Twitter for Dummies (33 page)

Going Transparent

Transparency is a crucial marketing buzzword for some businesses and a scary reality for others. Lest you think we’re asking you to live out that unpleasant dream where you forget to wear your pants to school, relax. Transparency doesn’t require exposing company data to corporate spies or baring your soul for the Internet. More than anything else, it simply means being honest, disclosing your biases, admitting to mistakes, and not trying to force your message and spin on everyone all the time.

Although many Twitter users find themselves becoming more casual in their use of the service over time, you need to find your own personal comfort level between acting like a real person and over-sharing. After you find that line for yourself, your business, and your employees, being genuine and transparent on Twitter becomes second nature. Transparency fosters trust and relationships. It’s no secret — people like to work with people they like.

Here’s how to achieve transparency:

Release control.
Stop worrying about what might happen to your brand. Instead, listen to what your customers are trying to tell you and respond to that feedback. The truth is, you haven’t been able to control your message for a while now: You might just not have known it. For example, look at the hashtags
#motrinmoms
and
#amazonfail
. In the former example, painkiller brand Motrin put out an online ad campaign that targeted mothers; it failed spectacularly when real moms took offense at its content. They used Twitter to express their anger and ultimately get the campaign suspended. The Amazon Fail incident happened when books pertaining to gay and lesbian themes were suddenly pulled from the online retailer’s bestseller lists. Again, Twitter users smelled something fishy and instantly started spreading the word. Both companies learned from going through this process that a better Twitter listening practice would have helped them address concerns early and prevent a conflagration.

Admit to problems.
When you acknowledge that your business and you occasionally have rough patches, you can form stronger, more genuine connections with your community. That kind of open disclosure has limits when it comes to some professions. Obviously, people in the legal and medical professions, as well as government agencies, have to restrict and curtail their Twitter use because of privacy issues. But for most businesses, honesty is the best policy.

Reach out continually.
Don’t stop seeking out the customers who are talking about you (you can find them by conducting regular Twitter searches; see Chapter 9) and reaching out to them. That personal touch goes very far in establishing and maintaining a positive perception of your business or brand.

Be proactive.
If you’re engaged with the community in a genuine way, people forgive most mistakes. Twitter’s community is pretty cooperative, and if you embrace it, you can be rewarded with unexpected benefits like loyalty, advocacy, and even organic, voluntary promotion of you and your work.

But, What If My Employees . . .

Like with any new tool, business owners often feel some uncertainty and concern about how to manage employees so that they don’t waste time or make costly mistakes when using Twitter. Remember to apply common sense and manage based on behavior and results, not just specific tools. Your existing guidelines about e-mail, blogs, commenting on Web message boards and forums, and even conversations with outside individuals cover any concerns that you have about your employees’ use of Twitter.

That said, it is important to take heed that information spreads fast on Twitter, and that Twitter is a very open and searchable public forum. Errors can — and will — go farther, faster, so the exercise of common sense is in order.

Before you start using Twitter for your business, provide staff with guidance on how to use it and what to be cautious about. Twitter is extremely new to many people, and they may not yet be familiar with just how public and open it is. Definitely set a few ground rules to help avoid common mistakes. You can simply write up a one-or two-page set of reminders or direct employees’ attention to the parts of your existing HR policy that cover public communications.

Make the guidelines basic, clear, and easy to follow. Here are some thoughts to get you started:

Remember that if you wouldn’t say it in front of your parents, kids, or boss, perhaps you shouldn’t say it on Twitter.

If you do something confidential at a company, keep private information under wraps. Respect clients’ privacy, as well as your company’s.

Respect the company brand when you’re out at
tweetups
(Twitter-based meet-ups) and events. Anyone can get quoted at any time.

Perception is reality. Even if the complaint you tweet right after a client phone call wasn’t about the client, it can be misconstrued that way.

Manage your time on Twitter well so that it doesn’t interfere with your workload.

Unless your business has other issues that come into play (for example, if you work for a law firm or government agency), these basic rules should be enough to keep people from abusing their time on Twitter. Customize them however you want.

Twitter can be an extremely valuable tool when it comes to building your professional team and bringing them together. You can set up meetings, tweet notes, meet customers, and more — and your staff can connect more easily by using Twitter, as well. The more of a team you can build, the better you can weather any economic buffering.

Sharing Knowledge

You can also use Twitter to share knowledge, collaborate both inside the company and out, and gather business information and research. After you start to build a healthy network, you need to send out only a few tweets about your project, problem, or issue before people come out of the woodwork to try to help your business and you. If you haven’t been building your Twitter network, you may have to wait a while for this aspect of Twitter to become useful for you.

Say that you come up with a major presentation about what your company does or sells, but you need something to complete it, such as a chart or a link to a relevant study. Twitter can probably help you find that missing piece. People on Twitter usually offer a helping hand when it comes to knowledge sharing, collaboration, and information gathering, especially if you spend time interacting on Twitter and building your network. Avid Twitter users are all aware of the same thing: By helping out others, they can get a hand when they need it.

