Twitter for Dummies (29 page)

Linking to interesting articles changes the way that your Twitter audience perceives you. Remember, people follow you because you add value to their Twitter streams; but if you flood your stream with links that aren’t relevant to your audience, you may start to annoy some of your following. By adding a link to a tweet that you post, you draw attention to the targeted Web page, photo or video, and you’re implicitly endorsing it as a good use of your followers’ time. Abusing that assumption will erode the interest and trust your followers have in you and reduce the effectiveness of your network.

If you do a lot of linking, review Chapter 9 so that you can track links like a pro. By using tools such as bit.ly (
http://bit.ly
), you can find out which Twitter users are linking to the same articles, which is a great way to start a conversation.

Image is everything

Your update stream is by far the most important part of your Twitter profile. However, your profile’s presentation also needs to reflect something about you. In the same way that you wear a nice set of clothes to a job interview, you want to dress up your profile so that it reflects the image that you want to convey to the world.

Although you may have your update stream protected in your Twitter account’s settings, anyone in the world can view your Twitter profile (at
http://twitter.com/
yourusername
). Be sure that you’re comfortable with the world seeing whatever you put in your profile.

Whether you’re a business or a private citizen, your followers and potential followers react much more favorably if you include in your Twitter profile a photo of yourself and a link to something about you. People like to know who they’re talking to, and when you present an image that reflects who you are, other people become willing to be honest and open with you.

If you’re representing a large, iconic brand on Twitter, you can do your Twitter profile in your corporate colors. However, because Twitter’s strength is in personal connections, you need to have actual people representing your brand’s Twitter presence. Use a service such as CoTweet (
http://cotweet.com
), shown in Figure 10-6, to mark each tweet with its author, and in the 160-character bio on Twitter.com, let readers know who each set of initials belongs to.

Too many team members to list? You can show them off in your background graphic the way
@CoTweet
itself does. (
Note:
In the interest of full disclosure, Laura is an adviser for
@CoTweet
.) Check out Chapter 11 for more recommendations on the best ways for businesses to tweet.

Figure 10-6:
You can “sign” Tweets by author by using CoTweet.

Being genuine

Authentic people and businesses, using Twitter in a real and interactive way, can experience tremendous growth and return on investment from Twitter because they make real contributions and build up a rich base of trust, influence, and social capital. People respond much better to an authentic, human voice. They engage more closely because they feel comfortable responding, retweeting, and otherwise paying attention to the genuine voice. Bring some value to the twitterverse by adding your authentic contributions, whatever those may be.

For example, if you’re tweeting about politics, whether you’re a conservative, moderate, liberal, apathetic, or whatever, feel free to agree or disagree with someone — Twitter is, after all, a digital extension of real life, so if you want to engage in that type of dialog, be yourself. Don’t try to come off as something you’re not just to appeal to people.

If you’re representing a business or tweeting on behalf of your company, you probably want to avoid politics, religion, sex, and other hot-button topics, so as not to offend your potential customers.

Your update stream speaks volumes about you. Twitter is a network built on trust and relationships, and being insincere jeopardizes the quality and effectiveness of your network, both on- and offline. You lose some of that hard-won trust that you’ve been building since you joined Twitter.

Even though you want to be genuine and real at all times, remember that you can easily forget to be nice to people behind the safety of a monitor and keyboard thousands of miles away. Treat others with respect, as you hope to be treated, and you can have a positive online experience. Try not to engage in arguments over petty things — this behavior gets you branded as a troll, and people start to avoid you and stop taking you seriously. (Get the scoop on trolls in the sidebar “Don’t feed the trolls,” in this chapter.)

Evangelizing your causes

When you’re on Twitter as an individual, if you share a favorite cause or a local event in a way that makes it interesting to others, you’ll attract those with common interests. They may get involved and show support, and the more fellow twitterers know about you and about the things you have in common, the more connections and ideas will flow in your network.