By Tom Funk, VP of marketing, Timberline Interactive
Engaging in back-and-forth dialogue and spreading the word about what others
are saying, are critically important parts of the Twitter ethos. But, research
in the 2010 Global Social Media Check-up study by consulting firm
Burson-Marsteller, indicates that too many companies are doing much more
talking than listening.
The study found that although 82 percent of corporate Twitter accounts tweet
company news, only 38 percent actually respond to people’s tweets, and just 32
percent retweet the posts of others.
So, what's the best way for merchants to go about tweeting? Here are my 12
steps for avoiding pitfalls and building a successful Twitter program:
1) Reserve a good,
relevant user name. With no more than 15 characters to play
with and, oh, about 106 million users earlier to the party, your most urgent
task is to come up with a short, memorable, recognizable, intuitive Twitter
handle, one that is as close to @YourBusiness as you can get.
2) Display a human face
for your business. I generally think the handle of your
business Twitter account should be the name of your company, although others
prefer names such as @Jill_atCompany to humanize the account, and allow several
people to tweet for a single company, an ideal approach for large firms.
3) Establish your
specialty. Your Twitter feed should ride the coattails of a
bigger, more passionate lifestyle and social mission, represented by the market
you serve. Imagine you’re writing little items for a fascinating lifestyle
magazine in your niche. @organic_valley, a Wisconsin cooperative of 1,300
organic family farms, is not just hawking the products made by its farmers;
it’s also sounding off on a wide range of topics related to world hunger,
nutrition, deforestation, the impact of pesticides, bioengineering, and more.
4) Post frequently.
Twitter is voracious. It demands at least daily postings to amount to anything.
Keep it brief, don’t overthink it, but feed it. Get into the habit. If you
establish a seven-posts a week schedule for Facebook, say, plan to come up with
15 or 20 posts a week for Twitter. If you’ve done a good job of establishing
your specialty above, you can simply set up news alerts to be informed of new
developments in your market. Summarize them in less than 140 characters and
point a link to the article. You should also echo on Twitter every promotional
e-mail you send out, and every company blog post you make.
5) Use hot-button
keywords in your industry. Heavy Twitter users troll through
Twitter search results or set up alerts to follow topics of interest to them
and the users who post about those topics. Keywords could be the names of
high-profile people, news events, companies, or even your industry and market.
Whether it’s surfing, fat-free, Google Analytics, knitting, Scottish…whatever
your niche, people on Twitter are searching for it daily, and will follow you
if you’re a regular poster on the subject.
6) Use popular hash
tags, and promote your own. A hash tag is a single string of
characters or words, prefaced with the # sign, used to make it easier to find
all tweets on a given topic or event. On the day of its Indy 500 auto race, the
tweeters at Indianapolis Motor Speedway pushed to get #indy500 to the
top of the trending topics. Whether your topic or event is global in scope or a
niche business conference, giving it an easy-to-remember hash tag is key to
helping your audience stay in the loop.
7) Follow.
It’s not enough just to post and hope for the best. You’ve got to actively
build a network on Twitter, and the best way to have people notice what you’re
doing is to take notice of them. Search for members posting on your topics of
interest, and follow them. Look at their own followers and select relevant
folks to follow. Keep a focused network that aligns with your “elevator pitch”
or area of specialty. When you follow people on Twitter, they’ll generally
follow you back.
8) Recognize your
followers. When people follow you, take a moment to check them
out. Some will be blank-slate newbies or evident spam artists you can ignore.
But, when real people with an interesting stream of tweets follow you, follow
them back. Send them a friendly direct message, thanking them for the follow,
and how you’re looking forward to getting to know them. Maybe nothing will come
of it—Twitter is the least reciprocal of the social media platforms—but, it’s
good form, and you never know what will come of these connections.
For instance, Paul Kalemkiarian, owner of the Wine of the Month Club, reached
out to one of his Twitter followers who ran a comparison website; they
established a business relationship, and she ended up sending him $100,000 of
holiday season business.
9) Promote. Give
the Twitter icon prominent real estate on your website. Display the current
feed widget on your home page. Pitch the Twitter feed in your e-mail
newsletter, and maybe even your catalog or other print media.
10) Retweet. Be
listening for references to your brand, and when people say something nice
about you, retweet it. And, also send a direct message to thank them.
Retweeting the good word is an easy, effective, daily discipline you should get
into; it’s a great way to spread any good buzz enjoyed by your brand, and it’s
unique to Twitter.
11) Ask for retweets.
This can be a little crass, but if handled tongue-in-cheek or for a good cause,
it can really spread the word. Examples: Riding a wave of popularity for its
Shape-Up fitness shoes, the Skechers shoe brand asked its followers to “Retweet
if you love your Shape-Ups!” This simple effort resulted in scores of positive,
authentic, brand-building tweets, just for the asking.
12) Attend or host a
tweet-up. One of the coolest elements of the surge in online
social networking is that it hasn’t turned us all into lonely, isolated, mouse
potatoes. Twitter fans have popularized the tweet-up, an in-person get-together
of Twitter users. When the social connection deepens through in-person meeting,
you’re really taking the fullest advantage of social media’s rich potential..
---Source: i-Merchant
Magazine June 23, 2010 (www.multichannelmerchant.com). Tom Funk is vice
president of marketing at Website design/development firm Timberline
Interactive.
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