The very existence of this book is an example of Twitter bringing people together for knowledge sharing and collaboration. Laura got to know two Wiley employees on Twitter and in person at conferences, which led to a conversation about Laura writing
Twitter For Dummies.
Laura in turn had met Michael and Leslie via Twitter-related conversations and events, and they had all come to trust one another over time. We also reached out via our personal Twitter accounts and
@dummies
on Twitter to ask the broader Twitter community what they thought belonged in a book about Twitter. Moving forward, we’ll continue to listen and interact via the
@dummies
account, our Web site, and, of course, via the community at Laura’s Twitter-powered community startup
www.oneforty.com
.

Chapter 12

The Social Side of Twitter

In This Chapter

Using Twitter as a support system

Connecting with people

Making new friends

Deciding who to follow

Getting quick answers

Sharing information

Just as businesses can benefit from using Twitter to build goodwill, communicate with stakeholders, and establish personal relationships with customers (which we talk about in Chapter 11), the service can likewise be used by individuals to build strong social connections. Through these connections, one can tap a wealth of resources that were heretofore unavailable due to limitations of time or distance.

As we show in this chapter, your Twitter network can help in a myriad of ways that range from the prosaic (such as recommending a favorite pizza place in an unfamiliar town) to life-saving (coordinating disaster relief efforts in real time). We also go into detail about the social benefits of strong Twitter connections and provide tips for building and participating in a supportive Twitter community.

Using Twitter as a Support System

Most people don’t realize this, but Twitter is a support system for your support system. Twitter keeps you connected in real time with the people in your life, providing support to your support system itself.

Many users instinctively turn to their Twitter network when they need to commiserate over a loss for their favorite sports team, when they get a promotion or a new job, when they lose a loved one, or when anything else happens that they want to share with a supportive network of people.

Twitterers have used the service to help displaced families, victims of natural disasters, abuse victims, job-seekers, animals in need, and even researchers who need people to take part in focus groups. Twitter has also proved useful for couch-surfers, who have come to know interesting and accommodating people in different fields of expertise.

Because Twitter helps people get to know each other on a more personal level, new friends can successfully meet and interact with each other offline.

As always, exercise caution when meeting people for the first time. Meet them in a public place, like a cafe or restaurant, and if you can, bring another friend with you, so you’re not alone. Pay attention to your instincts — if something doesn’t feel safe, it probably isn’t.

For many, Twitter has replaced search-based electronic resources (such as Yahoo!, Live Search, or Google) and become their go-to place for help and support. Depending on the nature and the strength of your network, asking your friends on Twitter (both the ones you now have and the ones you’re making) for guidance or opinions can yield more detailed and varied advice and help than you might receive if you had turned to only your offline network.

Of course, Twitter isn’t meant to replace your offline network of lifelong friends and family — it’s a technology designed to enrich that network. While connecting with your friends on Twitter, you may meet new friends and start to get a better feel for the people (both new and old) whom you can trust.

Although Twitter is useful for supporting global causes and events, the most poignant uses of Twitter can just as easily be found in the simple ways that users help each other, one at a time, all day, every day.

Twitterers reach out to one other through the trials and annoyances of everyday life (such as not having enough quarters at a laundromat) to crises of every size and measure. Twitterers have been support networks when loved ones are in hospital, when couples divorce, when relationships break up, and more. When you use Twitter, your expressions of frustration and loss are often met with an immediate response. Twitter empowers humanity to act humanely.

Connecting with People

Because all Twitterers use the same toolset and (as far as Twitter is concerned) play on the same level, it is remarkably easy to connect with people on the service. The more people you connect with, the more your follower/following numbers go up, thereby increasing the breadth of your network to a sometimes embarrassingly large number of people.

Some Twitter users (and we won’t name names) are addicted to increasing their follower count and will use many tricks to artificially increase their number of followers. For more information, check out the sidebar “Gaming for followers,” in this chapter.

Anxious to have lots and lots of followers? First, it doesn’t matter as much as you might think. Second, be patient and build a network of actual connections, not collections of usernames and large follower numbers. It takes time for people to notice you; you’ll need to have posted a few updates or tweets first. But if you share posts that others find valuable (in other words, you write tweets that people find interesting or informative), your follower count will grow organically. Getting more followers may take a while, especially if you have esoteric interests, but having a following of attentive and interested listeners trumps having a large number of followers any day.

The first time you make a real, organic connection with a stranger on Twitter, it might feel a little weird, but it’s also a bit thrilling. Whether you do something as simple as get (or give) a much-needed answer to a question, connect for business, or bond over something fun (such as music or sports), you’ve just made your first Twitter-friend.

Twitter is based around people and their networks. These interpersonal networks are the most important aspect of this simple and (we admit) quirky service. Real connections power Twitter — those connections are the heartbeat of your Twitter community.

In its early stages, Twitter went through some serious technological growing pains while it got more popular, leading to significant site downtime and unacceptable levels of quality of service. But the power of the connections and the format of the service kept it going. Without that network of connectivity, no one who uses Twitter would have had the patience to not only stick around while the people behind the service worked out the kinks, but also to embrace the problems and create solutions.

One of the most common issues with Twitter during its early days was downtime — the server frequently became overloaded with too many users writing too many updates. Although users couldn’t access their Twitter accounts, the development team was nice enough to let you know what was going on: In place of whatever screen you expected to see, Twitter returned with a graphic of birds holding a whale out of the water. The picture and euphemism for Twitter down time was born: the Fail Whale, pictured in Figure 12-1.