How to use Twitter - Part 1 - Followers

This is the first part of a series of blog posts intended primarily for Webreality clients who want to make better use of Twitter.

Future posts will cover re-tweeting, Twitter search, mobile Twitter, Twitter tools and creating your Twitter routine.

What’s a follower?

A “follower” is another Twitter user who has chosen to include your tweets in their view of Twitter. So on their Twitter home page your tweets will appear in the stream of tweets they see.

How do I get followers?

You can get new followers by activity in Twitter and things you do elsewhere on the internet.

With a new Twitter account the quickest way to build your following is to get “follow-backs.” This means you follow other Twitter users with the aim of getting them to follow you in return. Most Twitter users have their account set up to send them an email whenever someone new follows them. So every time you follow someone they have the chance to click on a link in the automated notification email and look at your page in Twitter. Many of them will then follow you. This is called a “follow-back”. The secret to getting follow-backs is choosing the people you follow carefully to make sure they are likely to be interested in you.

You will also find that you can build your following by re-tweeting. This means taking a tweet by someone you follow and re-publishing it as a tweet of your own. (My next post in this series will cover re-tweeting etiquette.) Twitter users who track their own tweets being re-tweeted will often follow people who re-tweet them.

It’s also a good idea to engage with the Twitter cultural phenomenon of “Follow Friday” in which users tweet the Twitter names of other users they consider worth following. Again, users who track references to their Twitter name will often at least acknowledge your “Follow Friday” in a tweet, and might also follow you as a result.

Outside of Twitter itself, you should use every online opportunity to invite people to follow you.

• Your website should include a “follow me” link to your Twitter page.
• If you run a blog, do the same.
• If you promote your business in online forums, have a standard sign-off for your contributions which invites people to follow you.
• Add a suitable link to your standard email sign-off for business emails.
• If you use bulk email marketing include a “follow me” link in every email you send.

Managing your followers

There are so many reasons to be following people on Twitter. Researching your market, keeping ahead in your own area of expertise, learning about social media, learning about Twitter... But, it’s easy to overdose on Twitter. The standard Twitter home page view shows you the 20 most recent tweets by the people you are following. Unless you are staring at your Twitter home page all day, you’re going to miss a lot of other people’s tweets in your standard view. And the more people you follow the more tweets you’ll miss. So my advice is to be very strict with how many people you allow yourself to follow. Assuming that everyone you follow is a relatively active tweeter, my benchmark would be to follow no more than 100 people.

You might need to go way beyond that initially to get the early follow-backs you need, you’ll find that you want to follow new people all the time as you see re-tweets of great people, and you might decide periodically to actively research new people to follow to get fresh insights and new follow-backs. But it’s always worth pruning your own “following” list to remove the people who aren’t active or are no longer relevant or whom you followed early for a follow-back but never followed you!

Here’s a very useful article about managing your Twitter noise:

http://lavrusik.com/2009/08/31/tips-tools-to-keep-your-twits-organized-and-noise-to-a-minimum/

Next time... re-tweeting.

Why it's vital to write with search in mind

In my world things hunt in packs. I'll get a question from a client one day about a particular topic, something new that I've not needed to brief a client on before, and then within four or five days the same thing will have come up on a couple more occasions with other people. 

(As an aside, there are all sorts of theories for this phenomenon. One of them is the Law of Attraction.) 

Anyway, the latest one to crop up in almost every conversation I'm having at the moment is the need to write web copy with search in mind. From a technical perspective this plays out in the way you structure the code of your website to make it easy for Google and other search engines to index your site correctly.

But my topic for today is the thought processes involved in ensuring that your copy doesn't try to reinvent the language that people will use when searching for a subject. 

Webreality's working on a major project at present with a very big client with a huge team of content editors working on a large number of sites with thousands of content pages. In helping them migrate to a new content strategy where much of the content served will derive dynamically from their new site's search technology, the biggest challenge we will face is coaching their users to think first and foremost about how a piece of content will be found before they even start adding it via the content management system.

