The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success, 3rd Edition

Trinity Number Two—Microblogging (Twitter)

Everyone is talking about Twitter. Lady Gaga has more than 18.5 million followers and Justin Bieber has nearly 17 million followers. That’s more followers than the combined populations of Ireland, Norway, and Panama, each. Oprah has more nearly 9,000,000 followers. This is all reason enough to take Twitter’s capabilities seriously.

If you don’t fully understand microblogging (Twitter), and have begun using it, now is a good time to go back and read Chapter 13—Thumbs Up for Microblogging. As with the previous Trinity category, you need to get into the Five Ws: Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How, again.

The Who is who in your organization will be tweeting and managing your Twitter account. Microblogging also has a second who and that is, who is out there in your industry who is tweeting? Identify some of the thought leaders in your industry and follow them. See what they have to say. Look at the number of followers they have. Look at how many people are following them. Look at the frequency and the content of their tweets. Are they providing their customers with a good WIIFM or IDKT?

The What is, what are those leaders tweeting about? What do your customers want in their tweets? The Where? The Where is any place you can tweet: the office, the coffee shop, the airport, at home, but not while driving. . . .

The When is as often as you have good content. If you are going to use Twitter for business, please don’t tell me your plane is late, ...