RESPONSE TO FACEBOOK GROUP CONVERSATION: “HOW NOT TO USE TWITTER”
There are no rules, but there are definately best practices. Since Twitter is growing so rapidly in comparison to all other social media, the best practices are being defined by early adopter successes & lessons learned. If you are on Twitter now - congratulations! - you are an early adopter and will join us in defining and discovering Twitter’s uses and limitations.
Using Twitter, or any social media tool, is most effective when you create and work a system for integrating it into your business communication needs.
Imagine your communication needs today are:
a) Generate audience and comments on your new blog post
b) Important indusry information for inclusion in your monthly newsletter/whitepaper/email
c) A Virtual Assistant to take a little bit of the stress off your upcoming Request For Proposal
I like how Twitter use clearly defines the need for businesses to approach social media first from a social perspective, instead of our instinctual focus on advertising/results, pushing our business/promotional message or closing sales. There are a lot of examples on Twitter of people and businesses who simply use Twitter and other social media as simply free advertising, and although it may work for them to a certain extent, never as well as it could - creating stronger relationships with existing clients and getting people to talk about you (activating Word of Mouth Marketing for your business).
How do you get people to talk about and follow you?
- Share interesting, useful, valuable information - always include useful links, which can be shortened at www.Tinyurl.com
- ReTweet - give other people credit for finding and sharing the great information; you are RT (ReTweeting) to your “followers”
- “Send” influencers useful information they may RT to their large audience (giving you the @yourname credit, which may be RT again & again)
- Chat with people (using the @username in your Tweet)
- Chat in live ongoing topic-based conversations (using # hashtags and www.search.twitter.com)
- HELP people out - when you overhear someone asking for information or thoughts on a product/service/issue
- Ask questions! People will respond and send helpful links
How would you do this at a live business networking conference?
- scope out the room & identify groups of people who are working in or discussing topics that are interesting or an expertise that you have/need right now
- listen in on their conversation (unless their Tweets are protected/private) and respond
- give, help and suggest - reciprocity will do the rest
The basic principle to keep in mind is that people will do business with people they know, like and trust.
KNOW - People get to know you (or your company) through everyday real tweets about interesting meetings, announcements, blog post conversations, comments, #followfriday and your general status updates on what you are doing, thinking, why. I’ve heard some experts suggest a 80/20 rule of Tweets 80% focused on sharing business links 20% on personal thoughts and happenings.
LIKE - They will like you, for who you are really, based on how you converse and socialize on Twitter - if they unfollow you then they’ve decided (at least for now), they aren’t interested in listening to what you have to say.
TRUST - Trust takes time to develop. If you’re on Twitter often and make strong connections with people, you can shorten how long it takes for people to trust you - to the point where they want to do business with you.
Once you’ve invested the time to develop a relationship so that your followers know, like and trust you, when the time comes they immediately need your product/service you will be one of the 1st people they consider. It’s an investment in time, not money that will grow your business.
For the moment, most of my Teach Me To Tweet, shared articles are posted to my facebook profile click here
And general marketing, media, etc conversations are on Twitter click here
