In my last post I asked, “If a tweet happens in the woods and there is no follower to hear it, does it make a sound?” Once a company acknowledges the potential of Twitter to increase top-of-mind awareness, there still is the detail of attracting an audience. Here are 5 mistakes companies make on Twitter that sabotage their efforts to attract an audience:
1. The Glengarry Glen Ross approach
Most Twitter followers accept that when they start following a for-profit business, they’ll get the occasional sales pitch. Nothing gets you un-followed faster than to “always be closing” with tweets like, “Click here to see why companies are switching to us” and “Widgets Inc saved 10% a year using our service.” Generally, your followers will tolerate an obvious sales pitch once every 10 or 20 tweets.
2. The Robo-tweet
Some snake-oil salesman told companies on Twitter that it was important to thank every new follower with a cold, impersonal direct message. Dozens of companies direct message me to say, “Thanks for the follow!” Useless. Worse, one company sent their robo-thanks at 1:30am. Shortly thereafter, they had one less follower.
3. The credit hog
If you see an interesting tweet from someone you’re following, it is acceptable (in fact, encouraged) to “re-tweet” the value. However, doing so without crediting the original tweeter (e.g. “RT @guykawasaki”) is bad form on par with plagiarizing data in a research paper. Give credit where credit is due and it will be reciprocated.
4. The once-in-a-blue-moon tweet
Almost as bad as constantly selling is failing to tweet frequently enough. The average Twitter user checks their feed several times a day. If you tweet value once every week or two, you’re just not showing up enough in the feed to be of any benefit. Infrequent tweeting probably won’t get you un-followed – worse, you’ll just be anonymous.
5. The Irrelevant Over-sharer
If someone is following your company on Twitter, keep it relevant to the professional world. Don’t tweet about the movie you’re taking your wife to or your kid falling off the swing and needing stitches (unless you can make it relevant and valuable to the business world). Do: “More restaurants would be doing well if they had service like they do at Food Restaurant.” Don’t: “Dude, I love Kung Pao Chicken.”
A couple more tips that help build your following:
1. Follow people and companies who would benefit from following you (they will often reciprocate). Like followers of your competitors, for example.
2. Put a “Follow on Twitter” link in a position of prominence on your home page. The mere suggestion works wonders.
3. List yourself in online directories like WeFollow. Put yourself in any category related to your business activity.
At the end of the day, amassing a Twitter following is about giving value consistently and predictably. Quite frankly, most of your competitors aren’t taking Twitter seriously yet – but they will. If your company does, you stand to reap all the benefits of getting in on the ground level.
18 November 2009
The Truth About Twitter
If you’re like most serious business people, you believe the latest social networking tool Twitter is nothing more than a passing fad. Conventional wisdom holds that Twitter targets ego-centric individuals thinking the multitudes are following their every update and that serious businesses have nothing to gain by engaging in such trivialities. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Evaluating a new technology mid-stream is a sticky process. Twitter’s early reputation as the latest fad for the self-focused Facebook generation was more or less earned. But, increasingly, Twitter is evolving from banal social network to egalitarian broadcast tool. Business owners who choose not to evolve with Twitter are leaving priceless top-of-mind awareness untapped.
Twitter levels the playing field. Traditionally, the big players were capitalized for big ad buys and expensive marketing campaigns. Twitter allows businesses of all sizes to engage existing and potential clients in three profitable activities:
1. Adding value
Most business owners understand the merit of giving value to prospects and clients unconditionally. If you position your company as an expert in your field, when your services are needed, you’ll be the first one they call. Being the resource of first-response gives you a significant competitive edge if you have something of value to say when called upon.
Twitter allows you to broadcast value messages to all your followers, for free, communicating, “We are a reliable, valuable resource in our area of expertise.” Practically, this means linking to relevant articles, sharing brief anecdotes, and commenting on current events relevant to your industry. If a prospect knows you give value for free, they’ll gladly pay when they need what you sell.