Gerry McGovern has written on this topic and has some excellent real life anecdotes that illustrate the need to write as users think rather in a way that fits the self-image of the publishing organisation. One of his most memorable posts on the subject is here. "Climate change" is the official terminology of most governments, but most people search for "global warming." Airlines used to prefer "low fares" until it became evident from Google's data that customers search for "cheap flights."

And it was one of Gerry's recent posts that brought the topic back into focus in the light of the current swine flu outbreak. The EU have been trying to "re-brand" swine flu as "novel flu virus." Now, we know that bureaucracies tend to expend a lot of energy in trying to change the way people think, but ponder the irresponsibility in the web age of trying to change the name of a virus that threatens the world after the world has universally adopted a particular name for the virus. A good way to prevent your citizens finding the latest information about how to reduce the pandemic risk. 

Gerry sums it up with, "Search is the greatest laboratory of human behavior that has ever existed. When words such as "swine flu" go wild on the Web, you must use those words because otherwise you will not be found. If you are not found then you are not useful."

Trash the splash

You own a shop. You want it to look "cool". So what do you do? It's obvious, isn't it? You hire a big, burly bloke, dress him in a cool outfit, stand him at the door with his arms folded, and tell him that when anyone arrives at the door they have to ask him very nicely if they can come in before he moves aside. Even if it's raining and they're in a hurry.

THAT'S the real world equivalent of the website splash page.

I hoped I'd never have to rant about them again.

Then, last week, I heard a designer (not one of Webreality's...) banging on about how "cool" Flash splash pages are.

Dude, it's 2009! And no-one says "dude" any more! Or uses splash pages.

Does Google have one? Does Amazon have one? Does Ebay have one? Does YouTube have one? Does Facebook have one? Does Twitter have one? (Think I've made the point.)

Great web design is rarely "cool". It just works. Quickly.

Moral of the story - if you want a website that works for your target users, use a web designer. Not a designer who does websites!

Cynthia loves thespiraltree.com

Message received by Sarah at thespiraltree.com:

"Sarah,

I have to tell you that your site is one of the most beautiful and calming that I have ever visited. The "spirals" of your tree are elegant and yet soothing and your choice of pictures, along with the layout, is just so welcoming. It was fun to just wind around and explore.

Cynthia"

Video poised to permeate the web

From mediapost.com:

"Video is poised to permeate the Web in a way that goes far beyond YouTube's user-generated clips."

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=98807

Privacy and Google's "behavioural ads"

Web users are impatient and time is short. Google has always strived for relevance in the search results and ads that it serves in response to a search term. No-one complains when an individual website serves up relevant content when we visit - see youtube.com as a good example. Google's allowing users to see and edit their profiles.

So what's the problem with Google's new behavioural ads?

This is the web at its best - intelligently serving relevant content to users.

Socitm 2009 UK council website review shows "stagnation"

Thanks to headstar.com for this news update:

""A picture of stagnation" is painted by many of the reviewer comments from this year's 'Better connected 2009' review of UK council websites by the local government Society of IT Management (Socitm), published this month.

Despite finding a steady overall improvement in the quality of UK local authority websites, the review says a range of website management issues must be addressed by councils if sites are to offer fully developed 'self-service' options to citizens.

Self-service will be vital if councils are to become more efficient and save money by reducing telephone and face-to-face service provision in tough economic times, it concludes.

The survey ranks all sites as either 'standard', 'transactional' for more interactive and better-developed sites, and 'excellent' for those that meet high criteria across all areas of review.

Eight councils have achieved an 'excellent' ranking in 2009: Allerdale, Barking and Dagenham, Bristol, East Sussex, North East Derbyshire, Salford, South Tyneside and Surrey.

This compares with five excellent councils last year and just one the previous year. However, levels of satisfaction recorded among people visiting council websites are some 10% lower than in 2008, the report finds, detecting just "marginal improvements against most criteria" since the previous year."

A brief review of the top sites cited in this report shows that Jersey and Guernsey's govermental sites have a long way to go to compete at this level. Gauntlet's down - Jersey's on the case! 

