There are a lot of hep cats out there in the offline world, but they can be a bit quiet about sharing what they like with other people. Fortunately, there are huge flocks of rad birds online! Tweeting birds, actually. The kind that like to tweet all day about how many worm-selling websites they have ranking in the SERPs and enjoy retweeting the silly videos their bird friends sing about. It turns out that after a while, those bird friends can be pretty hard to get to join your flock! This week, Jen Lopez, our community manager, talks about how we managed to increase our total bird/Twitter followers by 250% to over 27,000 people.
Oh, and make sure to check out the surprise ending! Valentine's Day is coming up soon, you know...
Video Transcription
Hi, SEOmoz fans. I'm Jen Lopez. I'm a community manager here at SEOmoz. Today I'm going to be talking about how we increased our Twitter followers by over 250% in the past year.
Now, I know the question is going to come up that we're not supposed to care about the actual numbers. It is not about the numbers. It's about the actual influencers and that sort of thing. That is true. It is very true. But you still, in order to get more influencers and in order to get more people retweeting your stuff, you need to get more followers. So, we're looking at the percentage that we increased and not necessarily the exact numbers.
Before I really get started I should tell you that when I first started taking over the Twitter account, my biggest goal was simply to beat Rand in followers. We started and the SEOmoz account had something like 4,000 followers. That was maybe a year and a half year ago. Today we have almost 28,000. That was because I was bound and determined to beat Rand who had a good 15,000 more followers than we did. So let me tell you exactly how we did that.
The first thing is we engaged. I know you're going to say, "Everybody says engage with your followers." But what does that really mean, right? So, at SEOmoz, for us we use Twitter not only as a marketing tactic but as a customer service tactic. It is also a huge part of our community. Twitter for us is a little bit of everything. If somebody sends us a kudos like, "Oh, I just tested out the new web app. Seriously awesome. Thank you, SEOmoz," we respond back and say, "High five!" or "Glad you love it." Sometimes we retweet it, whatever. They get a response. That doesn't happen 100% of the time, but it happens often.
The next thing that we do is if somebody complains, they get an error, they're like, "Your latest post was horrible," whatever the case may be, they also get a response. Sometimes the response is, "Whoa! Sorry you got that error. Can you send us a screenshot?" Or, "Make sure to have your third party cookies on." Whatever the case may be, they get a response. Oftentimes, once they get a response, their tone changes. They change from being mad about something to all of a sudden being like, "Hey, it's cool. You responded. You got me. I'm good."
We also started, if you notice, every one of our blog posts get published on [Twitter]. Oftentimes it will go up in the middle of the night in the US plus in the afternoon. What we're doing is we're trying to make sure we have a huge following from essentially all over the world. We want to make sure that it is not just the West Coasters getting great content. We schedule it so that it goes out. There are definitely ways to schedule your content and schedule tweets so that you don't look like a spammer. You're actually going in and when you are around, you reply to people. You touch base with them. The biggest part of engaging is just making sure that you are talking to people whether it is they love you, they hate you, they have a question, whatever it is; talk to them. People really appreciate it. Simply by doing that, that alone in the first year that we started making these changes to the Twitter account increased our following by about 100%.
What really kicked us into over gear is we made sharing a whole lot easier on the site. I don't know if you remember, but at least 6 months ago, it was really difficult to share any content on our site. If you wanted to share a post, you had to scroll down way at the bottom, there was a "share this" button, I believe. Then you click "share this" and you have like 500 options of what you're to do next. Most users aren't going to do that. They don't want to have to think. I go to a website and I want to share something, I don't want to think about it. I want to click a button that says "Tweet Me" and let it take me off to Twitter. So, that's what we changed. When we redesigned the site, we made Twitter and Facebook very prominent on the site. So not only actually has our Twitter followers increased, but our Facebook fans have about tripled also, just by, again, making it easier for people to share your content.
Again, as I'm talking about this, these are the tactics that we have taken to increase our followers. It may not necessarily work with what you're doing. You may not be in a business where you necessarily want to talk to people who are hating your product or whatever the case may be. But this has worked for us, and it has increased our reach by thousands and thousands. If you look at Klout and you look at where we were before and where we are now, the difference is actually amazing. The next step in this is actually to do a post that shows you some really distinct numbers and that sort of thing that I can show you the difference and what our reach is now as opposed to what it used to be.
