Know when your analysts are likely on Twitter with Tweetstats

One of the great things about social media and Twitter in particular is that they give you permission to interact with analysts outside of the normal channels. This can be a powerful tool for staying top-of-mind because as former Gartner and AMD analyst Jonathan Yarmis tweeted: “vendors who interact with me on twitter get me multiple times/DAY, everyone else multiple times/month or year”. 

While you can tweet an analyst in an asynchronous fashion, it is even more powerful if you exchange tweets in real time. A great tool to understanding a person’s pattern for when they usually tweet is Tweetstats.

Tweetstats is a free tool that is simple to use because all you have to do is enter someone’s Twitter handle and hit [enter]. After a couple of minutes it returns a number of graphs that analyze the person’s twittering by date and time. Within this context it is the Tweet Density that you should look at because it shows when the person tweets by hour and day of week. Here are two examples:

Example A:
 

Example B:
 

Example A does most of his tweeting during the normal business hours 8 am and 5 pm, though he does some evening and late night tweeting. Example B is an early bird doing most of his tweeting between 5 am and noon. 

SageCircle Technique:

• Experiment with Tweetstats using your top analysts’ Twitter handles
• Add reminders on your calendar as to when your top analysts will likely be on Twitter
• Engage in reasonable interactions – relevant, interesting and don’t over do it
• Periodically run Tweetstats to see if the analysts are changing their tweeting patterns

Bottom Line: Remaining top-of-mind with advisory analysts is a critical activity because every day they could be interacting with one of your company’s constituencies (e.g., prospects, partners or press). Twitter provides a simple permission-based way to touch your analysts without having to do inquiry or briefings. While not the end-all-and-be-all, it is a useful part of your AR tool kit.

Question: AR – Have you formally adopted Twitter? If not, why?