Usability testing endorsed

Great de-brief meeting with a Jersey-based client last week who's just completed a programme of usability testing with Webreality's guidance on a web portal and a set of proprietary web applications.

They want to stay anonymous at present, so no direct quotes from them, but our lead contact said he was a "testing convert." The results of the testing produced valuable design and layout changes that dramatically improved first time task completion in the second round of testing. The commercial benefits will be tangible.

Entertainment key to successful "millennial" content strategy

A month ago Mediapost.com published this:

'According to Deloitte's State of the Media Democracy survey, three-quarters of Millennials (ages 14 to 25) view the computer as more of an entertainment device than their television. Ed Moran, Deloitte director of product innovation, notes that "This (early-adopter) generation of consumers was the first to be raised on the Internet and is united across borders and cultures by their digital media preferences, so the implications for global marketers are unprecedented." '

For businesses and organisations with web strategies targeting younger web users this is crucial information.

The results continued:

'Across five surveyed countries, Millennials are the most active in gaming, music and Internet use for socializing:

• 80% of Millennials are regularly searching, downloading and listening to music over the Internet
• 73% are also regularly socializing online (via social networking sites, chat rooms or message boards)
• 59% of Millennials use their mobile phone as an entertainment device, versus an average of 33% of all consumers.
• Millennials are spending one-third less time watching their television than are other generations.' 

It's already widely understood that old style "push" marketing, which disseminates messaging in as targeted a way as possible, is being supplanted by "pull" models based on the spontaneous emergence of communities of common interest who pay attention to each other's likes, dislikes and recommendations. Social networking has accelerated this phenomenon, with the natural viral effect of blink-fast and super-easy sharing of content and ideas.

The newest challenge for millennial marketers is how to work entertainment into the brand and its online strategy; how to use pull marketing and entertainment to win more hearts and more eyeballs.

Online holding up well in the downturn

At Webreality we expected a very slow start to 2009 but so far so very good. There's lots of evidence of businesses looking online to find more cost-effective and measurable marketing tactics, we're seeing new clients who want to put processes online to reduce cost, and there is a surprising amount of new e-commerce business about.

Down to us to keep things as cost-effective as possible.

Webreality is first and foremost a support business, which is why we keep our clients long term, and that philosophy is serving everyone well at the moment.

Parish of St Helier puts services online

The Parish of St Helier has launched a new website which aims to set a new standard for online parish services in Jersey.

http://www.sthelier.je/ is ground-breaking for Jersey in that it allows parishioners and others to interact with the parish administration online. Users of the website can perform a variety of tasks on the site, including applying for a day nursery place, reporting street and rubbish collection problems, appealing against a parking fine and requesting a check of whether they’re on the electoral register. In addition, the site offers downloads of the most frequently used forms that the law requires citizens to sign.

Constable Simon Crowcroft wanted to turn the St Helier parish website into something genuinely useful to parishioners. In his own words: "We’re changing it from a place that pushed information out to people into a place that parishioners come to do their business with the parish in their own time. We’ve made a great start with things that people can already do online, and there’s more to come as we tackle the legal obstacles to completing certain tasks. I hope other parishes will want to follow the same path.”

The best local authority websites in the UK have moved rapidly in the direction of delivering service online. I was excited when Webreality was asked to build the St Helier website because it presented an opportunity to really advance local government web strategy in Jersey.

Simon and his team have embraced the need to be task-focused online and I’m sure that parishioners will find the new site much more useful and valuable as a result.

The power of optimism

There's plenty of doom and gloom about, but I wanted to share a great story published today on the BBC news site.

"Pessimism is the most serious cause for the global economic tsunami," says Sir David Tang, entrepreneur and founder of the Shanghai Tang clothing chain.

"What we all need to do is to sit down and calm down and go back to basics."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7785564.stm

I think he's got it right. In 2009 people will be seeking out optimism and positivity and the money and market share will flow in the direction of those who deliver great value with a smile.

Happy new year. Let's get on with it!