Other than making sharing easier, we've also added it to emails. You get an email from the customer service team and we say, "Hey, did you get an awesome experience with customer service? Tweet about it." We send an email about the webinar coming up. We're like, "Don't forget to tell your friends about it." Whatever you do, make it really easy to share. I've received emails from my dentist that say, "Forward this to a friend," or "Share this with your friend on Twitter." Whatever you do, think about all the ways that you market or that you do customer service and figure out how you can add Twitter into that.
The last one is, we involved everyone. Even though we increased our talking from the actual Twitter account, where it is really Roger, so oftentimes, you know, Roger he really loves to get on Twitter and just chat it up with people. Sometimes he woots and whees and beeps a little bit. But it was really important actually to involve everyone. So we have asked everyone that if you see someone that has a question about a tool, someone who is asking about the best guide to SEO and we have that content, or if you just see anything out there where I can't be on there 100%. I can't be online at all times. Even though, if you know me well, you probably know that I'm mostly online all of the time. So, we involved. Rand, if Rand sees a question come through to SEOmoz, he'll respond to it and he'll CC the SEOmoz account so that we know it has been covered. Same with Joanna or SEOmom, they do the same thing. We have also involved our associates like Dr. Pete, the entire distilled staff, so the people that you see posting on the blog and that sort of thing. I've also asked them, if you see questions, whatever it is, talk to people. Remind them, hey, there's this post over here or there's this app over here or don't forget you can send an email to [email protected] and they'll be able to give you more information or help you with your problem.
Then, here we have Mozzers just in general. We have some of our great community members who have also helped us. They've taken it upon themselves to jump into conversations, involve people into the SEOmoz community through Twitter. For us, like I said before, Twitter is not just a marketing tactic to us. It is involving people in the community. It's telling them about community events whether it is a meet-up or a webinar coming up or discounts to a conference, whatever the case may be. We use Twitter for everything talking to our community.
So, these are the main three tactics that we've used over the past about a year and a half to increase our followers. The other thing that we often look at is increasing our reach and taking a look at our influencers, because we want to make sure that not only are we gaining followers but we're gaining followers who are the equivalent to the linkerati. We want the social linkerati. We want these people who like to retweet, who like to send your information out. We want those people to be following us and to be engaged with us. We will often jump into a conversation and be a part of it simply because we know that having that touch point with someone makes them feel more a part of the community. I've done it in person, too. I talk to people in person and mention Twitter, and the next thing you know, I see that they're following us. It is just really important to get out, talk to your people, and engage them.
I would really love to hear what's working for you. What do you do? What is your tactic to gaining followers, finding those influencers, and how do you use Twitter? I hope that you guys will forgive me that perhaps I am not as eloquent as Rand. I really loved doing the Whiteboard Friday today. Aaron who is back there taking the video is laughing at me at the moment. I would just like everyone to know that. Anyway, thank you everyone. I hope you have a great weekend. We'll see you next week for another Whiteboard Friday.
Video transcription by SpeechPad.com
(And Jen, they were laughs of love! I find Jen to be a very enjoyable person.)
Good post Jenita, great to see some lovely SEOMOZ women at the end of the video =)
But yeah some tactics I use for twitter include:
* posting relevent content with hash tags.
* Looking at trends in my niche and making my tweets trend based.
* Connecting with influencers in your chosen niche, making great content that will generate re tweets, asking for posts with your user name is possible hehe
* Posting the twitter fan widgets on your websites,
* adding the twitter tweet buttons to websites.
* Adding add me to twitter buttons to email sigs on all my various emails.
* Sharing content via linked in using twitter sync.
Their are many more tactics I use but these are just off the top of my head.
Just curious, what value do you find in using hashtags and how do you use them?
My twitter account is more personal than not so keep that in mind. I use the hashtags as literary devices. (eg. #justsaying #80'smusicFTW)
The only time I properly use them is during events so I can tag my comments for the event stream
Hash tags are good for targeting various trends, Targeting various keywords, I also find it is easier to come up in real time search when you use a mix of hash tags in posts compared to no hash tags. Futhermore if people are searching for specific content hashtags help them come accross your account and add you. Sure enough Twitter search picks up non hashtag content yet I feel it is easier to be found when using them via the testing I have done.
