About six months ago I realised I wasn’t using Twitter or Facebook effectively. For a start, I was using them in exactly the same way. Every TWEET I sent became a status update and my networks were the same. Friends that were non-work related aor non-twitter usesrs became confused by some my my tweets.
So, I decided to develop my own mini-strategy for social media use. I thought of Twitter as online equivelent of the business networking event – sure there may be some refreshments and some banter, but really you’re all there on business. Facebook, on the other hand, I saw as the works night out. Sure, some shop gets talked but, primarily, you’re there for a social purpose.
I started splitting my tweets and status updates using Ping.FM. This meant I could send an email from my phone, premixing “@fb” or “@tt” depending on whether I wanted it to go to facebook or Twitter or, on occasion, leaving it off entirely and letting it go to both.
My next observation was about use of Twitter. It is essential that Twitter reflects your personality and isn’t just “shop” tweets, but at the same time overuse with uniteresting tweets can cloud it and put people off following you or, at least, reading them. This came to light when I missed a really interesting, useful, work related Tweet, because the same person had tweeted several times that hour about more menial things. So, I tried to do my “personality” tweet once or maybe twice a day (at the start and end) and only add other personal Tweets in as “@ replies” or when something happened that I thought others may genuinely be interest in. On the whole, the personal tweets ended up as facebook statuses.
Interestingly, this didn’t mean I tweeted less. The chart shown here (from Twanalyst) shows that, wheile there was initially a drop, the picked up again fiarly quickly. (The second drop is since the birth of my daughter, where I have stopped many weekend and evening tweets).
I feel that this makes my tweets more readable and, certainly, I feel from feedback that peopel are paying more attention to them. Additionally, my facebook activity has picked up too, as my updates there are more geared up to what facebook should be about.
The lesson I’d take from this are these five points. Whether applied to your personal, professional or corporate social media usage, I think these are my golden rules for using the media effectively.
- Use each media separately. That doesn’t mean you can never import tweets or delicious bookmarks into facebook, just that you shouldn’t ALWAYS do it. Recognise the strengths of each medai (ie Facebook for social, twitter for networking)
- Keep “on message”. Try and avoid “what I had for breakfast” tweets, unless breakfast is your business
- Use Re-Tweets / FB Shared links when others in your audience may be interested – not as vanity tweets for them
- It’s OK to Tweet/FB MORE, but do it targeted using DMs and @Replies. Don’t overload your feed with Tweets or shares however useful they are
- Respond to people who respond to you. Follow less people if this means you can do this more.
