Solidly determine who you are.

The first thing that anyone gets to know about you on twitter is who you are and what you represent. Photo, bio, web link, etc. When someone visits your twitter page,  they need to see you and your brand – more about who you are, what you do and how they can contact you.

Figured out why someone would follow you.

People don’t follow you just because. They need to be given a reason! What are you talking about? What content are you creating? Are you just talking to yourself or are you sharing links, responding to conversations and participating in the twitter world. What do your last 10 tweets say about you? You need a solid mix of the 3: tweets of your own thoughts, retweets of others links and thoughts (quality!), and replies to conversations. Tweets tell people you have your own ideas. Retweets tell them that you share quality content from others and replies tell people that you have conversations and engage. Look at your last 10 tweets…would you want to follow you?

Find better people to follow

Because such a big part of twitter is the conversations – it is always better to have quality people you are following. But, it can be hard to find them. Try these four:

• Lists: Who do you already trust? Take a look at the lists that they have built. You will probably find new and interesting people to follow there. Also, look at the lists that follow you – usually it will help you find more people in or around your area and industry
• Suggestions: Asking your followers is never a bad idea – people like to help others!
• Twellow/Twellowhood: Search through (basically) everyone on twitter by keywords, locations, bio’s, etc. Create your own free account to make sure that your profile on the site is up to date and has the right keywords attached.
• #Hashtags: #smmoc, #leadershipchat, # for a big event, etc, look for ones in your area.

Monitor keywords, conversations and searches.

What are the words that are most important to your business? Tools like tweetdeck, hootsuite and even search.twitter.com allow you to monitor what is going on with the words and phrases you care about. Just like in a search engine, you can search for individual words or put phrases in quotes to search for more specific things. You should have a constant search running for your brand name, your main 3 key phrases and at least 2 general keywords. Yes, there will be a lot of garbage, but if you can catch at least one quality tweet or cut off one problem, it will be worth it.

Stop trying to sell.

While ROI is important, what many people forget is that the ROI of twitter is not usually sales, but conversations, community and learning. Yes, there is a great opportunity to convert social media relationships into clients and sales, if that is your main priority, you will scare off the audience. Start talking, start listening and forget the ‘sales’ and you will see the shift in how twitter works for you.

Stay tuned for tomorrow, when we discuss using Facebook more effectively!

Reading Brian Stelter’s story in the New York Times was a little unbelievable, but completely inspiring. And made me wonder what we could do through twitter – or how his story could help other companies.

The basics: Brian Stelter started a twitter account specifically to help him lose weight. Every day, he would tweet what he was eating, when he was working out, and how much he had lost. It was a chance for him to be held accountable and have a cheering section. He said he thought about trying weight watchers and other programs, but none would keep him motivated…so he turned to twitter. The post talks about the success he has seen, and the results he is experiencing. One of the most impressive results were the number of people who supported him, sent him messages and even called him. He in turn became motivation for others, who joined in his weight loss goals!

So how can a business learn from what Brian did? What are the take-aways from his twitter plight to lose weight?

1. Have something compelling to talk about. Brian found a group to follow him because he was putting himself out there and giving people a real chance to connect with him. Businesses need to be open in the same way. Provide answers, help and be available for your consumers and finding a follower base will be easy.
2. Create a community. The followers liked Brian’s account because he created a community around his weight loss. Others could comment, share their stories and be involved. Giving people a place to share a common bond will create a stronger network.
3. He stuck with it. Just like his weight loss, he also stuck with twitter. He didn’t ignore it, or worse, do it for a month and then give up. His accounts reliability meant that others were willing to follow and be a part of it. People don’t want to follow accounts that will disappear overnight.
4. He talked about things everyone understands. If you try to be too technical, or share content that only a small percentage of people will care about it is hard to gain followers. People want to be able to respond and understand – so give them content that is on their level. Stay away from the technical jargon.

Many companies try to over complicate what it takes to find success through social media. Brian’s account and results show that there are better ways. Open lines of communication, sharing real stories and being honest to your followers will deliver the best results.

What else can we learn from his twitter account and how he managed it?