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KEY POINTS
- Twitter is not just about celebrities’ lives.
- Another way of networking.
- Build up followers.
- Post replies or share messages.
The name James McBrearty will be known to only a handful of readers of Taxation. He is an ATT and CAT (certified accounting technician) qualified accountant who is known to almost 9,000 followers on Twitter as the ‘Twittering tax man’. This is clever branding because, by his own admission, James’s tax expertise is focused on ‘helping self-employed people pay less tax’.
James is a regular user of Twitter – as am I. He is also a great advocate of using Twitter to build relationships and business – as am I. However, I am less of an advocate for the use of the micro-blogging site by accountants and tax advisers.
So, why this article? Simply, I have noted more and more of our number are considering experimenting with Twitter. Furthermore, as I have been active on the site for almost 18 months, I thought I would share what I have learned, in so far as is relevant to Taxation readers.
In this article I will explain how you can get started on Twitter and why you might want to, and I will share some tips and tricks based on my experience to help make things easier for you. By the end you will either know that Twitter is not for you, or you will be tempted to give it a try.
Two misconceptions
If I believed everything I saw in the media about Twitter I might imagine that it was full of celebrities and other people telling each other about the minutiae of their lives, including what they had for breakfast, lunch and tea.
This is a very misleading impression, in much the same way as if we allowed our perception of satellite television to be determined by how many music, kids and shopping channels it contains. In reality you can get great value from a satellite TV without watching any of those channels. It is just as easy to avoid all of the nonsense on Twitter, too.
The other misconception arises from media references to celebrities’ Twitter pages. In practice, I rarely look at anyone’s page. There are far more effective ways to benefit from Twitter and to see value from one’s tweets.
Conversation not advertising
Only three categories of people will see your tweets. First, those who are following you (and it takes time to build up your followers). Second, anyone who searches Twitter for words that appear in your tweets.
The third category are people who follow any of your followers who retweet your tweets.
It is all but impossible to build up a meaningful following on Twitter or to get retweeted if you use it for adverts and self-promotional tweets. As with all other forms of online social media, the overt ‘Tax worries? Call now!’ messages will largely be ignored.
Maybe it is best to think of Twitter by way of an analogy with face-to-face networking. If two practising tax advisers move to a new village and visit the local pub in which they want to win over the locals to become clients, which of the following two approaches would have greater chance of success?
- The first adviser walks into the pub and, ignoring conversations, starts boasting about how good he is and also shouts about the free tax tips he’s giving away.
- The second tax adviser enters the pub, looks around for a while, contributes to a number of conversations without butting in, allows the locals to get to know him a bit, for them to find out he’s a tax adviser and to tell their friends and associates about this lovely new professional tax adviser who they’ve met in the village pub.
Anyone who behaves like the first tax adviser will be largely ostracised. He will probably end up complaining about how unfriendly the locals are and that it’s a waste of time going to the pub. It is much the same with Twitter, which has been compared with a local pub, a fast-flowing river and a new search engine.
Registering your account
If you’re inclined to experiment, go to Twitter.com and set up your account with a username –e.g. JohnSmith – and a brief biography. Identify your locality – e.g. Shropshire or north London – and your web address.
I suggest using your real name as your username. If you have a common name (as I do) you may need to adopt a variation. (I am @BookMarkLee). You can use underscores if that helps, e.g. @John_Smith.
Another exception is if you’ve built a brand around a name other than your own – e.g. @thetaxbuzz or @AbacusAccountants – then staying consistent takes priority. You can change your username at any time. Different considerations apply to larger firms, but space does not permit me to expand here.
It is clear that more people will want to follow you if you also add a photo showing your face, rather than a logo or any other sort of image.
A face photo can also help your followers feel that they are getting to know you as it will appear alongside each of your tweets. This is the first step towards them starting to like you and trust you, which are usually prerequisites to them becoming clients.
Getting started
You may want to follow a few other tax advisers (see the list below) and maybe some accountants, to see the sort of things that get tweeted.
There is no point in starting to send loads of tweets until you have people following you. This is something of a Catch-22 as few people will follow you until you start posting tweets.
