#twooc day four user guide february 2015

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Day FOUR: Etiquette & Conversations

The small print:

All this material, whilst given freely for this course, is for your use only, and not for dissemination to anyone else, even inside your own organisation. Please do recommend that your colleagues sign up for the course so that they can participate too at http://twooc.wordpress.com

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DAY 4: Outline

Etiquette & Conversations

Activity:

• Search for yesterday’s conversations using #twooc on your Twitter profile, and get a feel for what’s going on in our “classroom”.

• Have a look at some of the tweets in your twitter stream, and see if they broke any of my suggested Twetiquette rules. Do you think it matters?

E-tivity:

• Have some conversations – find some, start some, respond to some.

• Check out page 59 point 16 for your “homework”

• Contribute a tip for what to tweet about to the 12 Days of Twitter community by tweeting using #tips and #twooc

• Choose a tool and schedule some Tweets for the weekend, just one or two a day. (You’ll still need to respond to any conversations they create though!)

Tools:

http://bufferapp.com/

http://www.socialoomph.com

http://www.postling.com

http://crowdbooster.com/

http://twtpoll.com/

http://hootsuite.com

Resources:

Some great blog posts on twetiquette:

• Mashable’s Complete Twetiquette guide: http://bit.ly/MashableTwetiquetteGuide

• Ten things you need to STOP tweeting about: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/twitter_stop

• The top TEN reasons I will not follow you back http://mashable.com/2009/01/06/twitter-follow-fail/

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Day FOUR

Etiquette

Now you’ve grasped the basics of how to tweet, and are getting used to the idea of what to tweet, and why you are doing it, let’s start having some conversations.

Twitter may appear to be a one to many medium, but in fact, it’s an opportunity to open up one-to-one dialogues, and that is what starts a relationship.

People are on Twitter to chat. It’s like someone standing in the check-out at the supermarket, turning to you and addressing a comment to the world. You can join in any conversation. If they wanted it to be private, they would be having it elsewhere.

However, there are some rules of etiquette that can be hard to get to grips with. There are also differences of opinion around best practice, and so you may not agree with everything I write. That’s fine, as long as you know some people will feel the same way I do, and you make your choice around your own Twitter behaviour based on that knowledge.

So many people are using Twitter poorly, that there are a lot of examples of how to do it badly out there, and by copying people you may unwittingly adopt them. In all things, be aware that what annoys you, probably annoys other people, and so don’t do it even if you see lots of other people doing it on Twitter.

So today, I thought I’d give you some guidance on what NOT to do, and then some inspiration for starting some conversations, on brand, on topic, and showing off your expertise.

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Twetiquette

Things to do on Twitter that will lose you followers:

• Automatically sending Direct Messages when people follow you that tell them to download your ebook or connect with you elsewhere

• Announcing how many followers you have or in any way referring to number of followers as a goal

• Affiliate marketing – posting shrunk URLS that take visitors to sites that will “Get them Twitter Followers Fast”, or offering teleseminars or motivational CDs

• Following anybody and everybody, especially people without pictures – that shows me you’re not choosy

• Simply re:tweeting other people and nothing more

• Simply quoting “meaningful quotes” and nothing more

• Quoting meaningful quotes and not crediting them

• Using your business name as a hashtag and using it in every (or any) tweet

• Referring to yourself by #hashtag as if you are a celebrity. (see #fredism)

• Tweeting nothing but pushy sales pitches for your product or service

• Broadcasting but not engaging – it’s all about you, you, YOU

• Having personal one to one conversations on Twitter beyond a couple of tweets – by this time you should be DMing or getting on the phone!

• Swearing, being combative, depressive or angry

• Re-tweeting or linking to a blog/article/website by someone else, without crediting the author. If you can, find out their Twitter account and credit them.

• Re-tweeting someone else’s retweet of your own tweet. (We’ve seen it already, and we certainly won’t retweet it ourselves now)

• Linking something and not telling me why YOU think I should read it (Not just the article headline and a link) or why YOU have found it interesting (not just “Interesting”).

• Tweeting the same thing repeatedly. My rule of thumb is three tweets, each making different points, to link to each new blogpost I write, for example.

