A friend, very confused about Twitter, asked me how I manage my time on it. I told her about a little process I go through that helps keep me on the right track. And thought I’d share it with my community. Nothing profound, but maybe a few of you might find it helpful. So, this is for my friend. Hope this helps!
Randomly, once a week, I go through and organize a full day’s tweets into three simple categories: sharing (when I promote someone else’s work for the benefit of my community), conversation (when I am just chatting with other folks), and “ME” (when I promote my events, my blog posts, my services, etc.).
My analytical process is quite simple – you know, for a guy like me tabulating results in a moleskin. But here is the goal – and your target – for this exercise:
No more than 10% of the total tweets should go in the “ME” category.
If your “ME” percentage is higher than 10%, you are probably not utilizing Twitter effectively. And yeah, I’ve heard all the talk about everyone using it differently, what works for one doesn’t necessarily work for the other, etc..
I say hooey. If you are conversing with people and learning how you can help them and sharing valuable content with your community, then you are on the right track. Whether you are a person, a brand, or a business, or all of the above.
FULL DISCLOSURE: I just did a quick analysis on my Twitter profile from yesterday. Which showed 13% of my tweets sharing other’s work, 74% of my tweets conversing with people, and 13% of my tweets promoting something of mine, in this case, yesterday’s radio show. A quick review of yesterday’s numbers tells me I need to simply share more content from other’s work, and I will get the “ME” number under 10%. Easy.
If your “ME” number is consistently higher than 10%, here are some things to think about:
- You need to come to grips with the fact that marketing is two-way, a conversation, a dialog. Understand this, and treasure this opportunity, and you will no longer struggle with something like Twitter.
- It is actually possible to get to know someone on Twitter. Just decide to engage in a conversation. Ask about their kids. Ask about their favorite music. And ask about their business, not because you want to sell them something, because you really are interested in knowing.
- Celebrate the tools that allow the sharing of other people’s work, such as TweetMeme. They make it so easy. You have NO excuses.
- Do your best to concentrate on “REAL” interaction. Don’t focus on building up impressive amounts of followers, and don’t automate responses to people. You don’t play a recording at a face-to-face networking function, and you don’t (you better not) walk around to everyone at an event and give a business card to all guests – hoping someone will call.
So what do you think? Is 10% too high? But honestly, if you can manage a “ME” number of 10%, that’s a good start. I welcome additional thoughts…
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[photo from drp on Flickr]
