Twitter Engagement Metric

Business Goal

Follower mention is an excellent engagement metric. It indicates to what extent you are connecting with other users on twitter and developing real relationships. It can also be indicative of how valuable your tweets and content are to others, as the more value they see in what you have to say, the more likely they are to mention you.

If one of your business goals is to become a thought leader in a certain niche, or to build a larger community base of people that trust you and that you can do business with, then this is a good metric to follow. This is a valuable goal for almost any company, but especially for B2B firms, as sales in that situation requires good relationships and high levels of trust. To be sure if this metric is for you, you should probably ask yourself the following questions:

Is my target audience on Twitter? (try checking Twellow or Twitter search)
Are the people that influence my clients and customers on Twitter?
Is building a strong online community important for my businesses success?
Could I find potential partnerships or other opportunities from a Twitter community?
Is user engagement an important part of my brand and business?

How do you increase it?
You increase this metric by being social and helpful to others. An important part of this is reading other people’s tweets so you know who they are and what they are thinking about. Then you can start conversations with them, mention them, ask them questions, retweet them, give referrals to them, etc. Common courtesy also goes a long way; if someone else’s tweets are useful to you, let them know and thank them. And if you are mentioned in that way, be sure and let them know their mention of you is appreciated.

You are different than other businesses.  You provide goods and services in a way that no one else quite mimics.  You own a specific niche in the market.

Or at least you should.

Twitter, along with the rest of the growing social internet, provides immense opportunity to connect with people and organizations in meaningful ways in order to create value for one another.  It allows for powerful communities to be created when unique people and business can connect and work with each other.

The system breaks down, however, the minute we want to be like everybody else.  We want to follow large, pre-made Twitter lists from sites like listorious because we want to follow the ‘experts.’  We don’t want to miss any information that other people in our industry may be getting.

The problem here is one of opportunity costs.  Tracking popular pre-made lists of hundreds of tweeters, and doing it effectively, takes time – time that could be spent tracking a list specifically relevant  and customized to you.  And a list the no one else has. Businesses win when they are differentiated.  Why should the way a business uses Twitter be any different?

Find people by searching Twitter for key terms you are interested in.  Sign up for the RSS feed for these terms.  Look at the tweets of those the show up and see if they are saying relevant and valuable things to what you do.  Notice who they follow and who follows them, and read their tweet history as well.  Search for relevant tweeters on sites like Wefollow or Twellow.  You could even sift through someone else’s pre-made list to find the tweeters most relevant to you.

The point is, make lists customized to you and your business. If you’re just following popular pre-made lists, you’re the same as everybody else.