• Tweeting a whole load of tweets all at once. Even if it’s good information. Use www.bufferapp.com to spread them out over the day, or schedule them for the future.

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We asked some of our followers for their own thoughts on twitter etiquette – here are a few of the reponses:

If you’ve got an etiquette tip to share please tweet it using the hashtags #twooc and #tips and we’ll feature your tweet in the next version of this course!

Other matters of manners for your consideration

Automatic DMs

It is nice to welcome new followers, but it can get tiresome doing so individually when you are gaining a few a day. Soon you will go into your Twitter profile, click on Notifications, and turn them off except for when someone sends you a Direct Message.

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This leaves you with a dilemma, you won’t know when someone has followed you, so how can you welcome or thank them?

Easy, you can set up a robot to automatically DM anyone who follows you, and then you’ll never have to worry about it again. Or will you?

How do you feel when you follow someone and you get an automated Direct Message straight back, asking you to buy something, or “like” us on Facebook?

Think carefully about your automated message, if you must have one, and make it as pleasant, friendly and human as possible. The most salesy thing you should do is offer a discount voucher, in my opinion. (Strangely enough “free” seems very linked with “worthless” when talking about downloads on the net.) There are many diatribes online wishing “Death to the auto-DM” so use them at your own risk.

We don’t cover the mechanics of SocialOomph on the course, but it’s one of the free tools you can use to set-up automatic Direct Messages to new followers, and it will help you with the next issue too.

To Follow back, or not to Follow back?

People get obsessed with their number of Twitter followers. Truly, this in itself is not a measure of success (we’ll be revisiting ROI later, and there are much better ways to measure it).

So if it’s not pure number of followers, maybe its ratio?

We’ve discussed already that Twitter itself won’t allow you to have too big a difference between following and follower numbers, it also imposes daily and other limits. On page 57 you can see what Twitter has to say.

However, you still need to make a decision. Are you going to follow everyone back - effectively creating a 1:1 ratio? Or ar you going to try to get loads more followers than following – like the big celebrities do? If you are useful to your community, you should find that it expands naturally, some people feel that following back is only polite.

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However, I wouldn’t recommend always following everyone back. You’ll end up following all sorts of people who only followed you in the hope you’d follow back (are you following?). They may be unsavoury types, too, and will make your profile look bad to people checking you out to see if you are worth following.

Instead, if you must, use a follower vetting tool like SocialOOmph that alerts you to new followers, and makes it easier than Twitter.com does to vet them and choose whether to follow them back. Or if you want to get really sophisticated, a tool like http://www.postling.com recommends who to follow back based on their online influence. We’ll come back to this one later on in the course when we talk about Return on Investment and measuring success.

If you’re keen you might like a sneak preview::

(Note: Postling is a paid subscription service)

A couple of alternatives you can use are https://crowdbooster.com/ and http://www.socialbro.com/. These are freemium tools – so you get a free trial, or a free limited product, but then pay for longer, or for premium features.

Both of these tools show you your most influential followers, map your follower growth and measure the impressions and re-tweets your tweets receive.

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Crowdbooster:

Social Bro:

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======= TWITTER on FOLLOWING & LIMITS =======

Why can't I follow people?

If you're unable to follow more accounts, you've probably hit a follow limit. Twitter has imposed reasonable limits to help prevent system strain and to limit abuse. Remember that:

o If you hit a technical limit, you'll see an error message when you try to follow.

o We do not limit the number of people who can follow you.

Twitter's technical follow limits:

1. Every account can follow 2,000 users total. Once you’ve followed 2,000 users, there are limits to the number of additional users you can follow. This number is different for each account and is based on your ratio of followers to following; this ratio is not published. Follow limits cannot be lifted by Twitter and everyone is subject to limits, even high profile and API accounts.

2. Every Twitter account is technically unable to follow more than 1,000 users per day, in addition to the account-based limits above. Please note that this is just a technical limit to prevent egregious abuse from spam accounts.

3. Accounts are also prohibited from aggressively following other users. Our Follow Limits and Best Practices Page has more information on Twitter’s following rules.

