Remove Twitter Anxiety Now
July 27, 2009 at 7:32 am
Countless articles have been written in mainstream media about Twitter; some journalists love it, others hate it (or don’t get it?). Numerous discussions on LinkedIn, many self proclaimed ‘social media experts’ give seminars on how to Twitter. Even my 76 year old mother knows about it – God forbid she asks me to set her up with an account!
I believe that all this hype is putting pressure on business people about Twitter. I’m asked at least 5 times a week, “should we be on Twitter?”.
The best person to answer that is yourself.
Why don’t you have a listen to what’s being said on Twitter about you, your business, and your industry?
- If there’s a lot of talk, and you feel you have something to say, then get on Twitter. Set yourself up with an account and take part in the conversation.
- If there’s not a lot of talk, you’ve had a listen and put your fears to rest, so next time you read about Twitter you can salve your fears by knowing that you’ve had a look and it’s not for you.
One of the best applications I’ve come across recently for listening to Twitter is Twilert.
Twilert is a bit temperamental; I wouldn’t rely on it. I have searches set up for IKEA and I get about half of them.
The reason I like it is because it sends an email (at a frequency selected by yourself) with a summary of what’s being said on Twitter. It fits in with the email mindset that most corporates still hold. What I really like is that you can set it to monitor a specific geographic location. This means you can monitor the buzz in Ireland only, or UK, or the whole world if you wish – or even within a 5km radius of where are.
How To Set Up A Twilert
- Register on Twilert. It’s free.
- Once in, select the ‘advanced settings’ button under the main box:
- Type in the words you want to track. It’s a good idea to set up different alerts for your name, your company name, generic keywords relating to your industry, product names, competitor names, and any other ‘need words’ you come up with. By ‘need words’ I mean words that people would type when they need your product (they just don’t know it yet!).
- Select the frequency of send. You can even choose a time of day. I’d recommend mid afternoon so you have time to respond to any tweets on the same day if you want to.
- To limit the results to Irish-only buzz, type in your location under Places – make sure you type “Dublin Ireland” so you’re not stuck with that other Dublin in the US. Then select what radius you want. For all of Ireland, select “within 500km”.
- For this first raising of the periscope, let’s listen to everything. Later you can limit the results to positive or negative, or even asking a question. You may choose to set up separate alerts that get sent to different parts of your organisation, so that ‘asking a question’ tweets go to sales, ‘negative’ tweets go to customer service. But that will come later.
- Hit “Create A Twilert” and you’re done.
What You Can Do Now
- Shortly you will receive a Twilert in your inbox. This will show you all the mentions of your keyword in your specified location over the past 24 hours.
- I set up one using the keyword “eircom” just to see what people are saying. Predictably, it’s not all good:
- Click the links to visit the Twitter profile of who’s doing the talking (or tweeting).
- If you were eircom and you were using Twitter properly, you could be using Twitter in so many ways. Reputation management, sales, customer service. What do you think Ann Donnelly’s response would be if eircom tweeted her with a special offer to keep her business? I think she’d be bowled over. Vodafone Ireland is already using Twitter very effectively for just over a year now. Check their profile here.
Very quickly you will be able to decide if Twitter is a place you need to be.
It’s like blogging. When I’m doing blogging training, I make the point that before you set yourself up with a blog and start writing, it’s a good idea to first read blogs, comment a bit, and then go. By reading and commenting on blogs you are taking part in the conversation. And that is what blogging is. Therefore you are a blogger even before you get your own blog.
Similarly, with Twitter, you can listen and watch first before you jump in and set up an account and take part regularly. Adding Twitter to your communications mix does require commitment and resourcing, albeit nothing too onerous. My advice is to go ahead and have a listen. If you find your customers are on there talking about you, then get in touch and we can have a chat about the next steps for you.
Tags: buzz monitoring, twilert, Twitter