Thanks for the extra info and giving me a better idea of how you use them. ;)
Great wbf! We've been discussing improving our account recently and talked about how what you're doing at moz is really great.
Recently, I've been working to increase my following, for me the things that work are:
Hi Jen,
and happy Valentine to you and all the great women of SEOmoz, Distilled and of the Moz Community.
Do you know? When it come to SEOmoz tweets, my fun is try to guess who is the one giving her voice to Roger; people tends to have a its own voice and it sometimes is visible also if the speaker is hidden behind Roger (not saying "into", to not give to Roger somehow an R2D2 nature).
When it comes to Twitter, my case is different from SEOmoz one. SEOmoz is an ensamble of person, I am a one man agency... therefore "delegation" is quite impossible, at least if I don't start to have multiple personalities.
But generally I follow the same simple rule you follow. Engage, dialogue, proximity, generosity... and thanks to that I see my followers base increasing constantly.
What I do/don't do:
And, finally, yes, giving sharing options (Facebook and Twitter) in my site/blog and signing my email also with my Twitter account.
Awesome! Thanks for sharing these, and totally agree. :) One thing though... I'd say about 90% of the tweets from the @SEOmoz account are from me. :) I actually hate to say that and dispell any myths but it's the truth.
I know I know that you are the Roger voice, but that makes more entertaining to discover who else wrote in Roger name when it happen :)
As a twitter follower of yours Ginaluca, I have to say that your tweets are very often useful. I find that I don't have to follow as many people because if something noteworthy is going on out there I know I'll pick it up from your stream. So, no pressure, but keep up the good work :)
Thank you thank you thank you for posting video transcripts ... far too many sites don't and other than espn.com, I get so much more out of reading the material than I do watching it. It's much easier for me to work at my own pace and absorb it, reread etc. as necessary. So thank you! :D
You're very welcome! Great to hear they're useful for you. You're right though - I'd imagine an ESPN transcript would be less than captivating...
Before I jump into responding to all these amazing comments I wanted to add a few things I forgot to mention in the video:
I appreciate all the great comments and apologize for not getting these few things in the video. :) My rambling couldn't remember it all I guess. :)
I just noticed the contest today, myself, so glad you cleared that up.
How much is growth just due to growth? I mean, our @sengineland account has grown about the same. We don't engage at all.
I've weighed that up, and we might do more. But that's about the only thing I see different from our two accounts. We use it as a way for people to keep up on our news, and that seems to be working. Your growth rate is slightly higher, so I wonder if the engagement is that slight edge.
Yea this week we've been pushing the Free for Life promo quite a bit and have seen some nice growth from it.
It's definitely interesting to see the growth of @sengineland since as you said there's not really any engagement there. Using twittercounter.com I can see that over the last 6 months your account has gained 10,335 followers while ours has gained 11,518. I really wish though that I could look back further than 6 months. As I mentioned in another comment below, in May 2009 we only had 4,000. I'd love to find out where you guys were at about then and see what your growth has been. It would help to know if really the engagement helps as much as we've felt it has.
Also Dan Zarrella posted today New Data: “Engage in the Conversation” May Not Actually Work which obviously contradicts what I'm saying also. :) Again, if you have the data on your followers over time, I'd love to take a peek!
The thing is, whether it's "normal" growth or not, Twitter has become a large part of communication with our community, so I doubt our engagement level will die down any time soon. I may have to hit up Dan to find out what "normal" should be for a brand.
Thanks Danny!
I only have us back as far as Sept 2009, when we were at 10,884. I'll check out Dan's thing. With your brand, because you run a software service, you get a lot of questions (I assume) related to that -- customer service type of stuff. We don't tend to have a lot of people calling out that way, so that's another reason why we haven't felt like we need to be all engagy (if that's even a word). But also, individual editors have accounts, so sometimes people engagement with us that way -- and we engage back more that way.
Nice video very informative would like to see a similair video for facebook aswell and what you felt worked for you and what didnt especially with the new facebook fan page changes implemented today
keep up the good work guys"
We have a really great conversation going on right now over on Facebook talking about the new "upgrade" yesterday: https://seomz.me/eBfId9
In actuality we do very similar things with both our Twitter and Facebook accounts. When I took over the Facebook account we had only 800 fans and have increased that to over 7,700 in about the same time as we increased our Twitter following. Both has been done organically until now. Just in the past week we've been running a contest and will be seeing how it helps our followings!
