Influence

3 Ways to Give Your Tweets Extra Bird Bacon

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One of the reasons I find Conan's Twitter Tracker funny, is because the tweets he features are so lame. Now, people will follow celebrities no matter how lame their tweets are because, well, they're celebrities. For the rest of us here are 3 ways to keep your tweets filled with extra bird bacon:

1. BE RELEVANT - offer a helpful tip, a compelling link, or other valuable resource.
Examples:

Not Cool: Using as many trending topics as possible in your tweet to show up on current searches.

2. ENGAGE OTHERS - ask questions, answer questions, respond, or retweet.
Examples:

Not Cool: Asking others to RT your message.

3. USE HUMOR - doesn't have to make others laugh out loud, just smile.
Examples:

Not Cool: Tweeting old one-liners.

In his book Twitter Power, Joel Comm divides tweets into two types: broadcasts and conversations. The celebrities I've seen seem to focus on more broadcasts, and far too many businesses on Twitter fall in the same trap. They could both be more interesting with a little less broadcast and a little more conversation.

How to Grab Someone’s Attention

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I just started reading The Lean Forward Moment by Norman Hollyn (thanks to Karyn Johnson for recommending it). It's all about how visual storytellers can create moments that get the audience on the edge of their seats. Straind's music video For You, illustrates one of those moments:


Find more videos like this on STAIND

Hollyn explains:

Let's look at the third verse of the song, where there is a strong Lean Forward Moment, as the band sings, "All your insults and your curses, make me feel like I'm not a person." If this song's story is about how teenagers cannot get their true feelings across to their parents, then this lyric in the song is the most direct statement of it. The lyrics speak to their alienation and the music pounds those thoughts home at this point. (p. 308)

I may never watch another music video the same way again.

Brand Alignment

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Two weeks ago I got stuck in Atlanta when the airport got shut down after the control tower was struck by lighting. It was a zoo. Lots of tired, angry people were being told to stand in line and remain calm. After reserving a seat on the next flight in the morning, I secured a hotel room. I made it to the shuttle where I was the next to the last person to squeeze on and away we went.

At the hotel a new line of tired, angry people formed to check in for a few hours of sleep. That's when a group of pilots from Express Jet strolled off the shuttle from their seats in the back, bypassed the line of weary travelers, and stood at one end of the desk. Once the kid waiting on the customer at the front of the line finished, he turned his attention to the pilots.

I've never flown on Express Jet, so now my primary brand impression of them is based on the arrogant display of entitlement I saw those pilots display that night, making twelve passengers wait while they exercised their special privilege of checking in first.

That's one of those situations that probably wasn't covered in new pilot orientation, but my guess is that's not how Express Jet wants their brand to be portrayed. The important lesson I took away is to remember that your behaviors assume a role that is larger than you as an individual. You are linked to your company's brand. It was fairly blatant with these young hotshots thanks to their uniforms and badges, but we all represent the companies we work for (or the groups we belong to) whether we plan to or not.

To play it safe, act as if anything you do or say could appear on the front page of the local newspaper with your company logo as the headline. That applies to blogging, tweeting, and even cutting in line.