Twitip

by Aaron Zitzer of Tweamer – Follow him @azitzer

Dozens of articles have been written on how to use Twitter to find a job. A few entertaining articles (The Top 10 Tweets To Get You Fired) have covered how to lose a job with Twitter. But what if you have a job (like most of us) that you like (hopefully like most of us) and you just want to protect it and get ahead? Yes, Twitter can help us too.

What Needs Fixing?

The best place to begin your plan to ‘get better at my job by using Twitter’ is to look at your past employee reviews. These will highlight your strengths and the areas where your manager would like to see improvement.

Start by writing down the skills or attributes that you’d like to improve. That’s not necessarily the full picture though. How can you make sure that you’re considering and optimizing all the different aspects of your job?

Many companies use the ‘Balanced Scorecard‘ approach when it comes to strategic planning and management. In a nutshell, the Balanced Scorecard says that there are four areas that need to be tracked to ensure a successful company: Financial, Customer, Internal Processes and Learning & Growth.

We can use these same categories to plan and monitor our individual strategies for success. In fact, you may have seen the categories of the Balanced Scorecard already because companies that have adopted the method often use the same categories during the employee review process.

Financial

“What is needed to help the business grow & allow the company to re-invest?” At its most basic level, Financial objectives can be boiled down to two main themes: increasing revenue and decreasing costs.

Depending on your role, you’re visibility on these issues will vary. Try brainstorming around the two main themes as it pertains to your role. There will be a few where Twitter can definitely come in handy. Here are some examples to get you going:

• Increasing Revenue
  • Search Twitter for users who are complaining about your competitors and funnel them to your sales team as potential leads.
  • Run a contest where your existing users can win something by promoting your products to their followers to attract new prospects.
  • Offer ‘Twitter Exclusives’ to encourage new and existing customers to buy
• Decrease Costs
  • Support customers who are having issues with your company – reduces customer support costs and may help prevent the customer going to a competitor
  • Use Twitter to find the best prices and deals on the products and services that your company uses (look at your costs) – travel, hotels, office supplies, consultants and service providers, computers, etc.

Customer

“What do your company’s customers need and expect to help reach your financial objectives?”

This is an area where Twitter performs incredibly well and the strategies can be applied to just about any industry or region. First, listen to your customers, your potential customers and your competitors’ customers. What are they saying about your product or your company? What are the positives? The negatives? What are they asking for or need (i.e. what’s missing?)

Many Twitter tools allow you to track tweets that include keywords or #hashtags. Set up searches that include your company name, your product name, or phrases like “I wish”, “any suggestions”, or “recommend” along with a keyword related to your product or service. You’ll be amazed what insights you can quickly gather about your customers, their needs and their likes and dislikes.

You’ll also want to follow your competitors and the thought leaders in your industry to see what they are saying. By following your competitors you’ll identify new features, functions and services that they are providing.  You can often start to see what’s important to them and possibly even use that information to determine what direction they’re taking their product or service.

Another way to get competitive information is to listen to what their users are saying. This is a great way to get the dirt on your competitors.  What are customers complaining about? Can you use this to your advantage?

Depending on your role, you’ll probably want to focus on specific aspects of your customers, but having a strong understanding of your customers is important for just about every position in a company. If you can’t act on the information, simply passing it along to the right individual or team can help to raise your visibility and value within the organization.

A deep understanding of your customers and the competition can only have positive effects. You’ll be empowered to make more informed decisions. You’ll also be able to actively engage in more discussions around the company and you’ll demonstrate a commitment and high level of interest in your company’s success.

Internal Processes

“To satisfy our customers and other stakeholders, what processes do we need to excel at?” The internal processes that are most relevant to you will depend on the industry you’re in and your specific role within the company.  Start by finding and following some people that are in similar roles. Listen and learn how they approach the issues that you have to manage. Be on the look-out for ways to streamline processes and gain efficiencies.

If you don’t know of any people off hand, LinkedIn is an excellent resource. Search on a job title and you’ll probably find hundreds of people. Sort them based on the criteria you choose then start looking at some profiles. More and more users are including their Twitter account information in their LinkedIn profile. If you find a particularly interesting user who doesn’t have a Twitter account in their profile, you can always try a People search in Twitter.

Besides following people specific to your role, there are some general processes that we should all handle well to be successful. One of my favorites is called Getting Things Done (GTD). If you aren’t familiar with it I highly recommend that you check out the book by David Allen.

As the tagline says, GTD is “The Art of Stress-Free Productivity.” Anyone can apply the principles to get more done. Fast Company has dubbed the author “the personal productivity guru.” He’s had a number of follow-up books, he offers seminars, and he recently joined Twitter! @gtdguy He’s definitely one to follow and there are GTD coaches on Twitter as well. The #GTD tag gets quite a bit of use too so set it up in your Twitter tool of choice to receive tips on improving your productivity.

Other GTD Coaches on Twitter:
@GTDCoachMichael and @GTDCoachKelly

Learning & Growth

“What do we need to know in order to sustain our ability to achieve our vision?” Everything up to this point has been about making the most out of the situation you’re already in. Think of Learning & Growth as your continuing education requirement. What are the skills that you’ll need to maintain your edge , stay ahead of the competition and deliver extraordinary experiences for your customers?

The strategy that I recommend here is to find and follow the thought leaders in your industry (take a look at the speakers at conferences, people quoted in industry publications, etc.) and users that are one or two levels above you (they don’t have to be at your company). If you are an executive at your company, find and follow people in similar roles at larger organizations. You can use the LinkedIn strategy described earlier to find these people.

By tracking the topics that are important to them, you’ll uncover the skills that you may want to pick up. You’ll also stay on top of the trends in your market. Implementing these tactics should reduce the chance that you’ll need Twitter to find a job. Instead, you can use it to announce your new promotion!