Connecting With Journalists on Twitter

Introducing our first guest blogger Belinda Bull, owner of the increasingly successful Net2Nana online gift shop for mums, grandmas or any lady who deserves a fabulous treat.

Just 12 months ago Belinda started using Twitter and one of her main objectives was she wanted magazine articles about her new online business published in a selection of relevant, targeted publications.

12 months on she reflects on what worked well and shares these tops tips with you.

The recently published 4th Annual Digital Journalism Study showed that 47% of journalists used Twitter “as a source”. With this information to hand we really can’t afford not to build relationships with journalists and let them help us promote our businesses.

So here are my top 10 tips to make sure you are using Twitter to it’s full advantage.

1. Make sure your Twitter profile reflects what you want your business to be known for and what your area of expertise is.
2. Raise your Twitter profile, become known as an expert in your field and make it easy for journalists to find you as well as you finding them.
3. It’s never too soon to start building relationships with journalists on Twitter, plenty of companies start tweeting weeks before they even officially launch. Even once you have a built up a rapport with a journalist they can be working several months ahead so the time to start working on having your product/company featured in a publication may be up to 12 months in advance.
4. Use and love hashtags – #journorequest, #mediarequest etc. but add one to any tweet that you want journalists searching for info on a particular subject to find.
5. Be prepared to do some unpaid, uncredited work for a journalist before they run a great feature on you! I supplied one writer with a couple of quotes before she pitched my story to an editor, my reward was a fab 500 word article about my company complete with photos and links to my website.
6. Follow all the journalists connected to your field, chat, tweet, retweet and communicate with them. Don’t be too upset if some don’t follow you back.
7. Everyone loves to be flattered so if they make any relevant tweets about your industry acknowledge this by retweeting (RT) them.
8. If you write a piece on a blog make sure you put a link to it on Twitter, it’s a great way to expose your writing to a wider audience and raise your profile as an expert.
9. Similarly, if you write a press release provide a link and tag it with #journorequest, ask journalists if they’d like you to email them a copy. This is so much better than sending unsolicited press releases.
10. Don’t forget it’s a two way deal, the journalists want plenty of new, lively, interesting, informative copy to fill their publications and you want publicity for your company!

I also feel I should mention media strategist Michelle Drapeau, Twitter name @Lexi_Pop, a lovely lady who’ve I’ve got to know through Twitter, her blog www.lexipop.co.uk provides free information to help businesses gain publicity in the press The Writing Shop.

Enjoy connecting on Twitter and you’ll be surprised what you can achieve with 140 characters! I’d love to know about your experiences too.

Belinda Bull - Net2Nana

Look out for Net2Nana in next months Best magazine July 2011 & Essentials August 2011.

Ten Ways To Increase Your Twitter Followers

This guest post is written by Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg and the co-founder of Revision3 and Pownce. Kevin, who has over 88,000 followers on Twitter (making him the second most followed after President Obama), also “bloggs” atkevinrose.com. He is an investor in Twitter.

1. Explain to your followers what retweeting is and encourage them to retweet your links. Retweeting pushes your @username into foreign social graphs, resulting in clicks back to your profile. Track your retweets using retweetist.
2. Fill out your bio. Your latest tweets and @replies don’t mean much to someone that doesn’t know you. Your bio is the only place you have to tell people who you are. Also, your bio is displayed on Twitter’s Suggested Users page. Leaving it blank or non-descriptive doesn’t encourage people to add you.
3. As @garyvee says, “link it up.” Put links to your Twitter profile everywhere. Link it on your Digg, LinkedIn, Facebook, blog, email signature, and everywhere else you live online. Also, check out the great feedburner-like badges from TwitterCounter for your blog.
4. Tweet about your passions in life and #hash tag them. Quality content coupled with an easy way to find it never fails. If others enjoy your content, they’ll add you. Learn more about #hash tagging here.
5. Bring your twitter account into the physical world. Every time I give a talk, speak on a panel, shoot a podcast, present slides, or hand out business cards, I figure out a way to broadcast or display my twitter account.
6. Take pictures. Pictures are heavily retweeted/spread around. This one from US Airways Flight 1549 has been viewed 350,000+ times. For mobile pics use iPhone apps such as Tweetie or Twitterific, both which support on the go uploading.
7. Start a contest. @jasoncalacanis offered a free macbook air if he reached the #1 most followed spot. That never happened, but Jason added thousands of followers…brilliant.
8. Follow the top twitter users and watch what they tweet. Pay attention to the type of content they sent out and how they address their audiences.
9. Reply to/get involved in #hash tag memes. search.twitter.com lists the hot ‘trending topics. Look for the #hash topics and jump in on the conversation (see #4 for links to #hash instructions).
10. Track your results. TwitterCounter will show you how many new users you’re adding per day and Qwitter will email you when someone unfollows you after a tweet.

If you enjoy this content, add me at twitter.com/kevinrose, thank you.