Thanks!
JEN!!!! LOVE seeing your smiling face on WBF! Seriously great job and great tips! Someone may have already mentioned this in the comments - but I'd add one of my favorite ways is to participate in Twitter chats. Whether it's for a brand I am representing or other type of account it seems there are relevant organized twitter chats for nearly every niche. Some of the most popular and relevant in this space would be #seochat and #socialchat but there are so many out there! Find out when they are - jump in occasionally and answer questions, ask questions of the hosts and interact with people. Your tweets will be available on their transcripts and other members of the chat will see you pop up if theyre watching. This can be a great way to gain RELEVANT followers while also engaging in your area of interest which makes it genuine and FUN!
Thanks Kristy! I totally agree and this is something we've only just this year started getting into. I think it's super valuable and often times for us in SEO and Social chats our brand/name comes up during the conversation anyway. So for us (whether we respond as @SEOmoz or from our personal accounts) it's important to be around to be able to reply, jump in, engage, etc.
Another STRONG, whiteboard friday atricle! definately gonna take some of these suggestions and apply them to our own twitter ventures here at MMG.
One of the great things about how you guys handle social media is definitely the timing of tweets, as Jen mentioned. We're only following about 25 people from our account, but we tend to get some of those followers posting multiple updates within a few seconds, or who post the same few links several times throughout the day. When it comes to SEOmoz in our feed, tweets are taken seriously and looked out for. Many companies have the approach of 'the more the merrier', but usually the best approach is to leave followers wanting more. - Jenni
The fact is we could probably be even better about scheduling tweets. At least when it comes to promoting content, events and the like. But I actually like to manually send them whenever possible so I can respond quickly if we get replies. However I always try to schedule a tweet about the latest blog post for between 10-11am GMT.
Hi Jen,
Great WBF and Happy Valentines Day to all at SEOmoz!
A few things I've noticed as trends to getting more followers are:
But overall, I think activity is key. If you are actively tweeting and providing value, people will follow.
Jackson
I recently tested different things from what I usually do and found that giveaways work like a charm - though the end result was a completely different demographic to what we expected. Still we managed to find value in this as many of them were bloggers keen to review our client's products.
That's great! We only just this week are doing our first contest (well since I took over almost 2 years ago now). I'm excited to do more of them but not just to gain followers but to simply increase brand awareness and usually when there's a contest someone wins something awesome. :) And I love to make people happy!
Hey Jen! It's great to see you on the video as you have lots of harisma (watchout, Rand) =)
And I sign my name under the claim that SEOmoz is higly responsive and helpful on Twitter to all the members of its community. I did felt that myself!
Thanks for making my day!
Nice WBF Jen. It's nice to see genuine ways to increase followers and in addition, a way to gain value from it. Way too many people use it as a pride metric and ignore any interaction.
I have a question:
As you are saying, that you are using your twitter account for customer service, engaging and sometimes selling your signups. Doesnt that create too much noise? If you are to take a call on which of the personas you want to keep for your primary handle-seomoz what would it be?
Would you prefer it to be a pure engagement platform or a customer case window or a sales one?
Personally I don't think it creates too much noise and feel that people appreciate it. Case in point, our followers just keep going up and up. The "persona" I take on is that of the voice of SEOmoz in all capacities. There won't be a time when we stop replying to customer service type questions as that's super important to our brand to help people as quickly and appropriately as possible. Plus we probably won't stop promoting our content or tools either.
I realize this way to manage a Twitter account probably doesn't work for everyone and every company but for us it works great!
What would you do if you have a large website distributing products or services like a computer manufacturer and it has some astronomical following. You are given the task of separating the topics of tweets such as 1 handle giving out useful information, 1 for customer care and 1 for deals and offers. What would you choose to do on your primary handle which has huge following?
I'm not directly involved in the account, but when you have a business profile that has a sales aspect, I actually thinking mixing up the message is a good idea (as long as it's all related). If the SEOmoz account did nothing but promote paid membership or post links to blog articles, I think people would get tired of it pretty fast.
I agree with you completely but consider the scenario.
