HR Pulse

Social media is just about you talking to a lot of people

What I learned on Richard Simmonds’ social media course

At the end of last year, I was fortunate enough to attend Richard Simmonds’ half-day course on how to use social media, particularly Twitter, effectively in your business.

(Read his introductory article on how to use Twitter here.)

He started off by getting us up to speed on the current social media landscape and which platform is best to use for which purpose, for example:

 

• Twitter: This platform is best used to amplify content from your other sources on the Internet. For example, when you post a new article on your blog or website, you would promote it using your Twitter account.
  
  
• LinkedIn and Facebook: Use these platforms for networking and finding new prospects. LinkedIn, especially, is widely used in the recruitment industry for datamining and sourcing new employees (Read some of our articles on how the recruitment industry uses social media.)
  
  
• You Tube, Pinterest and Facebook pages: Use these to market your products and/or services and create awareness about what you offer.
  
  

Get more ‘tweeps’ and make sure you don’t contract ‘twitterhea’

During the second part of the morning, Richard spoke about how best to use Twitter for your business. (Have a look at the table entitled: “Tweet lingo” to discover what ‘tweeps’ and ‘twitterhea’ mean.) He showed us:

1.    How to choose the best Twitter handle for your Twitter account;

2.    What are hashtags and how do I use them;

3.    How to crowdsource using Twitter; and

4.    4 Twitter best practices.



How to choose the best Twitter handle for your Twitter account

Your Twitter handle, or username, is your identifier on Twitter. This will usually be preceded by the @ sign. When people reply to your Tweets, your Twitter handle will be the first thing that appears on the Tweet. Here’s an example:

3 tips for choosing the best Twitter handle for you

1.    If possible, make your Twitter handle as close to your name as possible. For example, as my name is Lia Marus, my twitter handle is @liamarus.

2.    Choose as short a handle as possible. Remember that each Twitter message is only 160 characters long and your Twitter handle is included in this character count. So if you have a long Twitter handle, the person replying to you will not have a lot of space to reply.

3.    If you’ve developed a username over a number of networks, use this name as your Twitter handle as your followers will be able to identify you with this.

What are hashtags and how do I use them?

Hashtags are a way of grouping related posts together. So if you wanted to search for what people are saying about a particular subject on Twitter, all you would do is type the term (with no spaces) preceded by the hashtag in the search bar – as I’ve done here when I wanted to search for Tweets about South Africa:

What I now get is everything that people on Twitter have Tweeted about South Africa:

So if I wanted a Tweet to be added into the #southafrica group of tweets, I would type the hashtag (#southafrica) followed by my Tweet. After I’ve done this, my Tweet is added to the #southafrica group:

How to crowdsource using Twitter

Crowdsourcing is a very useful method to gather your audience’s opinions about a subject or get their advice. To show you how this works, I’m going to ask my audience how they feel about the new SETA grant regulations as I want to write an article about it. So here’s what I’d do:

Then wait for the responses to come to you!

4 Twitter best practices

1.    Don’t develop twitterhea: Just remember that if you Tweet too much, your followers might start dropping off. So keep your tweeps happy and only Tweet in moderation!

2.    Don’t lock your Twitter account: Social media is all about openness and transparency so if your Twitter account is locked, and people have to ask you if they can follow you, the thought will be immediately planted in their heads: “What is she hiding?” Richard’s advice is to keep your Twitter account open.

3.    Always thank people for following you. It makes the conversation more natural.

4.    Always follow people back – you want to be polite: You’re not a celebrity.

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