Starting to Get Twitter’s ROI

So I took the plunge on Twitter to better understand its ROI… Started following people I have been follwing via online marketing sites, newsletters, feeds, forums, etc. for years via Twitter last night.

Twitter was playing a bigger part in conversations with clients, so I thought it was time to jump into the birdbath rather than watch from the side. [Cringing at my metaphor but not enough to remove it. ;-)] As with most things the practice is more enlightening than the theory…

Been following Twitter’s growth as part of my siysphean efforts to stay on top of the ever-evolving world of online marketing for years. But I hadn’t done much more than set up an account and follow a couple of copywriters I admire. Until last night…

Interesting!

Simply following a large group of SEO and online marketing “gurus” has generated a lot of followers for @southerncontent. Generated a lot of followers and got me a lot more energised about the potential value of Twitter for building community around a brand.

I remain a underwelmed about the insight into the minuate of people’s lives. It’s gonna require discipline to ignore all the help people’s tweets about useful resources though. And I can see how quickly a compelling message can spread in a way that countless articles and webinars on Twitter never really captured.

Still stand by my earlier view that Twitter doesn’t fit into everyone’s online marketing mix. But I can see a definite ROI on Twitter activity for those sites/businesses for whom it does fit.

Follow me www.twitter.com/southerncontent. I’ll try to share as many of the internet marketing goodies I find as possible.

Twitter Just Went Mainstream in NZ

Your turn, Twitter. You know a website, Web application or Web service has gone mainstream when it appears on TV current affairs shows.

Tweeting on Twitter just became mainstream or early mainstream. No idea what that means? You’ll learn.

Twitter is particularly big in the UK. Lily Allen just started tweeting. Stephen Fry is tweeting to the point that people following him think he may be addicted. Jonathan Ross is constantly referring to it on his resurrected BBC Radio2 show… Econsultancy.com is currently running an experiment with a Twitter feed on their homepage…

But it is a worldwide phenomenon with NZ a little behind the times.

From Early Adopters & Online Marketing “Gurus” to Early Evening Viewers

It’s the talk of online marketing circles, after being in the mix but not overly prominent for a couple of years. Many businesses are tweeting. And even crusty corporates have got in on it, presumably persuaded by their online marketing advisers.

But you know it has really gone mainstream when TV news catches on and profiles a site. So it was very interesting to see one of NZ’s two 7.00pm current affairs shows on the main networks allocating 6 or 7 minutes to Twitter tomorrow night.

Honeymooning on Mainstream Media

Facebook, the last social media phenomenon du jour, got the positive introduction a couple of years back. Now it’s more likely to get coverage related to privacy and copyright concerns.

Twitter, founded in March 2006,  is still in the “cool new thing”/”honeymoon” mainstream media phase despite the fact that it informed guesses put the number of users at 3.5-4.5 million users as long as last September.

Should you be Tweeting?

Short answer: not necessarily.

Not every business needs to be on Twitter. Offering regular insights into what is going on might not be a good fit for your business. And there is absolutely no point if your target market is likely to think a tweet is something that occurs in close proximity to the bird feeder hanging from the old oak at the bottom of the garden.

If your market is Web savvy, young, addicted/connected to their mobile phones… And if offering regular insight into what you do will build brand awareness/loyalty. If your brand is closely associated with a particular person… Consider it. It’s good enough for Richard Branson, Nasa, Jet Blue & Barack Obama; to name just a few celebs, politicians and brands tweeting…

Golden rule: as with all journal-type social media initiatives, do it regularly or not at all.

Update: after writing this yesterday I checked out RadioNZ… first topic on interview I listened to with US correspondent: Twitter and mundanities US senators were sharing via their Twitter accounts…

But, as I say, “early mainstream”: interviewer embarassed herself, while touting the fact that her show has a Twitter account, repeatedly saying Tweets were up to 140 words (rather than 140 characters) before her correspondent corrected her.

Life, Times and Blogging Best Practices

Ooops. 16 days & counting. Time flies when you should be blogging. What is blogging best practice, when comes to posting frequency?

It’s the first issue I raise when the subject of blogging comes up with clients. [With suitably serious look on face] “If you are going to do a blog, you need to be able to sustain it. If you can’t post consistently, then you’re better not starting.”… Um. Mea culpa.

But there is more to best practice than blogging consistently and frequently because, as Hayden Sutherland asserts in his excellent presentation on Corporate Blogging Best Practice posted on www.slideshare.net, “its [sic] not just a ‘Me Too’”.

If I were assessing my blog, as I assess clients’ blogs, I would be noting that leaving a new blog unattended for two weeks wasn’t a good idea.

Failing the best practice test

As it is almost always, it’s a case of “do as I say not as I do”. My goal with this blog was to blog at least three times a week… Well. At least 10 times a month. Again: “Ooops”! It is over two weeks since I last blogged.

What happened? Life happened.

[Warning: excuses of varying legitimacy follow.] It’s been a bad winter for bugs and littlies and toddlers are notoriously toxic. Jo (wife, partner, etc.) went to the doctor with a cough that had hung around for nearly a month and came back with a diagnosis of pneumonia. We flew in Grandmothers from various parts of the country but time became a precious commodity.

Then there was all the other work stuff, the Olympics, other bits and pieces that make us all time poor, the client who offered an opportunity to go heli skiing ;-)… I could and should have posted something. But I fell into the trap of being a little too wedded to a “value not frequency” based blogging strategy.

There is more to blogging best practice than frequency, though.

Listening to a couple of radio show panelists the other day, I nodded along as they agreed there was nothing worse than a blog where posts have a “posting because I should” feel rather than a “posting because I have something to say” feel.

I have already canvassed the ebb and flow of universal insight into web marketing and content. An ebb and flow that influences how often I post because I wait until:

• a) I find something interesting to post about
• and b) have something to say about that something.

Not a bad rule of thumb IMHO unless your blog is more about following/reporting the latest news. But don’t fall into the trap I fell into and set the “something to say” bar a little high.

Useful References For Developing a Blogging Strategy

As I fretted about my neglected blog I wondered what was the latest on blogging best practice when it comes to freqency. A bit of searching and reviewing revealed little that was new apart from Mr Sutherland’s aforementioned presentation. But its a presentation that offers a very useful guide to anyone developing a blogging strategy for their business. I, for one, have bookmarked and downloaded it.

Failing the “no just ‘Me Too’”, I can’t think of anything I would add to the presentation or dispute in it. I would, however, note that SMBs probably don’t have to deal with the corporate politics that can stymy a natural voice and remove the necessary edge from a blog. If you are looking for a set of guidelines for your business blog you may have found it:

The other useful guide/reference on the relationship between blogging frequency and having something to say is an old blog from my ex-boss Stephan Spencer. Stephan’s take on “Optimal blog posting frequency” is well worth reading.

Bottom line: Aim to post frequently — once a week is probably the minimum — but aim to have something to say when you post. The trick is to find the right mix and be consistent i.e. do as I say not as I do.