5 Tips on When to Tweet
The idea of strategically timing your tweets is an idea to consider. The idea is simple: tweet when your audience is online. Tweets can quickly become old news, so it sounds logical to tweet your key messages at optimal times of the day.
Here are 5 tips on how to strategically time your tweets:
1. Tweet at the “all respected 9am”
9am seems to be golden hour for tweets, with the idea that you want to get your message from coast to coast, across North American and also dabble in the UK. Why? Well the West Coast peeps are just getting to work, it’s lunch time on the East Coast, and its 5pm in the UK.
2. The 9am-3pm window
According to sysomos the bulk of Twitter activity happens between 9am and 3pm. For Calgary social media users, the most tweets go out between 9am and 5pm, check out Mack. D. Male’s Calgary stats.
3. It you want to be ReTweeted shoot for 4pm
According to FastCompany post tweets at 4pm (Friday is the most RT’d day) for a higher chance of being RT’d, Monday is the worst – each day up until Friday gets better and better – so shoot to post mid and late weekdays.
4. Go against the trend, broadcast with less competition
If you are the type to buck against the norm you can take the above advice according to stats, or you can do it differently than everyone else. If most tweets are going out from 9am onwards, try throwing in some early morning tweets before Twitter streams get overwhelmingly full.
5. Or decide that this is all bull****.
Ignore all of the above stats and post when thoughts pop into your mind. There are many ways to successfully build your brand online, the most important way is to be online, if you can get stratetegic about it and tweet at optimal times then capitalize away. If this all too much for you, then ignore the above and continue to get your message out at anytime of the day that suits your fancy – you can still be successful.
My overall recommendation is to prepost the “important tweets” regarding promotions, events and blog posts at optimal times of the day, then spread your spontaneous tweets out during the rest of the day when it feels right, at any time of the day. Using hashtags, mentioning twitter handles and building a relevant following will help your randomly times messages be successful.
If you want to pre-post tweets check out a www.hootsuite.com – it allows you to set up future pending tweets. I use it, and love it – and it does a lot more than just prepost tweets.
Read MoreEnsuring Your Social Media Efforts Achieve Results
Social Media Managers can produce a return on investment to the companies they represent online.
Severals ways to improve the success of your organization’s social media efforts:
INTEGRAL TEAM PLAYER
- Ensure the individuals running the social media platforms are an integral part of your sales and marketing team. The SM team needs to understand what customers you are on the hunt for, what profitable business is and what the goals of the sales and marketing team are. Include the SM team in sales and marketing related meetings, this should be an obvious thing to do if you have secured the right individuals on your SM team. The SM team should have sales experience and understand the organizations sales process.
SETTING CLEAR GOALS
- Set quantifiable goals that can be achieved online so the teams efforts are always focused on end results. Goal Examples: Securing 5 new customers, up selling 2 customers, increasing attendance at events by 5%
CONSISTENT REPORTING
- Produce consistent and timely reports that monitor all goals and all efforts online. Reporting will help your organization evaluate if the online efforts are creating the needed results. The reports will also help the SM team adjust and refocus when needed.
Shannon Bowen-Kelsick (sbk)
Twitter: @sbkelsick
contact me: sbk@sbkelsick.com
Social Media and Politics – Barb Higgins For Mayor
On July 28, 2010 Barb Higgins, an iconic journalist for CTV, announced she will run for Mayor of Calgary.
A video posted on YouTube may indicate that Barb intends to use social media as a platform to inform Calgarians about her political views: http://bit.ly/cjPEiK.
Barb just started up a Twitter account as well: http://bit.ly/c3HHDb. So far she has 5 tweets… not spectacular but it looks like she is starting to use the platforms that could start to broadcast her campaign. Too bad she did not create her accounts before accouncing her mayor candidacy, it takes a lot of effort to get momentum on social media platforms like Twitter. She could be very successful online and in the election if she is able to quickly enable her volunteers (she is currently seeking campaign volunteers).
Her social media stats as of July 31st are:
- Facebook “Likes” : 340 (http://bit.ly/a5qolj)
- Twitter Followers: 348 (http://bit.ly/cjshU2)
- YouTube Channel Views: 346 (http://bit.ly/cjPEiK)
- LinkedIn connections: 47 (http://linkd.in/9Icamc)
Anduro Marketing was watching the mayoral race’s social media stats, but they haven’t been updated since June 15th – but it’s still worth a look: http://www.anduro.com/calgary-mayor-race.html
Social media can be one of the best ways to engage with people, and share information, like where a candidate stands on an issue – a platform candidates should put a lot of focus on.
Will the candidate with the most Facebook likes win the campaign? To be continued…
Shannon Bowen-Kelsick (sbk)
Twitter: @sbkelsick
contact me: sbk@sbkelsick.com
Twitter Counter – How Can It Help You?
Do you want to see your history of followers and your future forecast of followers? Go to www.TwitterCounter.com – you can see your tweeting statistics over time.
Competitor Research
You can also see anyone else’s stats – even your competitors – quite interesting if you are doing some research. Some clients that are considering different Marketing avenues feel a medium like Twitter will take up too much time and not have enough return. Although I believe you should focus more on what your doing than always worrying about your competitors – you should have an idea of what their business models look like – investigate what your industry and competitors are doing – Twitter Counter can definitely help with that.
