Last week, in my role as community manager for FeaturedUsers, I interviewed Guy Kawasaki for our #FollowFriday series. We talked about the startup economy, his books, Alltop, and how to get a standing ovation.

As if that wasn’t cool enough, I got to test out Wetoku, which is a sweet little embeddable app for doing online video interviews.

You can see the interview and read the transcript here.

Last April my friend Dusty approached me with an offer: he was too busy to handle the FeaturedUsers Twitter stream on his own. How would I feel about posting tweets, replying to followers, and generally monitoring the stream? It sounded like an interesting gig (and he was willing to pay me for it), so I agreed to give it a try.

Dusty had already set up the account with following/followers settings, so my only job would be sending out actual tweets. This has been something of a make-it-up-as-you-go-along gig for me, but after a few months I’ve got the basics of it figured out. I thought I’d share the process with you.

Twitter Stream

Flickr image by makelessnoise

A blend of tweets, sent throughout the day, is my formula for FeaturedUsers. This blend looks something like this:

1. Links. I send out about 5-8 links a day from interesting stories in my feed reader. Because my followers on FeaturedUsers and I have similar interests (Twitter, marketing, branding, web 2.0), I haven’t set up any special feeds for this account, but I would do so for a more specialized Twitter account. Most of these links are on those topics. At least once a day I try to send something that is more humorous or pop culture related. These are often the links that get retweeted the most, which helps to promote the FeaturedUsers brand across a wider audience. Also, it’s just good for people to have a laugh.

Most tweets follow the same basic format (as captured in TweetDeck):

This format ensures that I credit the author/site, add a little note of my own, and shows with the “^sv” that I am the personal sender of the tweet.

2. Retweets. I dip into the FeaturedUsers updates a couple of times a day to see what people are saying, and I retweet 2-3 people who have an interesting link to share (on topic!), or a good quote. This shows that you’re listening, and that you’re not just interested in talking about yourself or your brand.

3. Replies. I reply to all DM’s and @ messages throughout the day. If it’s a technical question that I can’t answer, I flag it for Dusty, but I still reply to the query, indicating that help is on its way. Prompt, good-natured responses are essential in customer service, and for now are quite manageable at around 6 or so a day. (I don’t reply to auto DMs.)

4. Follow Friday. Every Friday @FeaturedUsers gets a handful of #followfriday recommendations. Rather than thanking each of these people individually, I send out 2-3 batch tweets each Friday thanking those for mentioning me, and including the #ff or #followfriday hashtag.

5. Updates. Tweets are sent out to alert followers to new blog posts, updates to the service, or any other news related to FeaturedUsers.

6. Conversation. I admit, this is where I’m most lacking. Friendly conversation and engagement is appealing, and when I’ve spoken about more personal, general things, even the weather, it tends to get a response. But I usually forget to just “chit chat” on this Twitter account during the day. I’ll be working on that.

Tools

Flickr image by geishaboy500

Having an efficient method for sending and responding to Tweets keeps me from losing my mind. Here are the tools I use (Mac OSX/Firefox 3.5):

1. If there is more than one person on your Twitter account, you really should be using a group Twitter application like HootSuite or CoTweet. CoTweet allows for users to “assign” tweets (with optional notes attached) to each other for follow-up, schedule future tweets, and manage multiple Twitter accounts from a single page. It’s in Beta right now, so you have to request an invite, but last I heard these were being sent out pretty regularly.

2. Feed Reader. I’m addicted to Feedly right now, but Google Reader works fine for this. As I mentioned above, much of what I already read by default is relevant to the FeaturedUsers followers, so I haven’t had to create a separate folder. If I were tweeting for a real estate company or a wine merchant, however, I would have some unique feeds set up specifically for them. In the morning I go through my feeds and schedule links to be shared throughout the day. At the end of the day I’ll check Feedly again, and save a few links for the next day. That enables me to get rolling quickly the next morning with a few choice items. 2. CoTweet really really REALLY needs a bookmarklet for easy link sharing (they say this will be coming shortly). Otherwise, it’s perfect. For now I keep the HootSuite bookmarklet in my browser sidebar to send out links. This includes an option to schedule tweets into the future, which is great.

3. Link Shortener. A drawback to the HootSuite bookmarklet is it’s tied in with the ow.ly link shortener. This may or may not irk you. I replace all ow.ly links with an is.gd link, using the is.gd Creator for Firefox.

4. ShareThis. Another add-on I use is the ShareThis add-on for Firefox. This enables me to send all links to the FeaturedUsers del.icio.us account.

5. Twitter Search. CoTweet captures all @ replies and DMs on the website, but I still keep a FeaturedUsers search going on TweetDeck. This catches any mentions of the website or the service that aren’t in the standard @ reply format.

6. Google Alert. In addition to monitoring Twitter, I run a Google Alert for FeaturedUsers that sends results to my inbox once a day. This helps me capture any reviews or other mentions of FeaturedUsers on the internet, allowing me to thank the reviewer and link to the post the following day.

Anyone else out there Twitter for someone else, or Twitter for business? I’d love to hear about your process and the tools you use!