“In military, the rules of engagement (ROE) determine when, where, and how force shall be used.” How do you create your Twitter ROE to maximize your return on investment (ROI)? While not suggesting that force be used, the suggestion is that a strategy of some sort be employed to maximize your ROI.
Creating your own personal ROE could help to maximize your experience and give you more benefits. For as many people as there are on Twitter, each has their own theory and best practices. Have you considered what your goal is on Social Media? Do you want to gain more followers, get traffic to your blog or maybe earn some likes on your Facebook page. First suggestion is to think about these questions and formulate some thoughts.
A few best practices to consider and create a better ROI for your ROE:
Use a service such as www.friendorfollow.com or www.tweepi.com to check out your new followers, see who is following and maybe who is not following you. Formulate what you feel is best for you, if someone isn’t following you have a few choices. Unfollow, of course, but also decide if this person is of value to you. It is not too late to tweet them to say hi. It isn’t recommended to put people on the spot for unfollowing and will most likely come off as rude or needy. You will always catch more bees with honey!
Please do not ever auto-direct message. This cannot be said enough, it really annoys people and causes an immediate unfollow for many. The new follower is not going to be impressed with your sales pitch or immediately like your Facebook page. Respect the people who have chosen to follow you and yourself.
Find a new friend somewhere, follow them immediately! It is so hard to remember people’s Twitter handles and you will want to tweet them again. Immediate follow is a good idea. If you are in a great chat, don’t forget to go through at the end and follow the people who you enjoyed. The chat experience gets better as you create more meaningful relationships with friends outside of your weekly hour together.
Sharing is caring – make sure that you share more of other’s folks content more than your own. There are different theories on what percentage you should shoot for but if you are only pushing your own content it can look spammy. And you might run the risk of no one tweeting your information, reciprocity is always appreciated and remembered. Suggested practice is following the Pareto Principle of 80/20 content: eighty percent others content and twenty percent your own. (hat tip @ebonstorm)
Lists can also be used for organization and strategy. A stream of your new followers can be used to determine whether or not you should follow. Using a keyword search of people you follow can create stream of excellent content from people you have already pre-selected and respect. Also a benefit to create a smaller list of people who you don’t want to miss through out the day.
Using hashtags to follow or create a stream is an excellent way to organize and maximize. Also can be used to reiterate thoughts like #BOOM or #SocialMediaCrush, two of my current favorites. Or even to tie together a group of people like #cafefab, a special group of my girlfriends. (@natasha_d_g, @thehealthmaven and @parissab) (hat tip to @thedomesticexec)
Consistency is also important to maintain a presence, maintain followers and build relationships. Probably doesn’t need to be said but don’t drink and tweet, people notice! You can’t take back a tweet, even if you delete it the next day, it was out there.
What are your thoughts? Any best practices that you’d like to share with me? I’d love to hear from you!
Featured image courtesy of PV KS via Creative Commons.
Article by Peg Fitzpatrick
[...] your blog? Why would this be interesting to anyone? Following the 80/20 rule (more on that it the ROI of your Twitter ROE ~ Rules of Engagement) and sharing eighty percent of other’s peoples content and twenty percent of yours creates [...]