Twitter Rank
Always wanted to know how you stack up on Twitter? You can check out your popularity via the Twitter Rank on Twitter Counter.
Premium Dashboard
Of many features and offerings of Twitter Counter is the “Premium Dashboard”. This paid service allows you to see stats on multiple Twitter account stats. These types of reports could be very useful in presenting your Marketing efforts and the some of the ROI of your Twitter Activity. Management may be drawn to these types of charts and the future projections it enables you to view, share and analyze.
Understand what you are doing on Twitter, see you stats, and know where you are going – Twitter Counter may be able to help with that!
Shannon Bowen-Kelsick (sbk)
Twitter: @sbkelsick
contact me: sbk@sbkelsick.com
Is Your FACE Important To Your Blogging and Tweeting Success?
Is it important to put a face and a personality to my business and blog? Should I use a logo or picture for my profiles on Blogger and Twitter?
The word on Twitter is that it is highly recommended to have a picture on your profile – and that if you don’t people won’t trust you as much as they would with a real profile picture along side your name.
So personality and your mug shot do count right?
I often feel the need to like the author of the blog that I am following. And I have found myself straying away from blogs where I am beginning not to like the person – even though these people have very good blogs with very relevant and useful information.
Getting people to like you is important for your blog
I have felt a bit special when Mitch Joel (Six Pixels of Seperation @mitchjoel) sent me a DM (direct message on Twitter), and when Liz Strauss (www.successful-blog.com @lizstrauss) mentioned (thanked) me on Twitter for mentioning her articles and blogs – I even sent her a message asking what time is a good time to post blogs – and she replied (to little old me!) quite quickly. I don’t think I would have had that interaction without Twitter.
And what that interaction does is make me feel closer to Liz and Mitch, it makes me like them more, and it makes me more loyal to thier brand, and yes I feel that I like Mitch and Liza as people, even though I have never met them – I like their brand.
Social Media has changed the way we commit to brands. The shift in branding has put faces to brands and accessibility to these people that makes us feels like you can reach out and touch them.
So do we want our customers or fans to feel like they can reach out and touch us? (you know what I mean!). That is what Social Media is all about today.
Yes you can build a business and a brand that is at an arms length from customers, but if you are embracing social media as a marketing tool let down your guard and let people get to know you.
Mixing our personalities with our online brand
It feels imposturous not to inject personality into my blog, as I type along censoring out anything that relates to my family, or my “business learnings” (aka: failures), or what I am wearing while blogging. Would you discredit me because I am writing this in sweatpants while drinking orange juice from a short yellow kids cup? I sure hope not!
Some may believe that your personality is your brand. So here’s to embracing our personalities and injecting them into our blogs. Don`t be shy – people might just like us.
Shannon Bowen-Kelsick (sbk)
Twitter: @sbkelsick
contact me: sbk@sbkelsick.com
Don’t Hate Me Because I Tweet
A Change In Culture: Getting Used To And Appreciating The Use Of Mobile Technology
I had to laugh at a Tweet Chris Brogan (@chrisbrogan co-author of Trust Agents) had a week or so ago. He is a man who has made a very successful career sharing his thoughts about business development and customer service – and how technology and the internet enables us to do that. He Tweets alot, and has over 115,000 followers. He tweeted that he was in a coffee shop, working on his mobile, when an older gentlemen looked at him and said something like “is there no limit anymore!” obviously frustrated with him punching away on his mobile.
But little did this gentleman know that Chris was actually working.
Sure he may have been “just” giving a shout out to a friend, or letting us know how CES was going. But this is all work as he is creating his loyal tribe of followers.
I often wonder what people are thinking when I am walking and typing away on my mobile – do they think I am crazy? Do they think I am just sending notes to my friends? Or do they realize that I am actually working – and working very hard?
Some interesting numbers:
- There are 4,100,000 million active mobile phones in the world (ranking: China, India, US, Russia, Brazil)
- 2.3 billion text messages are sent each day
- Standard Life in the UK changed out worker laptops to Blackberrys
- There are, on average, 357 texts in one month versus 204 phone calls
Mobiles are a vital piece to all businesses and non-profits today. Organizations that are embracing the technology are benefiting from it. Those organizations that are hesitant due to a misunderstanding or fear of the additional costs are loosing ground quickly.
When I got my first Blackberry I had no clue what I was going to use it for, I already had a cell phone that I barely used from my employer. I just knew that I needed a smart phone because I was missing out on a community of conversations and connections.
It was one of the smartest purchases I have made. I am more upto speed on the web and new technology than I have ever been – which is very important to my business. And my smartphone has positively affected my stream of business, allowing me to grow my network and connect with clients and peers.
So the next time you see young kids “playing” on their mobiles or adults in coffee shops “texting”, stop for a moment and consider they may be doing something very very productive, appreciate the culture change mobiles are creating – it is very interesting, positive, and it sure can be fun!
Shannon Bowen-Kelsick (sbk)
Twitter: @sbkelsick
contact me: sbk@sbkelsick.com
References:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_mobile_phones_in_use
- http://www.blackberry.com/newsletters/connection/business/i709/standard_life.shtml