You will need to post two or three a day before you have any followers. Think about what might prompt people to want to follow you. Overt promotional messages will not work in this regard.
As already mentioned, tweets cannot be more than 140 characters in length. It is common to provide links in your tweets to interesting items on the web. Most people who do this use URL shorteners, e.g. Bit.Ly, to reduce the length of their links.
You will find the whole experience much easier if you use something like the Hootsuite website or download Tweetdeck or Seismic to manage your interactions on Twitter. There are also free Twitter applications for mobile devices, such as iPhones and BlackBerries, which simplify the process.
Initially, you may choose to check your Twitter feed a couple of times a day using one of these tools. Try to post a couple of replies each time, or retweet messages you think are worth sharing.
Give it time, be yourself and enjoy. I know it’s not for everyone, especially those who have yet to consider a social media strategy for their practice. But that is another subject for another day.
Twitter tips
So if reading this article has inspired you to set up an account, here are some of my top Twitter tips which may help you get started.
- Ignore the basic Twitter question. Instead, imagine the invitation is to answer the question, ‘What is holding your attention right now?’
- Don’t automatically follow everyone who follows you and don’t chase hundreds of followers. If you do this you will attract spammers, marketing gurus, social media specialists, loners and losers. None of them will be prospective clients for your tax advice or advocates of your services. They probably will not even read any of your tweets.
- Don’t assume all of your followers will see all your tweets. They will only dip in and out, just like you will do. Twitter streams are like rivers. They are not newsfeeds.
- Don’t tweet anything you wouldn’t want to be quoted in the press. Once published, all your tweets are there for posterity and you don’t want any of them to come back to haunt you.
- It should go without saying, but don’t tweet anything about a client without explicit permission. Along the same lines, even if it is good or exciting news about the client, do not assume that the client has already made it public. Even if it is public, you may still want to get permission first.
- Do be social and interact with your followers and those you follow. Be thought-provoking with some of your tweets, and pass on tips and ideas that others may find of interest.
- Do recommend books and articles that you have read that may be of interest to your followers.
- Do remember that your followers may have friends, followers or family who could be looking for tax advice, even if your followers seem unlikely to be in the market themselves.
- In time they may retweet your messages or simply talk about you if the subject comes up.
- Do respond when people engage you in conversation. If you want to reply publicly use the @ sign at the start of your tweet, e.g. @bookmarklee. If you want to reply privately use D before the other person’s username,
- e.g. D @bookmarklee.
- Do engage the people you follow or who follow you in conversation shortly after you connect. Ask them a question, or enquire about something they have tweeted. They will be more likely to follow you back.
Twitter terms
- Tweet: a message posted on Twitter.com (maximum length of 140 characters, including spaces).
- @Taxation: the @ prefix indicates this is the username of someone who uses twitter (in this case, Taxation magazine).
- #accountants: the hash tag prefix makes the word (in this case ‘accountants’) searchable. The results of such a search will reveal all other tweets that include the word ‘accountants’ (with or without the hash tag prefix).
- D @taxation: the prefix D means your tweet will only be seen by the person whose username you add. You can only send direct messages like this to your followers.
- Followers: the people who choose to receive your tweets, i.e. to follow you. They choose you. You cannot choose them.
- RT @BookMarkLee: this would indicate that what follows is a retweet of a tweet posted by @BookMarkLee. This promotion of another person’s tweets is encouraged.
- Tweetaholic: someone addicted to Twitter so much so that it may be an actual problem.
- URL shorteners: facilities that reduce the length of a web page’s address. This is especially valuable because tweets are limited in length to 140 characters and often include references to web pages.
UK Tax Twitterers
Among the most active UK-based tax related Twitterers you will find:
- @BookMarkLee (me)
- @Taxation (this magazine)
- @CIOTNews
- @TheTaxBuzz
- @RichardJMurphy
- @HMTreasury
- @JonStow
- @JPointon
- @VATArk
- @RAndDTaxCredits
- @TaxationWeb
- @AndrewGoodall
- @ TaxHelpUKCom
Mark Lee FCA CTA (Fellow) is chairman of the Tax Advice Network and can be contacted on 0845 003 8780 or via email. He has posted further Twitter tips for accountants and tax advisers on his blog.
