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To get a sense of a competitor’s level of engagement, http://search.twitter.com is a great tool. To begin, just add a user’s name in the search bar. You’ll be greeted with every message to and from that account within the last 3 or so days.
The search interface makes it very simple to see exactly who is talking to your target company, what they are talking about and how your target company responds. In essence, you are privy to their complete interaction - meaning you’re well You can also get a sense of the type of Twitter strategy that they are using you can draw inferences about. Do they respond quickly? Are they informal? Is there a particular type of day that they tweet?
You can get a sense of what positive tweets are being sent if you include a smile emoticon, :), with your query.
“@timClicks :)” returns messages like: @timClicks Thanks so much Tim. :-). Thankfully, there are no results for “@timClicks :(”.
Remember, that it’s possible to analyse competitors that are not even using Twitter. Not having a Twitter account doesn’t prevent people from tweeting about you. Experiment by searching for trade marks, company names or governments.
Search is great, but it doesn’t give you a full insight into a competitor’s use of Twitter. They might be sending great deals to selected followers via direct messages, for example. To find out, create an account and become their customer. Do not impersonate someone or indulge in deceptive conduct. Instead, make some genuine enquiries. Carry out a few purchases. Assess their response.
Some questions to think about:
Your company needs to make the ethical decision about how far to take this strategy. It’s plausible that you could create accounts in many target demographics to interact with everyone in your industry. This is ultimately very close to breaching Twitter’s rules. However, as long as you are being genuine, it is highly likely that you will be able to gain large quantities of information about how your industry interacts with new media.