How We Use Twitter

As for full disclosure, I originally posted this back in April after getting hundreds of questions about how we were building our followership on Twitter, but didn’t post it for one reason or another. Until Guy Kawasaki (@GuyKawasaki) posted a similar page recently and then I decided to post ours as well. These are questions I get on a daily and weekly basis about out accounts on Twitter. If you have one not listed here, send it to me and I’ll answer it and post it here.

Q: Why do you sometimes post the same thing over and over?
A: Several reasons actually.

• We have followers, friends and clients in several countries (56 and counting) who obviously visit and read our tweets at all hours of the day and night and we would be doing them a disservice if we did not attempt to communicate the same ideas and thoughts to them in a more convenient way than making them search through tons of tweets just to play catch up.
• Not everyone is on Twitter every minute of every day. So we have found that tweets should run every so often (never more than once every 4-6 hours, some 10 or 12 and some once a day and even some just once a week) so that they get the widest possible exposure and over the course of about 2-3 weeks. This only holds for a limited amount of tweets for my main stream (@JeffreySummers) and not the other Summers Hospitality Groupcompany streams (@FoodBizCoach @Summers Hospitality Group @Hospitality101)
• For all of our automated tweets we use Twaitter.com
• Also, as Guy notes here, it’s the same reason ESPN and CNN do so as well.

Q: Why do you follow everyone back? Is it a numbers thing?
A: Good question. Several aspects to the answer.

• No, it’s not a numbers game with me. I believe that social media is about just that – being social. So that’s one reason I do. Otherwise, I could just type out my thoughts into a simple blog and have you follow the RSS.
• I do not follow everyone however. If you send out tweets about MLM,  bogus programs to ‘get more followers’, porn, don’t have an avatar or bio that tells me you’re human, etc… I won’t follow you back. I will also not follow you if you are a celebrity (or a celebrity in your own mind) who has a gazillion followers but only follows 4 people – or if you only have 7 tweets over 8 months. I want to engage with people who are engaged and engaging, themselves.
• I mainly follow everyone back because it’s the only way you can privately ask me a question (DM) without having to use email or call me. I like the speed of this and I always want to be accessible to anyone I can possibly be of help to or discuss really cool ideas or issues with.
• I also do not want to limit my ability to hear from someone who may have an idea that sparks something in someone about something important. I never want it said of me that I didn’t listen.
• I will also not follow you if you have a blog that gives me more valuable ideas and discussions than your tweets. In that case, I’ll just subscribe to your RSS feed or email updates.
• I also unfollow everyone who unfollows me for whatever reason because if you don’t want to be sociable, why should I care?

Q: Do you use an auto-follow program to get followers?
A: Nope. Never have, never will. I tweet and people find value in what I talk about so they follow me. It’s that simple.

Q: How do you keep track of so many people?
A: I don’t. There’s no way for me to read thousands of tweets a day. I pay attention to my search results streams, favorite groups of people and DM’s and @ replies only. I use a free 3rd party application called TweetDeck to keep track of @ Replies and DM’s and a couple of searches I keep live to track certain issues and people. I also have a couple of groups set up to make sure I don’t miss anything important from someone I consider as such. I also use Buzzom.com to bulk manage follows and unfollows. I do make sure though that I answer every @ reply and DM. It might take me a few hours but I will get to everyone’s tweet usually within a few hours.

Q:How much time do you spend on Twitter?
A: I have Twitter and Tweetdeck running on a small desktop computer 24/7/365. That doesn’t mean I’m right there watching or Tweeting. I sleep, eat, run errands, make time for my family, have a personal life, take care of my clients, etc… but it still runs in the background while I work and live. I do this to follow along in case I see something (a tweet, pic, link, idea, comment, etc…) that catches my brain and I want to do something with it later.

Q: Does anyone else tweet for you?
A: No. It’s always me- every tweet, DM or @ reply. If I ever wanted people who work with me to tweet under the RCS name, I would have them use a username like RCS_Ted, or RCS_Gary to note that they weren’t me.

Q: Why do you post a lot of your own articles and blog posts? Isn’t that basically just advertising for you?
A: You can call them ‘ads’ if you want, but I don’t think of them as ‘ads’ in the technical sense. I do so because my articles are more about the issues and ideas that my clients and future clients need information about on a daily basis, than overt pitches for my products and services. To me that’s value. And I believe I deliver more valuable content in my “ads” than anyone. I guarantee it.