So you’ve done everything right. You’ve created your perfect Twitter profile, found an awesome picture to represent who you are, and are engaging with people like crazy. Now you you’re beginning to have a following, but are they seeing your tweets? Not everyone is as interactive and engaging as you, or lives on the internet.


How can you maximize the potential reach of your tweets? The answer: proper timing of tweets. You’ve heard it in the business world your whole life, “timing is everything,” and it applies to your tweets as well. While it may seem like most Twitter activity is going on all day during business hours, that’s just the activity of who you follow, not who is following you. In order to get your tweets seen, you need to tweet when your followers are on, otherwise they’ll just get lost in the massive Twitter feed on your followers page.


Here are a few tips on how to accomplish the perfectly timed Tweet:

1. Research your audience. Is your following a bunch of computer engineers writing code until 4am? If so, it’s probably not best to tweet in the morning when they’re sleeping. Or is your following a typical business person doing the nine to five grind every day? In this case, your best time to tweet may be before nine, and after five.




2. Use available social media tools. There are hundreds of tools out there to help you find out who your audience is. For timing, there’s one in particular that helps you optimize the timing of your tweets named Timely. This application grabs data from your last tweets, and from your following, to calculate the best times for you to tweet so they have the highest impact. You can sign up for the application (it’s free) or you can simply type in your twitter name on their website for a quick list of higher impact tweets. Signing up for the service gives Timely more data to calculate more effective times for you to tweet.




3. Scheduling tweets. Now that you’ve researched your audience, and have the science of Timely backing your tweets, it’s time to schedule some tweets. If a high impact time for you to be tweeting is at 3am, you’re not going to want to wake up every night at 3am to send out a tweet. You can schedule your tweets in the Timely app mentioned above, or you can use many other services such as Tweetdeck or Hootsuite to schedule your tweets. Scheduling your tweets will let you write out all your tweets at the beginning of the day, save you time, and ensure they’ll be sent with maximum impact.

Of course you should always keep engaging and contributing valuable content to the Twitterverse on a regular basis. Using these tips are just a few more marketing weapons for you to optimize your efforts of having your message seen across Twitter, which will in turn generate a larger following.


- Spencer Tucci

This week, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by none other than America’s LinkedIn Lady, Carol McManus, on WGCH Greenwich. We had a lot of fun (full disclosure: Carol and I worked with each other at a previous company), and the half-hour went by in a flash. What really hit me, however, is that even people who are successfully marketing their brands on other social networks, are often completely flummoxed by how best to make use of Twitter.



The bulk of the questions I received contained elements of both confusion (”I don’t know what to do”) and fear (”I don’t want to damage my brand”).



To help both the people who want to start tweeting and have not yet sent their first tweet, and the people who have started tweeting but are not yet seeing the results they know are possible, I pulled together the following Twitter checklist.



Note that you are not going to get 10,000 new Twitter followers overnight by following these 40 guidelines. You will, however, increase your social influence, engage your target audiences, and grow your business!



Ken’s Fast Start 40: The Twitter Checklist



1. Download/Listen to our radio show from this week [30-minute .mp3 podcast].



2. Read my previous post on this blog on how to engage your target audience on Twitter.



3. Use the shortest, brand-appropriate Twitter handle that is available.



4. Use a headshot with you smiling as your Twitter photo/avatar.



5. Use a custom Twitter background [optimized for #newtwitter].



6. Identify your business’ top five keywords, write them down, and pin them up in the place where you normally tweet.



7. Use your business’ keywords in your Twitter bio.



8. Use an actual (i.e., not an URL-shortened) web address in your profile.



9. Make sure your Twitter profile is public.



10. Add Follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/YourTwitterHandle to your e-mail signature line, your business card, your products (including packaging), your LinkedIn and other social network profiles, and ALL of your print, web, and voice (including your voice mail greetings) communications.




EZ TWEET: Share this Twitter checklist now with your Twitter followers by clicking here.




11. Go to Google Alerts and create a Google alert for your Twitter handle.



12. Go to Klout.com and get your baseline social influence score — note that it may be 0 to start.



13. Go to Twittercounter.com and get your baseline Twitter growth statistics.



14. Tweet at least three times a day (and no more than seven times a day), including weekends, spread evenly throughout the day.



15. Follow at least 20 people (and no more than 100 people) a day.



16. Once a week, use ManageFlitter.com to unfollow the people who have stopped tweeting (i.e., people who have not tweeted in over 30 days).



17. Tweet relevant, brand-appropriate content that shares your expertise.



18. Look for opportunities to tweet relevant, brand-appropriate photos, audio, and videos.



19. Avoid negative tweets, both in terms of the language you use and the emotions you express.



20. Limit your tweets to a maximum of 120 characters.




EZ TWEET: Share this Twitter checklist now with your Twitter followers by clicking here.