You have an active following of over 100K who engage with your handle frequently, of which you get 3 varieties of followers:
1. People seeking information on your products and looking for deals
2. People seeking general information about your niche but not necessarily your offerings
3. People who are customers or want to buy and have certain pre sales question.
What would you do? would you prefer keeping a single handle for all the types or separate them and why?
Hi, Good thinking on how to sell on twitter.
IMO twitter is more relaxed engagement platform. You can sell and you expect all types of customers! There are social media management platforms to assign different tweets to different employees in the organization.
If it is a general question, you can point them to a FAQs section on your site. Handle would be #yourcompanyfaqs
If it is a pre sales or sales related tweet assign to a sales person at your company. #productinfo
If it is a after sales response you can assign that tweet to customer service. #productaccessories
Before using any social media platforms the company should have a communication policy in place to manage/handle all sorts of public requests! Of course you could use different handles for different type of query/tweet! But as long as the person dealing with the tweet know what it is this shouldn't cause much confusion!
I follow Roger and I think that "he" has a perfect blend of tweets. Enough are newsworthy to keep me reading them all when they come in. Sometimes I'll forget about a webinar and thatnks to Roger I'm reminded. Or I'll have not read the blogs for awhile and Roger will remind me when a new post goes up.
Do you worry that people who read your Twitter stream for interesting content will be annoyed by all your "customer service" tweets, such as "Thanks @so_and_so!" or "@someone, try enabling javascript in your browser, then the site should work!"
How do you balance the functions that Twitter performs as a one-way source of news vs. a two-way conversation between you and a particuarl party?
I did worry about that at first and over the past year and a half have probably received 5-6 complaints. However the overwhelming response has been super positive. The fact is most people only see a small portion of our tweets. They're only seeing the tweets that aren't replies and replies to people they also follow. When it comes down to the number of tweets I send in a day that aren't replies it's probably no more than 5-6 on a normal day and maybe up to 10-12 on days where there's a webinar, conference or something else going on. So your average user really isn't seeing all those "high-fives" and such.
I focus on each person individually and often will respond with the person's name. i want them to know I'm taking the time to respond & make it personal. You'll often see something like this: "@soandso Hi Richard! Thanks so much for the feedback, I've sent the issue over to dev & they're already looking into it!" I don't want them to feel like they're getting some kind of canned response, as every response is personalized and genuine.
Great post Jen!
Thanks for pointing out how to use twitter for more than just saying what you ate for lunch. It's a great idea to use twitter to handle customer service issues, this is because if that person has an issue or a question you engage with them directly and you make them feel like they are valued, which they are, but it can quickly turn a potential negative situation into a positive public testimonial that other followers of you or that person can view.
Thanks for the awesome video, you did great!
Most definitely but it also has the potential to change someone's attitude from complaining to being thankful. I've seen it time and time again! Many times all it takes is to know that someone cares about what you're saying. One thing I didn't touch on in the video is that when I see feedback about the software, or issues, or whatever I send those tweets to various people on the team. Adam our Director of Product gets many emails a week from me pointing to tweets we've received with great feedback or info about an issue. It's important to not only respond and engage with people but to actually take action!
Oh and there are people I consider "trolls" who I have attempted to converse with before but nothing I can say will change their mind about whatever the issue is. In those cases, it's usually more approriate to let them be. Engaging at that point only adds flame to the fire.
Thanks Jen! I thought this video was very helpful. I agree that one of the most important things to do is to engage with your followers. So many of my friends [mostly the ones that do not do a whole lot with social media] tell me they don't even want to bother engaging on Twitter because they feel that everything happens too fast and nothing they send out into the 'Twitterverse' will be seen. I always let them know that if they just try to engage and start a conversation, the people will listen and the followers will come.
Hey Jen (and Aaron) I've pretty much made my comments attached to others, but I wanted to go on record to say you both ROCK! Excellent quality video and the additon of staff members at the end was inspired. I'd really love to see more of that.
Great WBF from Jen, great detail in the SEOmoz approach to increasing Twitter follows. Good to know SEOmoz is heavy into customer satisfaction, a side to online business I would love to hear more about from SEOmoz.
Thanks again Jen
ps, thank connections8 for the hashtags idea.
