The Twitter Effect: My Life as a Social Media Manager

Sydney Social Media Manager CLAIRE FELICES has developed a niche offering small businesses a daily-activity social media solution for just $26 per week! Here she writes about how she turned gadding about on Facebook into a vibrant career …

About 3 years ago a friend e-mailed me asking me to familiarise myself with twitter and doing internet stuff for him. The subject was even “I really have to get you to do twitter”. I had at that time already created a career for myself over the internet, having been exposed to it for more than a decade as a chatter, gamer, contributor and transcriber.

When I first tested the twitter waters my thoughts were, this just was like facebook’s version of quick status updates. Only on twitter you can change that every few minutes or seconds depending on how often you would like it to. Doing that on facebook is a little tacky and entirely unwelcome.

But overall, my early comparisons, when seen through the prism of many months and now years spent working in both FB and twitter as well as Linked In and recently Google+, were wrong.

Facebook is more of a personal site. The telling of everyday life, what you are doing, what you like, how you view life in general. It is me and my friends catching up, people I grew up with, even went to school with but do not necessarily like. It is like saying hi to someone in the corridor without necessarily waiting for a reply.

Twitter is touted to be the people you wish you went to school with, the cool ones, those that share our interests or have some semblance of commonality. It is more of what’s out there, and getting it out there. You can’t just post something there and people will “like” your post. If I wanted to know what was happening to people I know, I log in to facebook. But when I want to know what’s happening with the world, I go to twitter.

But it doesn’t stop there. Both have business prospects. No longer can it be said to be a fad, these social media and networking platforms. It is marketing free for all. But as a marketing tool, it also holds the rule that if you don’t know your market, your business will fail.

The Twitter Ad-vantage

It is a mistake to think that just by creating a page, a profile or showing up in google is all that’s needed to compete and make a ripple out of this vast internet pool. This becomes the main reason why its best to get a well versed social media manager. It is not enough of a justification that nobody knows more about your products more than you do. Twitter will not benefit you and your company much if all you tweet about is your product. It is not enough that you follow and have followers. There should be quality in your tweets not just quantity. And talk, start a conversation, get a vibe.

True, facebook does have its groups, its business pages that scores you likes for your business page and may also tend to be a bit interactive. But twitter is more in your face, faster paced and with hash tags that if theres enough people doing the same (using the hash tags) makes for a trending topic.

To dwell in twitterverse is to be entertained as well as informed. With twitter you follow a broader spectrum of people, places even ideas or interests. We can lump them as a group, people that inspire, the health conscious, those that provide good articles to read, technology news bits, plain goofy edgy ones or whatever category you could think of.

For businesses, there is twitters immediacy to be taken advantage of. Some surveys are done through it. Specials and must haves that are on a limited time offer. It provides an open line of communication the business and its users. Business owners though must engage in it fully to get the right beat and to not be left behind or be thought of just conforming to the internet demand. Small companies though, could not afford to hire a full time web savvy tech person.

A Loyal Footsoldier

This is where I come in. I’m now looking after twitter accounts for a range of companies – for just $35 an hour. This hour is spread over the working week for maximum activity impact while encouraging the business owner or staff to occasionally tweet themselves (many clients in fact never have!). This gives businesses that do not know where to start on this social media phenomenon the chance to experience it while knowing that every day of the year they are building up relevant, localised followers without having to get their heads around that aspect.

While other businesses start twitter themselves and eventually lose interest or time or just don’t know what to do next, for the most part, my clients just visit now and again, satisfied in the knowledge that they’re getting their money’s worth.

Effectively Twitter is costing these clients just over $1000 for the year, which is a small amount to be paying – and easy to get the ROI back on that – if you don’t make that money back as a minimum you shouldn’t be in business LOL!!

It’s Numbers … But Also Relevance

It amazes me that there are some social media manager out there who rest on the “relevancy theory”, in that they don’t seek to build up followers or fans with any great ambitions because they say that it’s more important for people to have 150 relevant followers than thousands of, er, relevant followers.

My social media manager is from a magazine background, an environment which, while derided as old-school now (he got out early), nevertheless dealt with print runs in the tens, or even hundreds of thousands.

His view, much shared by me, is that the first point of critical mass on Twitter, for instance, is 2200 followers. And this thinking is far from the “all in, none relevant” approach that joining a follower-building network like “Twiends” will proffer. By achieving 2200 followers before you begin to even think about mounting a sales campaign.

Once there the goal must be to double numbers again, and indeed you’ll find a 50% increase in responses once you get past 3300 followers.

In both the above scenarios you can expect that by ethical, organic follower-building, a method which is a key platform of our techniques, about half your Twitter followers will be relevant. Far better than sitting around with 150 followers which preaching a false virtue of relevance.

Here’s some examples where my use of follower-growing techniques that are ethical and organic have created solid follower numbers which have turned out to be highly relevant as a percentage of total followers. The clients are now up and tweeting comfortably now that their numbers have been grown with authenticity and professionalism (and a little bit of coaching as part of the program):

The Health Arts College ~ based in Melbourne so I targeted Melbourne residents, their students are mostly women in their 30s to 50s, and also I targeted holistic practitioners and professionals around the world.

Geoff Jowett of Bodytrim ~ Geoff has a weight loss company and so I targeted not just general members of the public, but also a lot of personal trainers and gyms have been targeted and they follow him now to get cutting edge info on weight loss and his latest products.

SydneyCafes ~ going well with close to 7000 followers, most of them Sydney residents as well as foodies, food writers, chefs etc.

Rob Borg Sales Coach ~ targeted business owners who want to achieve higher sales from their sales staff.

WorldParTea ~ targeted foodies from around the world as her products can be sold internationally.

Peronis Italian Restaurant ~ my newest client, targeting residents in the Parramatta area as well as food media, eg bloggers, editors & influential foodie celebrities.

It’s a Conversation

We have yet to exhaust the opportunities that twitter offers. My most valuable lesson from my twitter years though, is as much applicable on the internet as it is on a personal level. Be not afraid. To ask, to converse, to be yourself. Mingle. Talk. Have fun. Re-tweet!