Some people will engage you and maybe even make you want to reply. Some tweets you will have found interesting and enticed you to share with other people (retweet).
But, big but: the most important ones to take note of are the ones you didn’t notice. Yes, did not notice. Go back and look at your Twitter feed. What ones did you skip over?
No picture or a hard to recognize picture. Blatant, in your face, self-serving advertising messages. “Hey, look at me! Buy my junk!” Boring, automated tweets.
One example of what not to do is an iconic car dealer in Kingston – Taylor Auto Mall. As I was writing this post, they tweeted this:
They have invested the time but not the thought. A well branded background and a recognizable logo are wasted with an ALL CAPS shout of a spam tweet. I stopped following them a few weeks ago because their spammy mentions (mentions are tweets with the @ symbol and a Twitter account name like @weehooey) about their employee pricing.
It is a common mistake on Twitter to take what you are doing elsewhere and Tweet it as is. Doesn't work. Taylor Auto Mall has a little over 300 followers. Who might follow them? Loyal customers with a hunger for more GM, more cars and more trucks is my guess (there are others but the customers are who Taylor tweets for). Give them something of interest. Give them a reward for following you.
Messages that sound like other media get filtered out. Our brains have years and years of experience filtering out advertising messages; television, radio, newspapers, magazines, the web with their ads, and now Twitter.
The difference between other media and Twitter is that you can easily stop listening to those people that abuse the privilege of having you as a follower. With ads on the radio, you have to still listen if you want the music the station is playing.
So what do you tweet? It depends on who your customers are.
Like anything else in business you need to have a strategy. Your strategy has to be focused around providing value and engagement with your followers who are your customers (or prospective customers).
CNN has content people want. They make it easy for you get the up-to-date news. You can scan through your Twitter feed at your convenience along with your stuff from the others you follow on Twitter.
One of my favourite type of tweets for small business is restaurants. They can post their daily special or their theme night. Deciding where to go for lunch? I would love my favourite restaurants to tweet their lunch specials.
Be interesting, engaging, entertaining and informative. If you can't do that, retweet someone who can (maybe add some comments). There is no rule that says you have to tweet everyday. Tweet when it makes sense and when you have something of value.
Like so many things in the social media arena, Twitter is about listening and giving first: create engagemnt. In the process of giving and listening, over time, you’ll begin to receive. Leave your advertising messages at the door because people won't follow just to hear your commercials over again and if they don’t follow, you’re wasting your time.
You can follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/weehooey
No comments:
Post a Comment