easily access your Twitter on your phone

Say something

• Don’t just tweet as if this is your Facebook status update – it’s not, this is a conversation• Tweet interesting news and comment from your industry – either your own opinion or add a link to a news article• When reading the news, if it’s a good story, click the Twitter logo and share the story immediately• Retweet (RT) interesting comment you see from others• Reply to other comments – like sending a short public email anyone can comment on

Industry news

• If you want to ensure you are seen as a source of news on your industry then set up some Google News Alerts

• http://www.google.com/alerts

• A daily digest of news on a particular topic can be emailed and you can use this as the basis of your news tweets for the day

Scheduling

• If you are going to be away, but want to ensure some information is still published on your account, you can use tools such as Tweetdeck and Hootsuite to pre-schedule tweets• Hootsuite allows you to create a large batch using a text editor, then to upload them all at once

Promotion

• If you also write a blog then your Twitter account is great for promoting it• Comments on blogs have collapsed now, with much of the discussion taking place on social networks, such as Twitter rather than at the end of the blog post itself

Personal or work

• Most of those bio statements ‘this is my personal view, not my company view’ are meaningless – if Rupert Murdoch tweeted a statement on his personal Twitter account, would people think it’s just personal?• So be careful, what’s published will be out there forever – even if you delete a tweet• But, accept that people are not machines, you have a real life and don’t need to only tweet corporate news - nobody minds some personal info, especially when tweeted at the weekend

Who owns my account?

• Think about this carefully if you are tweeting because the boss said that you should• If you build a considerable following on Twitter, is that yours to take with you when you leave the company or does your company ‘own’ those followers?• Worth checking if you are asked to tweet in your name, but on behalf of your company

Summary

• Twitter is a great tool for focused conversations and engagement• It’s much easier to reach analysts, journalists, and real business influencers this way because the messages are short• By selecting who you follow, you can create a great feed of ‘news’ packed full of information from influencers in your field• A blog can also be a useful addition to Twitter, because you can write your opinion in more length, then talk about that on Twitter

These notes were prepared by:Mark Hillary

j.mp/markhillarywww.twitter.com/markhillary