21. Etiquette – MT = modified tweet. If you change someone’s tweets when you RT it, change the RT to MT

22. Etiquette – Thank followers for retweets. They don’t have to RT your stuff so be polite!

23. Don’t force engagement, take your time and be yourself. Anything fake will show

24. Person 2 Person: If your twitter @handle isn’t your real name, use your real name as your user name

25. Perspective: Does it REALLY matter who unfollows you? Don’t get hung up about it or use tracking tools

26. Think before you tweet. Seriously. Especially when angry/stressed – what would your audience think?

27. Be rounded. Make sure your tweets aren’t all about you – share, RT etc – people buy from (good) people

28. Don’t RT every nice tweet about you that you receive, it gets nauseating & looks desperate #moderation

29. Sure show off your latest product/photo – but do so in moderation. Multiple times a day = not cool

30. Don’t make your (business) twitter account private – it’s hard to build relationships with the door shut!

If you like them, why not share them… (Like it? Share it button! button to your left)

What’s your top twitter tip?

The final part of this series will be here tomorrow and don’t forget to read Part 1 and Part 2.

Jan

Image courtesy of flickr.com

The post 40 Top Twitter Tips – Part 3 appeared first on The Net Advantage.

11. Tweet little but often – most tweeters are creatures of habit & tend to tweet at the same time every day

12. Don’t use auto-DM’s – tweeting is about person to person not robot to person engagement

13. Only approx 15% of your followers are using twitter at any one time – so you can repeat (some) tweets

14. Be a good (relevant) retweeter if you expect to get any retweets yourself – it takes time

15. Too much noise in your twitter stream? Options – use a follower clean-up tool e.g. @twitcleaner

16. Only 2 minutes spare today? Build lists of your followers so you only see the most important tweets

17. Do you have a social media policy? If not, frankly, why not? Lots here http://bit.ly/y39JHb

18. Ask your followers what they want to see on your blog – answer their questions, not yours…

19. Stuck in a rut? If you usually tweet in the morning, mix it up & try the evening/weekend/afternoon

20. Extend your reach: always mention another person/business using their twitter name

If you like them, why not share them (Like it? Share it! button to your left);-)

What’s your top twitter tip?

Part 3 will be here tomorrow!

Jan

Image from Flickr.com

The post 40 Top Twitter Tips – Part 2 appeared first on The Net Advantage.

1. To drive people to your website/other online presence, be sure to add a web link in your tweet – make it easy

2. Make your tweets more retweetable – keep them to less than 120 characters so there’s no need to edit it

3. Use time wisely – why are you on Twitter & who are you trying to connect with? Spend your time with them

4. Spread out your ‘info’ tweets using a scheduling app such as @bufferapp to reach different audiences

5. What does your bio say about you/your business? Dry and dull or vibrant and approachable?

6. It’s called ‘social’ media – get social/engage, don’t bombard followers with business messages all the time

7. When did you last actively look for relevant followers? Go to twitter.com, ‘who to follow’ & get searching!

8. Use Twitter for lead generation – go to twitter.com/search & run advanced searches to find your target market

9. Use Twitter to develop media contacts – pretty much every journalist is here, find the ones for your industry

10. Add value to your tweets – add a reason to read a latest blog post/article, a title alone is often not enough

If you like them, why not share them (Like it? Share it! button to your left) …

What’s your top twitter tip?

Part 2 will be here tomorrow!

Jan

Image courtesy of swosh.com

The post 40 Top Twitter Tips – Part 1 appeared first on The Net Advantage.

These workshops will take place at the new training facility at The Academy, Shrewsbury.

The aim of these workshops is to provide advice and hands on training to allow businesses and organisations to maximise their return from Social Media, or get going with how to use each of the main sites more effectively, while applying a healthy dose of reality in terms of what is achievable in our busy business lives.

Each session stands by itself (but obviously we’d recommend you come to as many as you can to get the most benefit for your business!).

Full information on each workshop is available on the Shropshire Chamber website via the links below:

May 2nd 2012 – Building a Social Media Strategy
May 9th 2012 – LinkedIn
May 15th 2012 – Twitter – an introduction for business
May 23rd 2012 – Facebook – an introduction for business
May 30th 2012 – Blogging for Business
June 13th 2012 – Advanced Twitter
June 19th 2012 – Advanced Facebook
June 27th 2012 – Latest Social Media developments & top tips for Online Marketing success

Please note that first and final sessions are workshops, sessions 2 to 7 require a laptop to get the most out of the session. If you do not have one or cannot borrow one please let Shropshire Chamber know at the time of booking and we will do our best to ensure you have one.

If there are other workshops you would like to see us do, please let us know in the comments below and we’ll see what we can do.

I hope to see you at the workshops soon….
Jan

The post Social Media Workshops at Shropshire Chamber – Shrewsbury dates appeared first on The Net Advantage.

So, if you’re reading this in the hope I have the ‘get rich quick answer’, walk away now ….

Imagine the scene, I walk into a bar I’ve not been to before, I find the nearest chair to stand on, clear my throat and shout:

“Excuse me everyone, the name’s Jan Minihane, I do awesome social media advisory, training & mentoring – oh and I think I rock at speaking events too – I’ll be over at the bar if you fancy a chat”

I then follow that up by shoving my business card in everyone’s hands…

The response: Tumbleweed, quite a few rolled eyeballs and I become a social pariah in one fail swoop.

Twitter isn’t really much different to being in a new pub.

In a pub you would meet new people, have some polite conversations (let’s be honest, if you never talked to anyone in the pub you’d be the slightly strange guy parked at the bar that people weren’t sure about). Maybe at some point overhear someone mentioning about social media, so you go talk to them too.

Maybe a few visits to the pub later and you’ve had a few conversations and someone asks what it is that you do, so you talk about your business. A few weeks/months later and you get a call from said person wondering if you can have a meeting as maybe you have the right fit for their business.

Welcome to Twitter….

I’m not saying you can’t put out very focused business tweets, you can intermittently, as long as there is a lot of person to person engagement going on in between – earn your stripes and tweeters won’t mind the odd blog post, event promotion or your latest photo gallery.

Being a human on twitter, interacting at a very basic human level, being generous – that is what will win you business in the long-term. Don’t expect miracles overnight – you don’t visit a new local pub and expect to become trusted by everyone in there straight away, it takes months, even years.

Most people will check out your twitter profile before following you – if all you do is shout your wares, likelihood is they’ll go running for the hills. Social media users are savvier now; they want engagement and value, not noise.

Twitter, like all social networks, is hard work; don’t believe anyone who tells you otherwise. Full stop. It can also be very enjoyable but you have to be in it for the long haul, with a clear idea of what you’re trying to achieve.

What have been your experiences with different types of tweeters?

TTFN
Jan

Image courtesy of andrewhalcro.com

The post How you sell on Twitter (and in the pub) appeared first on The Net Advantage.