Really useful whiteboard Friday Jen - nice work! We're currently working on working a bit harder in this area and your tips and knowledge will definitely come in useful! I've been really impressed with the way you guys have handled your Twitter account for awhile now so it's nice to get some insight into how you're actually working it and what you believe is important to increase your follower base..
Thanks! That's very much appreciated. :)
Great job Jen! Love seeing women represent!
You say you often reach out to influencers by jumping into Twitter conversations: do you limit your "jumping in" to topics related only to your industry?
Hi Angie! Yes, I'd really only jump into a conversation if it were about SEO, SEO tools or more specifically about our tools. Sometimes I see people having a conversation about Open Site Explorer (or any of our tools) and will jump in and answer it or might even just say "hi! i'm happy to answer any questions you want to send our way" which doesn't butt into the conversation but lets them know I see the conversation and am here if they want to hear directly from us.
This video must be from an alternate universe. Ive not had any engagement from SEomoz on twitter when Ive had a comment (positive or negative) or a query etc.
I often leave a comment in my posts about how difficult this new comments box is to use (Win xp/7 in FF etc) and Ive had nothing back
Ive written a few youmoz posts, and not been published, but not had any feedback on why
I very often retweet seomoz/seomoz staff stuff and after a number of years hanging here and being a vocal advocate of SEOmoz, it seems a bit strange to hear about this engagement when Ive never actually seen it
On a side note, you mention 250% growth in twitter followers over a year. That seems pretty much in line with normal twitter growth over a year - any chance of a graph of the growth?
Thanks for the feedback, I see that we've responded to you several times on Twitter actually. I can see all conversations between us in CoTweet. One thing to note is that if you cuss in a tweet to us (which you did), we're not going to respond.
Regarding the issue with commenting on the blog, we know this is an issue an it's in the queue to get fixed. It's SUPER frustrating for everyone, and I feel your pain there. I see that you tweeted this morning about it and recently got a response (remember we're on the west coast). If you could send a screenshot of the issue and your browser info to help at seomoz.org it would help us to troubleshoot it.
When it comes to YOUmoz, we do our best to keep everyone happy unfortunately it's not always the case. Please feel free to email me directly jen at seomoz.org any time you post or if you ever have a question as to why something didn't get posted.
Yea I'm not a numbers gal obviously. The thing is in one year we went from 10,000 followers to almost 28,000. If you look back to May of 2009 when we really started changing our tactics on twitter we only had 4,000. I don't think going from 4,000 to 28,000 is normal twitter growth in any way shape or form. If you have data to show that this kind of growth is normal, it'd be awesome to see! So my percentage is definitely off, but the numbers tell the story.
Thanks!
Congrats Jen! Great first Whiteboard Friday.
Thanks!! Although actually:
Now that I look at these, I've had quite the transformation over the past year. :)
In the words of Billy Crystal: But you, dahling, hmmmm, you look mahvelous!Absolutely mahvelous!
:)
Your point about scheduling was very interesting, thanks I'm going to try that.
Jean Madden
Great WBF Jen as I mentioned on twitter- people seem to be attracted to a 'motherly love' personality via social media.
Hey Jen,
Great video, thanks for posting. I'll be sharing this video with my followers!
Love it! Thanks for sharing so much and being so open. It's really helpful and I love the point about scheduling your posts! V. nice.
Thank you so much! this is a nice article!
Today i read it, it is really useful with me.
Great simple steps to successful integration and grosth into the social media program. Lookin' good!
Stylin' .. :)
I love Twitter. It's Good for SEO!
Enjoyed reading about your TwiProliferation and congrats on, um, beating Rand. (No offense to Rand..um..'hi Rand' if you're reading this) As someone who manages Twitterstreams for start-up entrepreneurs and indie film and theater producers, I'm curious as to how you might have pursued a more niche community. A lot of what @Susannaroar --the avatar I created to curate the brand --a movie about a family living with over 150 large cats-- rarely tweets about the film itself. It focuses more on conservation issues and even maintains a "bad guys we would like to eat" list. Oh, and perhaps I should've mentioned, I'm tweeting from the POV of a fictitious big cat...sorta. It doesn't have a large following. It does, however have a relevant one. I think what I appreciate most of all was what you had to say about how numbers actually ARE important. Because it's generally not the perspective I acknowledge. That said, I've been doing this for three months and results are only just starting to show but I'm about to start to pursue partnerships and would like to increase my numbers that white hat way. Any suggestions?
