Puma sponsored the Social Media Breakfast this morning at the Fan Pier. Three floors of 24 steel shipping containers made a refreshing stage for the faces of Boston’s body of social media. C.C. Chapman, George Grattan, Dan Schawbel and Roger Wu spoke about “rocking the boat” using social media mediums. Apt seeing as the breakfast took place overlooking the boats involved in the Volvo Ocean Race.
The breakfast topics made me think about using twitter as a tool, along with content optimization and linking, to drive traffic to read-worthy web pages. I come from a writing background, and value crafting of the written word as an art form. Instead of abusing twitter to spout nonsense to thousands of followers who may or may not be paying attention, twitter experts are focusing their tweets to better serve their followers.
“Have something to say before you start talking.” SEO specialist Megan Dickinson summed up C.C. Chapman’s speech shortly before stepping out onto Puma City’s second floor deck. She had a darker view of twitter than most of the other social media birds flocking around the huge red crate cluster this morning with @ symbol-adorned nametags.
She said there isn’t a way to monitor social media success without a huge margin of error, and people amass flocks of followers with little value to their tweets. People-myself included-are collecting twitter followers like beanie babies. This process begs the same question, “What is the point?”
Dickinson is right. A company can’t “engage their audience,” and fire up brand passion simply by tweeting up a storm. If their audience is twitterpated, chances are they are following too many tweeple to pay attention to one brand’s tweets. Or can they?
Cramer’s Steve Gogolak said the only meaningful tweets he reads are ones that include links to quality content. The man has a point-unless your name is William Carlos Williams, you probably can’t leave an impression in 140 characters. Instead, Gogolak advocated using twitter as a tool to accomplish specific goals. This shifts the focus of twitter, ironically, off twitter.
First, using twitter to highlight and draw attention to a blog or a website makes the number of followers much less important than the number of loyal readers. Newspaper publishers care if you buy the newspaper, reporters care if their subscribers read their article until the last line. If you are as passionate about your own media as C.C. Chapman said you should be, you should identify more with the reporter.
So what amazing content shall you tweet about? Two types: The content you write and the content you love. Obviously, Dan Schwabel’s idea of promoting your own writing is a good one. Drive traffic to your work and it will work for you. But I like something better.
I asked one man at the breakfast about his favorite blog and he answered with a science fiction blog. (I don’t remember what it was, only that I was taken aback-and delighted.) Here was something worth reading-a passion. Even if we live and breathe social media, Chris Brogan and tweetie, there is something of substance to tweeting about alien sightings and Star Trek. Or something of substance for loyal followers- and that is why they listen.
Strategic content choices, editing personal tweets and consistently interesting topics give tweets personality without being obnoxious. Since online media is free but tweeple’s attention isn’t, then your followers should savor tweets like a high school student waits for text messages.
Who are your favorite tweeters? Where do they take you? What are they doing right?
That is something to tweet about.
Tags: c.c. chapman, chris brogan, content marketing, dan schwabel, george grattan, puma city, roger wu, SEO, Social Media Breakfast, steve gogolak, Twitter, volvo ocean race
