MJs Rules for Starting Your Twitter Brand Presence
December 3, 2013
Twitter:
Twitter is a connection to an audience who follows you because they choose to do
so. You don’t enter their space uninvited like radio, television or newspaper
advertising. They choose whom they follow and unfollow. Smartphones make
Twitter easier with apps and features, such as sending twitter messages to a text
messaging inbox for their favorite twitter selections. Estimated that 70+% of twitter
users don’t tweet, but do read and follow others with high engagement like
retweeting, favoriting, or even emailing tweet links.
Our core twitter following originates because they already have a relationship with
you and they ‘find’ you because they look for your twitter handle in twitter search or
on your website or you business card. Therefore, we have to be present where they
already interact. Plus, we need to encourage our friends to follow/retweet us
because their friends will then see our tweets.
It takes time to build audience. Once started, a business must maintain a presence,
because it’s a brand promise between you and your
customers/prospects/influencers.
CONTENT for Tweets must be:
1. Relevant to our ‘friends’ lives. Not just about us.
2. Palatable to RT. Positive. Friendly.
3. Shorter than 140 characters so they have a space to add a comment.
4. Include links, which get retweeted more often.
This is 140 Characters This is 140 Characters This is 140 Characters This is 140
Characters This is 140 Characters This is 140 Characters Th
Shorten links with bitly or buffer, etc.
Are we doing it right?
There are thousands of Social Media ‘experts’ who are proponents of ‘their right
way’ to use twitter, but usually they are wrong because the social media universe is
moving and evolving so fast that as soon as something is considered a ‘must do’ it
becomes passé’. The best thing to do is to get engaged and follow the conversation.
Soon, you will be comfortable sharing and form your own opinions about how to use
twitter for your personal brand.
Here are just a few examples of expert opinions:
A) You must tweet with frequency -- up to 10x per day --otherwise you are invisible.
B) You must not annoy your audience with more than 5 tweets per day.
MJs Getting Started on Twitter List. Good luck! And please follow me @MJMeister 5.22.13
In reality, your frequency depends on your followers. For News Service, it should match
expectations of delivering news. But for more informational tweets, it should not be a
flurry of messages when you ‘get time to tweet’, nor should it be so paced that it
doesn’t feel real. What’s the right frequency for your business?? We don’t know yet.
A) You must DM (direct message) everyone who RTs, favorites or follows you.
B) You don’t need to acknowledge RTs and followers because they know you know
you have been RT-ed.
In reality, twitter is a social medium, so we should be social. I believe in DM-ing local
followers or those whom we want to have a more personal relationship with, but NOT
Direct Messaging or following everyone simply because they started following us.
A) You don’t need to tweet beyond 8-5p for business.
B) You must be ‘on’ 24/7
Each business brand must find it’s right time. I tweet and post for a real estate client
most often in the afternoon from 2-5p and from 7p-10p Wed – Thurs + Between 10a2:30p on Sat/Sunday. Why? Because people are looking at homes all weekend. I tweet
for a local radio station throughout the day and evening, but ‘live tweet’ the Morning
Show from 7a – 8a.
When a business brand on twitter is a Collaboration of multiple people, your
strategy is not only about content and how to grow audience, it must be about
managing multiple personalities. You can’t have a bunch of people tweeting at
random or you lose brand voice. That’s why some staff should use the admin
@CompanyName and others should use @TheirOwnName even though they are
tweeting on behalf of the business. Under their own name, like @JohnDoe, they will
share messages relevant to the business and the business @CompanyName will RT
them.
A) You must automate tweets and connect twitter and facebook.
B) You must not.
I believe most businesses will get to a point where some tweets can be scheduled,
always monitored by a human. But, it’s a lot longer lead-time to get to that point
than most people think.
I don’t believe in connecting twitter and facebook automatically because most often
your audience on each platform is a bit different. It’s really annoying to twitter users
to see a tweet like this: ‘@CompanyName I’ve posted photos to fb’ or worse …
“@CompanyName fb.com/link” If I wanted to follow you on facebook, I would be
using facebook, not twitter. Most social media users are adept at both, but don’t like
to switch back and forth within minutes.