Thanks for sharing with us. You did a great job for a first time on camera.
Thanks Carlos! But pssst.. see my comment above. :)
And you look mahvelous dahling :)
Hah hah! I had the same thought Kristy!
Whatever, those other ones don't count, for some reason I will think up later. :P
Thanks Jen, really nice job!
Hi Jen,nice to see a female face on WBF.Great topic - easy to digest and to archieve. I especially like those kind of reminders because sometimes we neglect and overlook those easy items.
Happy Valentines day to you and to all mozzers around the whole world!
Thats right engaging is the key for twitter & facebook. I have always thought of normal conversation first b4 permission marketing. so that way people don't think that you're a spammer. nice video!
Great video, thanks for sharing guys!
Too much water....
Your what itches?
Hey... I want to thank Roger also for one thing I sincerely hate on Twitter and Roger doesn't do: #FF (Follow Fridays). Honestly, I find it so unpersonal, even though it was invented to be personal.
I actually had someone ask for a #ff today. I feel like it would be a bad idea to start doing those from the SEOmoz account because it would be as if we were picking favorites, which we're not really into. I'd hate to hurt someone's feelings for not picking them OR to start getting more and more requests for it. I've only once started following someone because of a follow friday and it was only because the tweet only listed one person & had valuable info about them.
In response to the Follow Friday comment -- I always welcome the opportunity to approach them creatively. Usually I single one of perhaps a small handful of people out. The #FF will be relevant, specific and often surprising. Honing in on qualities others might not ordinarily focus on. Authenticity is a highly coveted commodity and when you use it to bestow a genuinely deserved complement, it rarely goes unappreciated...thanks to all the inauthentic #FollowFriday --ers out there;)
I'm really horrible at using Twitter, so I appreciate the tips quite a bit :) In fact, I was so new to Twitter that I didn't even know how to see that an seoMoz tweet was mentioning me. I'm better now, hopefully this helps me get better. Also, I never knew the robot's name until now. Thanks Jen/Roger!
Hey Jen,
I love everything you wrote, thanks for the tips. I have one issue, though. I'm ALL about responding to people when the comment/question/complain/compliment etc. My problem is, how do you get people to start chattin' it up!? I have this problem with my Twitter and Facebook accounts as well as my blogs. I would love to interact, but how do I get them to??
thanks again!
Sometimes you have to start the conversation. People always like to take polls an answer questions. Maybe start with that?
Hi Jen,
Great job. You brought a nice flair to WBF. I like the sense of humor you and the other Mozzers bring to the various twitter account posts to.
You asked how we use twitter. I use it mainly as a research tool, finding who are the great minds in a subject and then looking at who they follow on the subject and who they follow on the subject. Then weeding out the jerks. The result is like a near continually stream of info about my favorite subjects with near instant updates. And some folks are just fun to chat with or share a joke now and then.
What a fun crew at the end. That was a nice surprise. :)
Nine hot chicks at the end. Phew, good thing my girlfriend didn't see this. You go girls @seoMoz
One thing I've noticed is that when you're a small fry in the social media space, particularly on Twitter, speed is of the essence when it comes to adding value and gaining followers (and attention!) for yourself.
For instance, I've noticed when a Twitter account with a lot of followers tweets a question or makes a suggestion, the quickest feedback to the tweet often earns the most love in terms of retweets and/or new followers. It's often been the case that I see an Influencer ask a question or makes a statement that I'm sure I can add value to - but then I look at the time since it's been tweeted and, too often, it was two hours ago and they've got 5k replies already. Unfortunately, replying to a tweet late only gets love from scrapers and bots, whereas if you're timely with a reply that adds value, you can pick up lots of new real live human followers. You see the same thing here on Moz, a bit. If a blog post comment is placed early, it tends to earn thumbs up more easily than a comment that might have more value but takes place further down the conversation.
So I suppose I should ask the question: does anyone pay particular attention to social media accounts in order to reply quickly to add the most value and pick up new followers? Do you think it matters?
Anyway, excellent post, and looking forward to seeing more Whiteboard Fridays from you down the track!
I liked it a alot too. At Cooking.com we have good facebook fans but we just started our twitter campaigns and I am sure this will come just handy.