So you’re on that proverbial cliff and have decided to take the leap into social media and in particular, Twitter. That’s great! In my opinion, those firms who make the leap first and stake their claim will be the market leaders within social media. Don’t you want to be among the leaders?
According to the poll on my blog, only 25% of firms are using Twitter while 43% are using Facebook and 93% are using LinkedIn. If you haven’t yet weighed in, please do so (the poll is in the column on the left). The survey is only open for 3 more days…so hurry!
Getting Started – Beginners
First, if you haven’t already, go to http://twitter.com and sign up. Choose a username with as few characters as possible (because there is a 140 character limit on tweets and just trust me, that will be important as you grow with Twitter). Twitter doesn’t ask for much information when getting set up, so as soon as you finish the process you should immediately click on “Settings” (upper right corner of screen) and finish completing your profile. In particular, you need to add a bio and a picture or other screen icon (DON’T keep the default icon, it makes other people suspicious that you may be a spammer). Are you getting nervous? Don’t, I know there’s a lot to learn about Twitter but we’ll get through it together.
A funny side story; a friend of mine finally created an account on Twitter and followed me. So I went to his profile and saw he hadn’t finished completing it so I suggested he do so. He said he did that on purpose because he wasn’t sure he wanted anyone to know it was him yet! Trust me, it’s okay to put yourself out there. You’re probably just going to be listening in for awhile anyway until you get the hang of it.
Start out by finding your friends and other interesting people to follow. Warning: people can sometimes be hard to find if they’re username is different from their real name; that’s one reason it’s so important to make sure your profile and bio are complete.
Here are some of my recommendations for CPAs:
http://twitter.com/AICPA_JofA (AICPA Journal of Accountancy)
http://twitter.com/AICPANews (AICPA News)
http://twitter.com/CPA_Trendlines (Rick Telberg)
http://twitter.com/cpamanagement (Rita Keller)
http://twitter.com/kristingentry (me!)
http://twitter.com/zappos (Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos; he’s just plain fun to follow)
http://twitter.com/mashable (if you’re into social media, Mashable is a great resource)
Okay, we have a lot more to cover so we’re going to change gears into bullet points of info:
- You get an email notification every time someone follows you
- You do not get an email notification if someone un-follows you (that also means that if you change your mind about following someone, they probably won’t know if you un-follow them, so don’t feel guilty)
- All communications are limited to 140 characters, which is like a headline or 2 sentences, tops. Use abbreviations and numerals instead of writing out the numbers, etc. You may have to get a little creative. And make it interesting and/or funny if you can.
- Hashtags (#) – Hashtags allow you to categorize your tweets into topics; for example, you might see #CPA a lot. At any time, you can search for #CPA and find all postings that contain that hashtag.
- @ Messages – You can use an @kristingentry to reply to something I tweeted (for a direct but public reply, put it at the very beginning of the tweet), or use it inside a message to give credit or acknowledge someone else. You can view all messages that contain your name by clicking on the @yourname link in the navbar on the right.
- Retweets (RT) – The Retweet is an important part of Twitter. It shows respect and interest in someone else’s post by copying their tweet and pasting it into your message bar with “RT @kristingentry” at the beginning (giving that person credit for the original post).
- Direct Message (DM) – This is a private messaging option, but is only available if that person is following you (it doesn’t matter if you’re following them).
- Favorites – If you come across a tweet you want to save, hover your mouse over the tweet and you’ll see a little star; click on the star and it will move into your Favorites file in the navbar on the right.
- Following – The stream of tweets you get comes from the people you are following. Follow your friends and family, and follow smart people you don’t know. You can find these people by seeing who your friends are following or by using a service like Twellow (http://twellow.com) which is like a yellow pages for Twitter and categorizes users by topic. Oftentimes, if you follow someone and they think your profile is interesting, they’ll reciprocate with a follow.
Here are the Keys to Success at Twitter
- Add value by holding great conversations
- Get great followers, which means be interesting and conversational (Zappos is a great example)
- Follow relevant people
- Reply to your @messages
- Make sure you are findable (if it’s a firm account, put the firm name in the “name” field instead of your name because people will search for your company)
- Don’t get overwhelmed and/or spend too much time on Twitter. The average number of tweets per day is only 4.22.
Are you getting excited yet? Get moving, because there are two more blogs to come this week on Twitter; Intermediate and Advanced User information. So stay tuned!
If you plan to make the leap (or already have but are quickly seeing how complicated 140 characters can be), I recommend buying The Twitter Book by Tim O’Reilly and Sarah Milstein. It retails for $19.99 but you can find it on Amazon for under $14.