21. Use URL shortener j.mp for all of your links (it's the shortest available with full metrics).



22. To maximize the number of clicks for a given link, use the full, non-shortened URL.



23. For your first 30 days, do NOT sell *anything* in your tweets, period. After your first 30 days, no more than one out of every 20 of your tweets can be a *soft* sales pitch for your products/services. Direct selling in your tweets will turn people off from following you, and will result in people already following you to unfollow you.



24. Avoid using tools that automate the management of your tweets or your followers as you can easily (and unknowingly) violate Twitter's terms of service, resulting in a suspended account.



25. Use your business' keywords [from #6 above] in your tweets.



26. Hashtag (#) the most important keyword in every tweet.



27. Create, and start populating at least three Twitter Lists (e.g., your current customers, your target/prospective customers, the experts you follow, your peers, people from your network, your competitors, leaders in your industry, etc.).



28. If you are tweeting as a business, brand, or organization, follow back *everyone* who follows you.



29. Acknowledge EVERY Twitter mention, retweet, and DM you receive.



30. Proactively/Directly engage at least one new person a day in a public [see #31 below] tweet.




EZ TWEET: Share this Twitter checklist now with your Twitter followers by clicking here.




31. When you directly engage or reply to people on Twitter, always use .@TwitterHandle instead of @TwitterHandle at the beginning of your tweet (so that your tweet can be seen by everyone).



32. Credit the original author(s) when you retweet others' content, including the media source/publication if you have space.



33. When crediting someone, use /@TwitterHandle (instead of RT or via) to save characters.



34. Add your own comment when retweeting others' content.



35. Retweet "manually" (also called "traditional retweeting") -- i.e., do not use the Twitter retweet function, as it does not allow you to add your own comment.



36. Be yourself. Use your natural tone and voice, and fully leverage your own unique personality (i.e., if you're naturally a comedian, be funny; if you're naturally a data geek, geek out!).



37. Read each and every tweet out loud to yourself BEFORE you post it.



38. Read each and every tweet AFTER you post it to check that the @'s and links all work. Immediately delete, correct, and repost the tweet if you find a typo.



39. Once a day, set aside a few minutes of quiet time, free of interruptions and distractions, to read through your followers' tweets.



40. JUST DO IT! Start tweeting, not on Monday morning, not tomorrow, not later today, but NOW.



People like to say that there are no rules on Twitter, and I agree. These are my personal guidelines, from what I have found from my own experience to work best over time.



In the comments section below, please share with me YOUR favorite Twitter tips and guidelines. Also please feel free to let me know which of my guidelines you disagree with, and why!




Need more help with your tweeting? Check out SocialGrow's Twitter Marketing and Sales Engagement Training.

My friends all know this of course. It’s not like it’s something you can hide really, especially when you help people to grow their social networks and to make better use of social media.



I received an e-mail this week from my friend Tim out in Phoenix. Wave “Hi” Tim, you’re about to be internet-famous. Tim and I went to B-school together, and he is in the process of closing down an e-commerce website. Knowing many of you have similar questions about social media, I asked Tim if he’d let me share my response back to him with you by blogging it. He said “yes” by the way. I always knew he wanted to be internet-famous.



Ken,



-Tim



Hey Tim,



You will no doubt be thrilled to hear that you do *not* have to relocate your family from sunny Phoenix to rural Montana. Most people have now heard the buzz about social media, and many have tried it for themselves, but are not (yet!) seeing the results they want.



Results are the right place to start. As a form of communications, the first question to ask — if you are using social media for anything other than entertainment — is “What do I want to achieve?” Take the time to identify what it is, specifically, that you want to achieve. Increase your revenues? Reduce your costs? Get new customers? Find a date for your sister’s wedding?



I read five questions (cries for help?) in your e-mail Tim. I will address each of them in order:



1. Why is social media important?

Social media is important — and I am defining “important” here as an effective strategy for individuals and organizations to achieve their objectives — because it makes it fast, easy, and [in most cases] FREE for you to create and share content.



For example, with traditional (”paid”) media, you purchase print, website, radio, TV, and/or billboard space, and then you pay someone else to articulate the value of your particular product/service in a compelling way to catch peoples’ attention — all in the hopes of persuading people to buy. With social (”earned”) media, you are no longer in direct sales (”BUY MY STUFF!”) mode. Instead, you are engaging your target audience by freely sharing the value of your expertise with people who are interested in it. And yes, along the way, you are letting it be known that your products and services are available for purchase. Earned media is not a magic cure-all, but an effective addition, and booster, to your existing marketing mix of paid and owned media.



2. What is the value of Twitter?

One of the values of Twitter is that it is a powerful lead generator. Each and every 140-character SEO-rich tweet is indexed by Google in almost real-time, getting you and your content on the first page of Google’s search results.



