MC Blog: My Twitter Policies and Plans

I've been on Twitter a whole week. So what do I know?

Well, I've looked very carefully at Twitter as a powerful marketing medium, a way to promote my brand, increase my visibility and credibility. My brand is about helping self-employed professions who are committed to making a difference be more successful with their marketing. So my Twitter activity needs to reflect that brand. It's a new medium for me, but not so different than my website or eZine in terms of tone or content.

What I like about Twitter is that it's a tool that encourages conversations, interactions, sharing of ideas and resources, and even promotion in real time. Twitter is immediate and moves fast.

Given all of this, I thought it would be smart to develop a set of Twitter Policies and Plans that matches my brand. Here's my first attempt.

My Twitter Policies

1. Twitter is about sharing value in a fairly narrow band. For me that band includes ideas about marketing, selling, and succeeding as an Independent Professional. So when I tweet, that's mostly what you'll be hearing about.

2. My focus will be on sharing value with you, not talking about me. This will include links to blogs and other web content, ideas, tips, strategies, information and inspiration. If I share anything about me, it will be about insights that I think you'll find useful.

3. I'll re-tweet (RT) posts from those I follow that I also think will add value. You won't get spammed with a zillion things just because I think they're cool or because I want to show you how cool I am. Can't imagine you give a damn.

4. I'll sometimes reply to tweets with my comments. This is a great way to build connections but it still needs to add a spark of value. Commenting on someone having lunch seems pointless!

5. I will not quote Socrates, Einstein, Tolstoy or any other wise person. I don't think Twitter is Bartlett's Quotations. Neither will I give you 140 character tweets of my own supposed wisdom. When people do this is, for me it comes of as "the guru speaks" and always seems a little too smug.

6. I will not tell you what I'm doing every hour on the hour. This seems to have been the original direction of Twitter, but it can border on the pathological. If I tell you what I'm up to, there will be a reason.

7. I'll ask questions and use my followers as a resource, if that's OK with you. There's still a lot I need to learn and with Twitter I can tap into this amazing network.

8. I will follow people who I feel have similar interests and who can add value to me and my business. I can't spend my whole day reading Twitter posts, so the number I follow will be considerably smaller than those who follow me. I'll never follow a ton of people in the hopes that they'll follow me. I'm not that insecure.

9. I won't post because I have nothing better to do. Twitter can be another word for procrastination. I have a ton of things on my plate any given day that I need to attend to. And I once in awhile I'll share about those things.

My Twitter Plans

10. A big part of my plan is to blog daily. Sometimes by blog posts will be long, sometimes short. I'll do my best to make them valuable and actionable. I'll blog every weekday and sometimes on weekends.

11. I'll tweet five to ten times a day. More than that is hard to imagine! Sometimes I'll repeat a tweet (say to my blog post for the day), understanding that not all my followers are on Twitter at the same time. First time in the morning. Next time in the afternoon or evening.

12. I'll promote my various products and services regularly but sparingly. I know you want to hear about what I have to offer and I also know you don't want to be hit over the head with it every hour on the hour.

13. Sometimes I'll promote affiliate products and programs. But only ones I've used and gotten value from. I'm not here to make a killing but to make a contribution. There's some great stuff out there that is worth checking out.

14. I'll respond as quickly as possible to all direct messages (DM).

15. I'll spend a little time every day refining my following list. I'll add people and remove others. I'm working on developing a channel that serves me best and that also provides the kind of value I can pass on to my followers. If I find a great person to follow, I'll let you know.

OK, that's about it. I've developed these Policies and Plan to support me in making Twitter work for me. If any of this is useful to you great, if not, ignore it. I do recommend that you create your own Twitter policies and plan as you would any marketing plan. With a real direction and plan of action, you're going to be more successful with Twitter. If you go about participating in Twitter randomly, you'll get random results.

All the best,

Robert Middleton

Blog Post

Comments

[Kimmo Linkama]

Sorry I'm being a Doubtful Thomas, but there are a few things I don't get about Facebook and Twitter.

All I have seen on Facebook are people who are frantically gathering more and more people into their "friends" list.

Twitter gives you 140-character slots to change the world. Big deal. 140 characters lost in the ocean of zero-value babble.

To create a meaningful and commercially useful presence on either one, you would need to really inundate the service with your messages. Hey, I'm a one-man business, I need to do some work for my clients too.

I can already hear someone in the back row shouting "Do it on your free time then". What free time? If I spend X hours a day for client work and the rest tweeting (who the heck invented this terminology?) or trawling for "friends" or posting news, articles, advice, messages, useful links and what-not, where's the free time?