MJs Getting Started on Twitter List. Good luck! And please follow me @MJMeister 12.2013
A) You must have more followers than those you are following.
False. In general it’s good to have more followers than people you are following
(look at the number on the profile screen), but while we’re building audience, the
only way to gain followers is by actively following others. Also, with so many varied
interests, we will have a lot of sources and friends to follow. Sophisticated twitter
users make assessments of the value of following you based on the number of
people who follow you. If you have a small number of followers, most people won’t
bother to follow you back unless they know you are just getting started. Small
number means different things for different people. Celebrities with a few thousand
are not very active on twitter. Local businesses with a few hundred are usually
viewed as legitimate. Twitter users also judge you based on the number and
frequency of your tweets. If you haven’t tweeted for a couple of years, they are less
likely to follow you. (Retweets count in your number of tweets).
A) You shouldn’t sell or fund-raise on social media.
Yes you can, but like everything else if that’s all we do, we will be ignored. We must
listen to our audience and use good judgment about when to share a sales message.
And, don’t apologize for it. Most people know you represent a product or service or
you wouldn’t have a business brand. However, only pushing out messages that ask
people to take an action is considered broadcasting and is perceived as negative.
A) You should ask questions to get a response.
Well that used to work to get engagement, but now most people ignore those who
continually ask questions in their tweets. Not to say that an occasional question isn’t
a good thing.
A) Top 10 Lists get more engagement.
That is true if you are the expert, but not if you are just making up 10 things to
tweet. So, if a college football coach shared ‘My Top 10 List for Recruiting Talent”,
people would probably click on it because college coach is an expert about the topic
of recruiting.
Just a few Don’ts:
Twitter is an extension of the business brand, so we don’t want to do something on
twitter that you wouldn’t do face-to-face in a business meeting.
1. Some people are intimidated by twitter and like many other things, become
braver after a cocktail – don’t. Tweeting under the influence is a recognized
phenomenon in the world of twitter. Usually nothing good comes of it.
MJs Getting Started on Twitter List. Good luck! And please follow me @MJMeister 5.22.13
2. Some people have strong opinions and get emotional and share it on twitter,
perhaps about a football game, religion or politics. Please refrain while
tweeting for the business because it is not a personal stage. Never use offcolor remarks, swear words or sarcasm. It’s not understood or forgiven on
twitter like it might be to those same people in a casual comment to a friend.
Be positive. Think of yourself as being at the podium in a roomful of several
hundred people. What would you say? What wouldn’t you say?
3. Because of recent national tragedies, like the Boston Marathon where
Twitter for the first time became the breaking news medium in the U.S., it’s
difficult to know what to say on twitter during a crisis. The twitterverse is
dominated by news of the tragedy or well-wishers. What happens to a
regularly scheduled twitter program? There were several mistakes made
during the Boston Marathon attack – like companies who had previously
scheduled tweets that went out as scheduled. Most were glaringly insensitive
and the brands took a significant PR hit. Next came the Oklahoma tornados. I
usually just let the business brands I tweet for go silent. However, that is not
a good strategy for every business brand. Decide your strategy upfront. This
is just an extension of a Crisis Public Relations plan.
Twitter stats: yes, available to track activity, engagement, gaining and losing
followers, etc. Don’t let worry about the stats stop you from getting started!
STRATEGY:
 Build a following -- How?
o Push messaging – I found this interesting; I want to share my recent
blog post about ______. Did you see this article on x,y,z?
o Traditional Advertising & Marketing
 Physical signage at store locations with @CompanyName.
 Twitter icon on website (check to see it’s linked to your twitter
account and not simply a ‘tweet this’ button.
 Invite people to follow you on twitter in your other social
media, like facebook.
 In your email signature.
 In advertising like newspaper ads, radio ads, trade shows, etc.
 Live tweet during an event where/when appropriate.
 Retweeting others on relevant topics. Experts in the field, not
necessarily your friends or colleagues.
Good resources:
HubSpot; TweetSmarter; Mashable; the Help tab on Twitter.com.
MJs Getting Started on Twitter List. Good luck! And please follow me @MJMeister 12.2013