3. What is the value of Fousquare?

One of the values of Foursquare is that it enables you connect more frequently with your network live and in-person. When I worked for Realogy, our building had a central staircase between the first and second floors that everyone used. Arguably, more business was done on that staircase than in the rest of the building combined, because it facilitated people running into each other. Likewise, Foursquare exponentially increases the opportunities for you to “run into” the people you know.



4. What is the value of Facebook?

One of the values of Facebook is that it enables you to reconnect with people from your different schools, companies, and organizations. The personal and professional possibilities multiply when you are able to more easily stay in touch with the people you know.



5. What is the value of LinkedIn?

One of the values of LinkedIn is the ability to identify and connect with people you want to reach through “friends of friends”. Because of its near ubiquity among business professionals, it also enables real-time access to first-hand information about your customers, suppliers, employers, and employees.



You’re already following me on Twitter (http://twitter.com/socialgrow), connected with me on Foursquare (http://foursquare.com/user/kenherron), have friended me on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/kenherron.fb), and connected with me on LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/in/kenherron). So what is it that YOU want to achieve with social media?



-Ken



SocialGrow Blog Readers: Do *you* have social media advice that you would like to share with Tim? Please feel free to include your recommendations in the comments section below, both on the importance of social media, and how he should be using Twitter, Foursquare, Facebook, and LinkedIn.



Last night, people were talking about Twitter (people always seem to be talking about Twitter around me…), and a friend asked, “You have over 15,000 followers. Can you share the ’secret’ so I can do the same for my [start-up] company?”



He seemed a little disappointed when I told him there really isn’t a secret to engaging with people on Twitter. As many smart people have already said, you listen, you create, and you communicate. I took a look at his Twitter account, and gave him a list of steps I recommended he take to better engage with his target audience. Looking at the list again this morning, I wanted to write it up and share it with you [below].



Ken’s List of 10 Steps to Engaging Your Target Audience on Twitter



1. Look Hard at Your Twitter Handle

While you want your Twitter handle to be as short as possible [so it doesn't eat into the 140 characters when people retweet your posts], be sure that it strongly relates to the name you use in your marketing communications so that it not only helps your SEO, but immediately identifies your Twitter account for both existing and new customers.



2. Use Your Own Photo

While many people are more comfortable using their company’s logo than their own photo, keep in mind that on Twitter people are still engaging with other people, even if they are representing brands.



3. Design a FANTASTIC “Tweetback”

Your Twitter background is the place to showcase not only your company’s logo, but to clearly articulate your brand’s unique value, story, and contact information. Design (or have designed) a compelling, brand-appropriate background. Check out http://twitterbackgroundsgallery.com/ for ideas and inspiration. And don’t forget to include the specific call to action you want people to take!



4. Share, Don’t Spam

People seem to forget that Twitter is inbound marketing (http://blog.hubspot.com/), and not outbound marketing. Why would anyone want to follow a never-ending stream of sales pitches? Focus on tweeting valuable [preferably your own original] content which shares your brand-appropriate expertise of greatest interest to your target audience. Think about the 1 in 10 rule — limit your direct marketing pitches to no more than 1 out of every 10 of your tweets.



5. Think 120

Limit the length of your tweets to no more than 120 characters (less is obviously better). While Twitter’s limit is 140 characters, if you use all of them, you make it harder for people to retweet your posts with their comments. You should also be retweeting your followers’ best tweets, and ALWAYS thanking them by name when they retweet your tweets.



6. Tweet at Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner

Tweet 3-5 times a day, throughout the day, minimally in the morning, at mid-day, and in the evening.



7. Use Multimedia

Think multimedia when you tweet. A mix of brand-appropriate photos, audio, and videos are more interesting for your followers than all text tweets.



8. Create Twitter Lists

Create brand-appropriate Twitter Lists to recognize and promote your followers.



9. Follow Great People

While you should obviously be following everyone who is talking about your company, your brands, and your products; you also want to follow people who are talking about your competitors, and the problems, needs, and wants your product or service solves. I have heard differing views on this, but as a company, I choose to follow back everyone [who's not a spammer, bot, or in a business inappropriate to my brand] who expresses an interest in SocialGrow.



10. Use the SocialGrow Application!

Following my own 1 in 10 rule, sign up now for the SocialGrow application at http://socialgrow.com! Launching soon, SocialGrow makes it easier to connect with people you don’t know, and faster to connect with people you do. Note that SocialGrow has a great consulting division should you need more help with using Twitter, effectively using other social networks, or creating an integrated social-media-inclusive marketing and communications strategy for your business or organization. Please feel free to contact me directly with your questions on ken.herron [@] socialgrow.com.