January 9, 2010

But I did manage to catch most of his talk about how to kick butt on Twitter. And I was tweeting here and there. Soon, several of you following me on Twitter asked me to summarize some of his key points.

So here goes – 10 points that I picked out from the dozens Guy Kawasaki made in his talk:

1. The Tweetmeme button is the most powerful button the Internet today, if you run a blog or content site. It instantly shows that others have found value in an article or post. People see the number of tweets and think, "It must be good." Second, the button makes it easy for people to retweet your article.


2. Make your tweets retweetable, by providing interesting stuff. "Retweeting is the sincerest form of flattery," says Guy. "A person who retweets is saying I think what you said is interesting enough that I am risking my reputation to send it to other people.”


3. To find interesting stuff to tweet, subscribe to Smart Brief updates; Stumbleupon categories; and Alltop categories.


4. Get people to help you. Use ghost tweeters (i.e., ghost writers) to do outbound tweeting. Never use a ghost to respond to Direct Messages or “@ questions” people send you. Guy says there’s an 80% probability that he will respond to an “@ message” or a DM, except at 3 am PST.


5. Ignore the dogmatists who say Twitter is only about telling people about "me" – he calls it “meforming.” Guy says, “If you are Lance Armstrong tweeting ‘I have a flat tire,’ that’s interesting. You or me tweeting about a flat tire -- not interesting. Do not do much ‘meforming.’"


6. Tweet everything on your blog. If you don't think something is tweet-worthy, then why are you writing about it on your blog in the first place?


7. Repeat your tweets. According to Guy, “We repeat each tweet 4 times. Each time we tweet, something gets an average of 600 click-throughs regardless of how many times we tweet it. If we had stopped at one tweet, we would have limited the potential of that tweet to 600 visits, instead of 600 x 4 visits” to the site where the link leads. (Remember, many many site owners are getting the benefit of the visits from these multiple tweets, not necessarily Guy’s sites.) He went on to point out that mainstream media, such as CNN, repeats their news every hour because they know that people are not listening every minute of the day.


8. Be prepared for negative feedback -- you WILL get someone saying something negative if you tweet.. No matter what you say, some people will disagree with you. If at any given moment, if you're not upsetting someone on Twitter, you're not using Twitter. Don't let the .001% dictate using Twitter as a marketing tool. Mother Teresa would get negative feedback on Twitter. Use Twitter the way YOU want to use it.


9. Do not buy followers -- most of those offers are scams. You should earn your tweets by tweeting out interesting stuff.


10. Should you tweet a sponsored message for money? Guy says, “It depends. If Reynolds Tobacco asked me to tweet that cigarettes don't cause cancer -- absolutely not. But if the manufacturer of a car I love, like Audi, asked me to, I don’t think I would turn it down. And I would disclose it as a sponsored tweet.”

For Guy’s slides please go here

Join the conversation ( 10 )

• Benjamin Wright 1 year 12 months and 15 days ago

  

  Anita: On the topic of small businesses leveraging web publicity, what do you think about this? A small Texas company is using Web 2.0 guerrilla publicity to fend off a strange lawsuit brought by a much larger bank. Have you ever seen anything like this lawsuit before? http://legal-beagle.typepad.com/wrights_legal_beagle/2010/02/public-relations.htm --Ben

• Joel Libava 2 years 0 months and 28 days ago

  

  Hi Anita,
  I did notice that you amended the Tweet amount from 6 to 4. (Which reminds me of a great Chicago song from the 70's)
  
  I do like the whole concept of opt in.
  
  The Franchise King®
  Joel Libava
  

• Cristian Andrei 2 years 0 months and 29 days ago

  

  Twitting the same post over and over again, it's just stupid. No-one thinks about the long-term effects of this, just the short term of having * (times) n more clicks?
  What happens when everybody is doing that, and tweeter is no longer a time-savior, but a time eater, having to look up these repeated posts again and again, nothing interesting, but I just keep spending my time looking at tweets. Sweet, isn't it, Tweet?
  Don't mind me, I'm just pissed off by consumerism at the moment...

• Anita Campbell 2 years 0 months and 29 days ago

  

  Hi Joel, BTW, did you notice I corrected "6 times" to "4 times"? That was my note-taking error.
  
  I find Guy's tweets extremely helpful and interesting stuff.
  
  And another point he made is that this is all opt in. It's a simple matter to unfollow. All of us have had occasion to unfollow someone because we don't like something about the way they tweet. That's just free will.
  

• Joel Libava 2 years 0 months and 29 days ago

  

  Anita,
  I have learned a ton of stuff from Guy. I loved the idea of Alltop, and still do. As a matter of fact, the radio program that I currently co-host with Paul Segreto (Franchise Today Show-Thursday's) allows me to start off by reporting the latest franchise related news directly from the Alltop Franchise page, which I actually was able to help create. (With @NEENZ)
  I happen to agree with Guy on most of his ideas, and his social media techniques. Now, will I ever have people do "Tweeting" for me? I don't know. At this point, I would say that I'm not interested in doing that. It's not personal enough for me.
  Now, about this re-Tweeting thing. The button is good. I use it, or the Typepad version of it, anyway.
  Last point; I do not consider what Guy and his peeps do on Twitter as being spam. It;s good stuff, and always interesting. (If he started sending out "Get 10,000 Followers In 20 Days" type Tweets, that would be spam!)
  I don't send my Tweets out 6 times a day. I think it's way too many. Couple of times, fine.
  
  Thank you for reporting on his talk.Those of us that were not able to attend CES appreciate it!
  
  The Franchise King®
  Joel Libava

• Anita Campbell 2 years 0 months and 30 days ago

  

  FYI, we're in the process of making another fix to this article, because Guy pointed out that he said they tweet 4 times, not 6 times (my bad).
  
  And do keep in mind that these are merely my quick summary notes, not a complete explanation of everything he said. The video of Guy will be available here at some point and that will fill in the gaps and add more context.

• Martin Lindeskog 2 years 0 months and 30 days ago

  

  What kind of RT button does Open Forum have at the moment? I can't see any button right now. I don't have any Tweetmeme button on my EGO blog. I don't think you have that service for Blogger.com. But I have other ways of sharing the content on my blog, i.e. Wibiya toolbar. I will get a RT button for my new site (powered by WordPress) EgoSoleTrader.com [under construction]. I am also thinking of getting a Disqus or IntenseDebate feature on my blog.
  
  I like the new Retweets section at Twitter's dashboard. You get a good overiew on retweeted tweet messages by others in one stream, RTs by you and your retweeted messages.

• Naomi Trower 2 years 0 months and 30 days ago

  

  I feel super fortunate to have met Guy at the LA Twitter Conference in Sept 2009. It makes total sense to tweet the same thing several times as there is a different Twitter audience at different times of the day. I hope to make CES next year!

• Scott Wieder 2 years 0 months and 30 days ago

  

  For a chance win two hours of consultation with Guy check out the promotion at http://business.verizon.net/betterway/

• Anita Campbell 2 years 0 months and 30 days ago

  

  I see that the link to Guy's slides is incorrect. I'll try to get that fixed. Meanwhile, here it is:
  
  http://holykaw.alltop.com/how-to-demo-twitter
  
  - Anita