Are Your Tweets Worth Following?
| May 12th, 2010 by Marty
Are Your Tweets Worth Following?
Yes, by now every company is on Twitter. Of course, not every company needs to be on Twitter—some firms are actually diluting their brand’s professional image by over-saturating their target market with unnecessary messages. But if you want your company’s product or service to be highly visible to millions of consumers and professionals, and you want your little ride on this bandwagon to be worthwhile, here are a few social media strategies to keep in mind.
Who’s on first? Decide at the very beginning who will be tweeting officially for your company and how much time he or she will be expected to spend on this. The ideal candidate will enjoy microblogging and have about an hour a day to listen, follow others and tweet. .
What’s to follow? Decide what your Twitter feed will be all about. Will you just put out coupon codes for your website, or will you tweet out a daily spiel of marketing copy? Or will this simply be a personal feed where you tweet your disappointment with under-cooked Panini? Figure out what vibe fits best with the rest of your social media strategies, and if twitter is being handled by an employee, provide some guidelines for twitter use.
Who said that? Once you’ve established your company’s presence on Twitter, be sure to monitor all conversation that refers to you. Note what people are talking about and what prompted the discussion. Join in, if appropriate. Just don’t gratify ill-intentioned rumors or gossip with your presence. In particular be on the lookout for people with questions. Take the time to be the nice, benevolent company that just wants to help.
What do you think? Be sure to ask questions. One of the best functions of Twitter campaigns (or other social media strategies, for that matter) is to get instant feedback on a variety of ideas. Ask whether people would prefer to get 30% off their next purchase of socks or just free shipping. Find out what people think about your new facebook page. Social media strategies can never be a one way street, so be sure to listen just as much as you tweet.
Where’d they go? One last admonition: keep with it. A dead or dying Twitter feed, leaves your followers with the impression that you don’t care about them. Followers must have regular and engaging tweets if you expect them to keep up with you. If keeping up with your Twitter feed is creating a too much of a workload for you, give us a call.
Social media strategies don’t produce instant results, but the company-market interaction pays off in the long term.
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Good advice. I read so many articles about Twitter that tell you to do this and don’t do that, say this and don’t say that. Those writers just want others to use twitter the way they do.
Your advice is far more helpful and allows for the fact that each person or company uses Twitter for different reasons.
What IS critically important is for the company to answer the questions that you have outlined in this article.
Determine your purpose for being on Twitter. Set guidelines for content. Be consistent with your brand. Monitor.
Comment by Laura Sultan — May 12, 2010 @ 1:08 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Laura Sultan. Laura Sultan said: RT @DiamondHazelton Are Your Tweets Worth Following? http://bit.ly/cazQh7 [...]
Pingback by Tweets that mention Are Your Tweets Worth Following? | Diamond Website Conversion -- Topsy.com — May 12, 2010 @ 1:13 pm
thanks for the comment Laura – I think the biggest personal lesson we’ve learned from using Twitter is the importance of listening, monitoring and engaging by answering questions – (at least in the business to business space)- it’s so easy to make it all about yourself & your company and much harder to make it about the other person, their company and their issues.
Comment by Marty — May 12, 2010 @ 6:01 pm