by Jamie Birch from Jeb Commerce (@jamieEBirch) on Twitter.
I’ve found myself becoming increasingly more organized in my “Twitterating” (you can use that) the past month or so. When I first joined the Twitternation, I was, like others, skeptical and at times annoyed by the service. But since starting my own agency, I’ve become more engaged in Twitter and found one way to broaden your reach, identify and work with new partners, and connect with potential new clients. It’s now become a vital piece of my business and I think it can become the same for you. It’s a concept that is very basic and has been around forever – help others. There is my tip for you.
Ok, I have a little more than that. I use two things, one application and one service, that allows me to identify individuals that are having trouble with items that I feel I can help them with, and relate to my business, and alert me to their questions they post within Twitter: Tweetdeck and TweetLater.com.
There have been much discussion on how to use TweetDeck, so I’ll focus on TweetLater.com. TweetLater.com is a tool used to increase your productivity within the Twitter service. It has several functions, but the one I use most is the alert system. It works very much like Google Alerts and I have my alerts set to once every hour. Every hour, TweetLater.com sends me a report that includes any tweets that contain the words or phrases I set it to. An example of that alert, via email, is below:
The concept is this; Twitterers often use Twitter to find others that can help them with a problem they are encountering at that moment in time. I have often used it when having trouble with more advanced WordPress functions and other technical problems. I’ve also used it when trying to find a dentist or good place to eat in my town of Coeur d’Alene Idaho. People are using this service to solve problems. You identify who is having trouble with issues you can solve, then you do your best to help them. You often find customers and business partners simply by being a good netizen and helping others.
So here is how I use it:
- Identify search terms that Twitters would most likely use as a question, or frustration, in the field in which you operate. For example, if you sell hard to find Chevy truck parts, your search terms may be terms like: ’72 blazer”, “transmission on 65 chevy”, or “hard to find chevy”. If you are sell an education DVD for children, you may use search terms such as “home schooling ideas” or “tutoring children”. If you are a Wordpress developer, what types of questions would people tweet that you solve?
- Create a TweetLater.com account.
- Set up your search terms within the alerts section of TweetLater and set your alert notification time. I’m pretty active online and use an assistant to help me go through all the tweets, but timely response to questions is important.
- Wait for your alerts to come through.
- When you do get your alerts, go through them quickly and identify any that you can respond to and add value to the twitterer.
Some things to remember:
- If you can help someone, try to answer their question in 140 characters or less.
- Honestly try to help others, don’t just sell your service or product. If you help them out, they will not only visit your site, but tweet a thank you as well.
- Don’t spam – try to answer the question, don’t do anything more than that.
- Be timely – a response to someone’s question a day later is just way too late.
- Be authentic and transparent. Don’t misrepresent yourself.
@sizzler_chetan
Tweetlater is a good collection of services to make yourself more productive and involved in twitter. I have used that earlier and it works pretty well.
@ModernPainter
I’ll check it out thanks for the advice.
@brandonacox
One of the things I love about Twitter is how it encourages helping, responding, and answering. Cool method for getting it done!
@mark shaw
As always a great article on how to get the most from using Twitter. I am always amazed at the number of direct welcome messages that I get, asking me to look a their website / blog / ebook etc… If you walked up to a complete stranger in the street, would you ask them to check out your site etc… No of course you would not.. so why do people do it online…
You are right. people try and sell their wares far too quickly without developing any realationship first.. a sure fire way to get people to stop following you..My tip to everyone would be…When Twittering Be: informative, interesting,unusual, personal, engaging,considerate, respectful, knowledgeable & promotional.
thanks
Mark
@laurenpolinsky
And what I really love about TweetLater is that I can schedule in advance all of my tweets. Since I run a retail business, I can coordinate multiple accounts to do the “spam” that is a necessary evil for any retail business. But I can also keep my business Twitter account a personality – commenting in real time on current events – while I’m in the office. I think TweetLater gives a healthy balance between what has to get done and the original intent of Twitter.
@mattlawton
I’ve been using tweetbeep again after trying out twilert as well. I think all tools have a little way to go to be able to detect certain human nuances and truly be time savers, but they can definately throw up opportunities.
@danielando
Jamie
Great article and I have just set up some Keyword Alerts to see how it goes…One Question though..
Can you remove the keywords alerts that you enter?
Cheers
Daniel
@JamieEBirch
Daniel,
Yes you can. At any time just login to your account and remove any of the terms you are following.
Please please please stop combining “Twitter” and “Tweet” with other words. Just stop now.
And please shut this site down immediately.
Thanks, just had to get that off my chest.
@ppmartin
Thanks, Darren, for this interesting post.
Some of TweetLater’s functions (concerning notably auto-follow, /-greetings and /-unfollow) are similar to those of SocialToo, but not the keyword search / reporting function.
I will give a try.
@thebenchs
Interesthing but nice post.
@eJams
I’m always looking for a productive and honest way to find folks on twitter. I think I’ll give this a try this weekend. Thanks!
@phaoloo
I find it very useful like Google Alert. I just ask a question, then a tweeple answers me and gives me advices which help me solve the problem. I then follow him.
Twitlater is good tool for making our selves more involvement in twitter. It works well in my twitter page.