Welcome back everyone. It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything on here, so let’s get it going again. I’ve been busy playing WAY too much Modern Warfare 2 recently and ended up neglecting this blog. I’ll be posting more from now on.
Back in the last post, I had talked about taking a look at your competitors and seeing what they do on Twitter. Now let’s dig in a bit deeper, and take a look at what you should be paying attention to.
Personally I like both Twitalyzer and TweetStats, but I like the information from TweetStats just a bit more. After you’ve managed to find your competitors Twitter accounts, go ahead and just plug them into these sites and see what you come up with. For today, let’s take a look at stats for my buddy Kenny Hyder‘s account, @kennyhyder (Great for SEO news and other random oddities).
First off, the guy posts TONS of stuff on Twitter, and is a great example of how to use Twitter, so eventually I’m sure we’ll be visiting him again. But for this example, let’s imagine that he’s one of your competitors. Take a look at how often he tweets, who he is following, who he is retweeting and replying to, etc.
Now for some reason, it’s part of human nature to think that if you want to beat someone, you have to do something 10x as well as the next guy. In this case, that type of thinking can lead you down a long dark road. Yes, you’ll probably do a little better at first, but what if your competitor tries to outdo you? How much more effort can you put into being 10x better than them each time they try to surpass you? Eventually you may drive yourself nuts just trying to keep up. What if you just barely do better than the next guy? Wouldn’t that be a little more manageable? Say he tweets 10 times a week, I recommend tweeting 11 times a week rather than 50 times. He retweets 5 people, you retweet 6.
This is going to be a never ending battle, but at least you’re putting yourself in a manageable position.
Now, let’s take a look at who your competitor is retweeting and replying to. Most likely, they’ll be following people in their industry and replying to some of those same people. Take a look at the accounts that your competitors are following, and maybe you’ll be able to find people to follow. Send replies to those people when you find something they posted to be interesting. Be active on Twitter. Don’t just sit there and read what these people have to say, start discussions with them. Think of each discussion you have as a free advertisement for your account, just don’t interact to the point that you become annoying. Ask meaningful questions that will be helpful to a vast majority of their followers.
Lastly, don’t think that you can get away with just looking at your competitor’s stats once and you’ll be fine. Check back once in a while and make sure that you’re still slightly ahead of them. Til next time, keep tracking your competitors. There’s no need to be the best, just a need to be slightly better.
