Couldn't give a tweet? #1

This is the first in a series of articles where we speak to Twitter users and find out what they are getting out of it, if anything, and whether they would recommend it to others for professional purposes.

This time we spoke to HR consultant and director of GH Consulting Gary Hoyte, a long-term Jellymould client. Gary’s Twitter account is: www.twitter.com/ghconsulting.

Twitter has come into all our lives. In the UK, it went overground when Stephen Fry mentioned it on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross. And in the US, President Obama famously used it to communicate with and motivate his supporters during the 2008 election campaign.

On first hearing about Twitter, many people are put off. It can either seem pretty ordinary, not much different from any of the many instant messaging systems out there, or so different that it is incomprehensible. It doesn’t help that, like Facebook, it’s impossible to fully understand what Twitter is like without joining up and getting involved.

A common complaint is that Twitter is a means for egotistical individuals to tell the world about every inane detail of their lives; a continual drone of people blathering about the gas man arriving late or how they’ve just eaten a custard cream; it’s noisy and insignificant; a distraction. And there is truth in this, of course.

Yet, Twitter has won the 2009 Webby Awards Breakout of the Year prize and the number of people using it is rapidly increasing week on week - apparently it’s grown by 900% in the last year alone! Intelligent, mature individuals like Stephen Fry and President Obama are keen users. Why?

There must be something in it but is it worthwhile for the small business or for small and medium-sized charities to set up and manage an account? Here’s what Gary Hoyte had to say.

Can you tell us how you started using Twitter?

I kept seeing references to Twitter and I had one social media presence through LinkedIn. So when it came to the time to launch my new website, I felt I should look at it in more detail.

To start off, I Googled ‘twitter for business’ and read a few articles. I quickly realised that to learn about Twitter I needed to start using it. There are two key approaches you can take. You can set up an account for your company - the corporate approach - or have individual accounts for staff.

I set up a corporate account in my company name and began following a few organisations, like the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD). Things became interesting within a couple of days.

I quickly realised that to learn about Twitter I needed to start using it.

I use LinkedIn to manage my network online and I’m in a few HR groups. On one of these groups, someone posted asking if anyone else was using Twitter for their HR business. I made a note of his Twitter account and began following him. In response to his message I sent him a direct message via Twitter with a link to an article I’d come across - “Beginner’s Guide to Using Twitter for Business” by John Jantsch.

It just so happened that this guy was based near me and we were both attending a CIPD conference, so we’ve now met and we have a great deal in common.

This encounter gave me the impetus to try out all the Twitter features early on, I re-tweeted one of his messages, used the direct messaging and generally got my feet wet.

We should explain that re-tweeting means forwarding on a tweet by someone you follow so that it appears on your own timeline and your followers will see it. Most Twitter apps provide a button for re-tweeting messages.

You’ve been using Twitter for a few months. Do you like it?

Oh yes, I’m a fan.

How do you use your account now and what are you getting out of it?

Well, I follow about 50 accounts, 50% of them are organisations and the rest are individuals. Twitter is a very good news feed and it’s in real time, so you often find out about stories as they are developing.

It’s a great way to gain new information and a learning tool.

Gary Hoyte’s Twitter ‘timeline’. Here you can see all of his messages. Some are directed at individuals, these are preceded by an @ symbol, and the others are to any and everyone. Re-tweeted messages are preceded with RT@ and the original user’s name.

How often do you tweet?

I’ve posted around 70 tweets now. I tweet at least twice a week but sometimes as much as two or three times per day. Quite a lot of the time I re-tweet - it’s a good way to get the company noticed by often bigger organisations but I only do so if I think the tweet is useful or interesting.

I also share links to articles that I think are interesting via Twitter.

Occasionally, I’ll tweet about what I’m about to do, for instance “Right, off down M4 to the initial meeting with a new mentee”. I’ve only tried this once or twice, though.

It looks like there’s a business aim there - you’re gently letting people know that you are a professional mentor, right?

Yes, that’s the idea. Well, Twitter is an important place to be found, if you are in business, and it’s a great new marketing space. For instance, one of my messages about a client’s work was re-tweeted by an American water charity that has around 15,000 followers. It gives you a chance to put your mark in their world.

I’d say it works best as a supporting marketing and networking tool, rather than a leading one. As I said, it worked really well alongside my LinkedIn activity.

So the potential is there to reach a lot of people if you make sure your posts are relevant and interesting. Has it resulted in new business for you yet?

Not yet. I’m not sure what will happen once I find that my customers are using it. That will be an interesting development.

Do you have any tips for businesses using Twitter?

I’d recommend reading Twitter’s own guide to using it for business and to begin following a few organisations that are of interest.

Check your followers, especially new ones that you don’t recognise. Like any online networking system, there are people that abuse it and it’s a good idea to block them as soon as possible. The information about who you follow and who follows you is public, so it can affect your credibility. There are some obvious indications about the quality of the account. A big clue is the ratio of followers to followees. If someone is following 40,000 people but only has five followers, you can guess that they are spammers and they have nothing interesting to say.

It takes a little focus to write a message in 140 characters or less but that’s a useful skill for everyone to develop.

What do you use to manage your account?

I use Tweetdeck on my computer and Twitterberry on my Blackberry.

Thanks very much to Gary Hoyte for his time and thoughtful replies. We would welcome your comments on this article. If you’d like to start an account with Twitter go to www.twitter.com and sign up. To follow Gary Hoyte, go to www.twitter.com/ghconsulting. To follow Jo Johnson of Jellymould Creative, visit www.twitter.com/jo_jellymould.