Maybe I'm just too old-fashioned to get carried away by every new gizmo.

But here's the good news: Convince me otherwise! I'm all open to opinions and advice.

[Lewis Green]

Robert,

Good plan. The best part of it happened before you wrote it down, I believe. Smart marketers such as yourself clearly understand that tools aren't likely to maximize their potential without careful planning.

Before I began Tweeting, I, too, created a plan but did not publish it because I so often discuss planning that I felt my overall social media and social networking plans covered all the tools, including Twitter, and I have blogged about the bigger plans on several occasions.

Like you, I believe marketing must be practical, sensible and measurable for a business and should deliver results. To that end, planning is a necessary first step.

By the way, I am now following you on Twitter.

Lewis

[Charles Dominick, SPSM]

Responding to Hendry's comment: Actually, there are marketing advantages to having your blog and your main site on a separate domain. I have two separate domains and will never change that.

I agree with what you are doing, Robert.

[Hendry Lee]

Robert, if blogging is part of your social media strategy, by all means setup a new blog on your own domain.

I proposed this before via email and you rejected it. But let me give it a shot once again.

You need it for search engine leverage, branding and so on.

Perhaps a word from Seth Godin can persuade you into making that migrate. ;)

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/07/09/what-would-i-do-different-if-i-had-to-start-my-blog-over-seth-godin/

[Robert Middleton]

HI Susan,

"With that said, I take issue with your number 5 policy, which came across as a a bit smug--which is the opposite of who you are."

Well, it's just that I'm following people and every other tweet is a quote from some wise person. I just don't get it. How does that help their brand? Once in awhile, no problem, but as an ongoing thing? I guess there are a lot of tweets that don't make a lot of sense to me. That's OK, but I'm not very interested in following that.

My byword is: "Share Real Value!"

Cheers,
Robert

[Alaia]

Greetings, I am actually following you on Twitter, I found you through someone else's post and thought your information looked interesting and that it would be beneficial to me and my clients for me to learn from you. In light of your recent posts on your intentions for Twitter and your trouble with twitter link I will step back and check with your site occasionally. I am new to Twitter and while I don't find the need to tell my followers each move I make I do find that I gain useful information from the "social" aspect of Twitter. I look at it as a friendly means of creating community of interesting people. It adds a warmth to business interactions and allows me to get to "know" something about the people that I potentially wish to do business with. Otherwise I could just as easily Google key words and use whomever pops up.
I wish you the best with your Twitter experience and you other endeavors.
Blessings
Alaia

[Susan Parker]

Hey Robert,

I liked reading your Twitter policies and found them helpful.

One of the beauties of Twitter is that people are free to put their own stamp on it in their Tweets.

With that said, I take issue with your number 5 policy, which came across as a a bit smug--which is the opposite of who you are.

I love seeing quotes from great thinkers that some people Tweet. Quotes can be really inspiring and sometimes just what you need when you're dragging or discouraged about something like marketing.

I also like to see people's "wisdom" and don't see it at all as some annoying guru type spouting from on high.

For example, I may use Twitter as a way to list my top 101 tips for clear thinking, which is my company and brand. I think there's value to that for people and a way to give them a taste of what I offer.

I know that those were your policies but as an "info-guru" your policies could carry a lot of weight with others.

All this is to say that Twitter is wide open and there's room for lots of ways to use it.

Best Regards,

Susan Parker

[Robert Middleton]

You're welcome Milli.

My approach to things like this is to jump in with both feet, create systems that work and then integrate it into my overall marketing plan and strategies. You need to think of your web site, blog, Twitter and every other form of marketing communication as pieces of a larger whole that are ultimately moving your business forward.

Cheers,
Robert

[Milli Thornton]

Hi, Robert,

I've been stalling about joining Twitter for some of the negative reasons you've mentioned above.

I'm not interested in what my friends ate for dinner or when they're going to bed! And I've never liked that online profile mania where people just seem to want the most faces on their Friend list (but they're not interested in you whatsoever, or there is no common sharing of interests).

I've seen you talking about Twitter in your newsletter lately and I was still resistant. Keeping up with Facebook and my other profiles is time-consuming enough. But something about your request in today's newsletter finally moved me to take action.

For me, your Twitter plans and policies are sensible and motivating. Very helpful and thanks for posting them.

I probably wouldn't, myself, do everything you've listed. But I'll be re-reading this blog post to help me focus my Twitter activities.

I'm still learning the basics and trying to set up a "look" for my Twitter profile. Thanks for the motivation and extra direction!

- Milli