What to do if you've hit a follow limit:

If you've reached the account-based follow limit (2,000 users), you’ll need to wait until you yourself have more followers before you can follow additional users. Follow limits are system-wide; Support cannot remove or adjust your

follow limits. To follow one or two additional users, unfollow a few accounts you're currently following. Please note, however, that regularly following and unfollowing many accounts at a time is a violation of the Twitter Rules and can result in account suspension.

Why Twitter limits following behavior:

These limits help us improve site performance and reliability and help us make Twitter a nice place for everyone. We’ve included a more in-depth discussion of why we have follow limits on the Follow Limits and Best Practices Page.

What are third party applications to “Get More Followers Fast!”?

You may encounter websites or applications claiming they can help you get lots of followers quickly. These programs may ask for payment for followers, or ask you to follow a list of other users in order to participate. Using these is not allowed according to the Twitter Rules.

======= This page is from the Twitter Support Centre =======

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#ff Follow Friday (or #ff or “friend follow”) revisited

How flattered do you think I felt to be included in this #followfriday? There’s no recommendation of why you should follow me (except that I follow this guy), and he didn’t even put the list together himself, he used a robot called LazyShoutOut! Yeuk! Am tempted to unfollow him.

Use #ff’s individually, and to make genuine recommendations.

It goes without saying that you should only recommend people to follow that you are already following yourself.

Twenders & #rfr

If you are looking for someone to work with you, a supplier or freelancer for example, then the hashtag #twender and #rfr (referral) can help.

It’s also good to retweet these to your network, and if you know someone who fits the bill then @mention both the original tweeter and the person you are recommending.

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Conversations

Ok, so that’s the etiquette, and now that’s out of the way, here’s some top ideas for STARTING conversations on Twitter.

1. Be the first to break relevant news – watch the news sites for your industry and link to them with your own reaction to the story.

2. Countdown to an event you are attending/running with:

• A behind the scenes look at what you are preparing

• Shout-outs to people who are coming

• Invitations to people who may not have signed up yet

• Sneak previews and introductions to those attending

• Booking form links and early booking offers

3. Ask for advice, people love to help on Twitter

4. Ask for an opinion on something, that question mark is a great call to action

5. Create a Twitter list of industry experts, and then tweet a link to it

6. Relevant Quotations – and say why they are important

7. Marketing – yes, you can market what you do. If people aren’t interested, they wouldn’t be following you. Just don’t make it too salesy, and restrict it to less than 20% of your tweets

8. Thank people, be specific as to why so it actually amplifies their Twitter presence

9. Send a link to your facebook page/linkedin page/linkedin profile occasionally, and invite new connections and fans

10. Ask people in a direct message how they are (simple, but effective)

11. Use pictures, audio, video, etc. (covered later in #12daysoftwitter)

12. Link to the best of your own material – it doesn’t always have to be today’s blogpost . If you wrote something that went down really well, and is still relevant, tweet a link again, and say so.

13. Create a survey to encourage responses, and then tweet the results. Use the answers to help you engage with the individuals who answered. E.g. http://twtpoll.com/

14. Book/film/radio show recommendations and similar

15. Asking your customers how they are getting on with your product or service

16. Your own idea – please tweet it to the class as today’s e-tivity.

And that’s it for today. Apart from a word from our sponsors . . . . ;)

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Announcing Our Indie Writers Festival – 21st February 2015 Have you got a book in you?

Then come along to our latest inspirational events for writers! The Leeds Big Bookend is proud to present our Indie Writers’ Fest in partnership with Leeds Trinity University on Saturday 21st February 2015. The day will offer a series of workshops, talks and panels, as well as opportunities to meet and mingle with writers, book-designers and publishers, and browse our pop-up indie bookshop. We’ll have some writing challenges too, so pens and imaginations at the ready!

Bookings open now : http://fortheloveofwords.eventbrite.co.uk

We’re celebrating our love of words with a day full of inspiration and activity alongside input from acclaimed and best-selling self-published authors who will share their journeys with you, to help you build a personal roadmap for indie success. You can choose to attend in person and participate in full, or follow the conference before, during and after online only with our virtual conference ticket. Discounts for concessions.inpartnershipmysnip. We hope this event will be the start of many collaborations and writing adventures. You are warmly invited to join us for our inaugural indie writing event.