2. Communicating important information
More than traditional mail, or even e-mail, people are using Twitter to aggregate information important to them. Your organization can leverage this trend by using Twitter to broadcast important information. In addition to traditional methods (website, e-newsletters, press releases), Twitter is a low-cost way to announce new products, new versions or releases, available job opportunities, even management changes.
3. Connecting mutual friends in profitable relationships
Think of Twitter as a cocktail party where every one of your potential clients is in the same room as all of your existing clients, business partners, vendors, and advisors. If you facilitated that event, would the attendees be grateful? One of your vendors needs a CPA and happens to meet your accountant who saved you thousands last year. A prospect gets a chance to chat with an existing client and hear about your exceptional customer service team. One of your vendors meets several potential clients and lands some more business – all because you connected them.
Twitter works just that way as people click around to see who you are following and who follows you. They see whose messages you have re-tweeted (re-broadcast) and start following those folks as well – all because you effectively introduced them. In business, what goes around comes around – there is very little downside, and tremendous upside potential, to facilitating these connections.
Of course, the most important thing is having an audience. To paraphrase a classic question, “If a tweet happens in the woods and there is no follower to hear it, does it make a sound?” Next week we’ll look at getting and keeping followers.
Evaluating a new technology mid-stream is a sticky process. Twitter’s early reputation as the latest fad for the self-focused Facebook generation was more or less earned. But, increasingly, Twitter is evolving from banal social network to egalitarian broadcast tool. Business owners who choose not to evolve with Twitter are leaving priceless top-of-mind awareness untapped.
Twitter levels the playing field. Traditionally, the big players were capitalized for big ad buys and expensive marketing campaigns. Twitter allows businesses of all sizes to engage existing and potential clients in three profitable activities:
1. Adding value
Most business owners understand the merit of giving value to prospects and clients unconditionally. If you position your company as an expert in your field, when your services are needed, you’ll be the first one they call. Being the resource of first-response gives you a significant competitive edge if you have something of value to say when called upon.
Twitter allows you to broadcast value messages to all your followers, for free, communicating, “We are a reliable, valuable resource in our area of expertise.” Practically, this means linking to relevant articles, sharing brief anecdotes, and commenting on current events relevant to your industry. If a prospect knows you give value for free, they’ll gladly pay when they need what you sell.
2. Communicating important information
More than traditional mail, or even e-mail, people are using Twitter to aggregate information important to them. Your organization can leverage this trend by using Twitter to broadcast important information. In addition to traditional methods (website, e-newsletters, press releases), Twitter is a low-cost way to announce new products, new versions or releases, available job opportunities, even management changes.
3. Connecting mutual friends in profitable relationships
Think of Twitter as a cocktail party where every one of your potential clients is in the same room as all of your existing clients, business partners, vendors, and advisors. If you facilitated that event, would the attendees be grateful? One of your vendors needs a CPA and happens to meet your accountant who saved you thousands last year. A prospect gets a chance to chat with an existing client and hear about your exceptional customer service team. One of your vendors meets several potential clients and lands some more business – all because you connected them.
Twitter works just that way as people click around to see who you are following and who follows you. They see whose messages you have re-tweeted (re-broadcast) and start following those folks as well – all because you effectively introduced them. In business, what goes around comes around – there is very little downside, and tremendous upside potential, to facilitating these connections.
Of course, the most important thing is having an audience. To paraphrase a classic question, “If a tweet happens in the woods and there is no follower to hear it, does it make a sound?” Next week we’ll look at getting and keeping followers.
06 August 2009
Sometimes it isn't easy, for God's sake
I'm reading in Exodus this morning the story of the plagues, the Passover, and the Israelites exodus from Egypt. I've read this story many, many times before and I think it's interesting how the Lord shows you truths you've never seen before if you ask Him to.
So I started by asking the Lord to speak to me through a passage of His Word that I'm pretty familiar with. God is faithful, and He did it. Here's what jumped out at me for the first time:
Here's what I found interesting. God is speaking to Moses and He tips His hand a bit. He says, "Hey Moses, here's what I'm going to do: I'm going to cause Pharaoh to resist you, and, by proxy, Me and what I'm eventually going to do anyway. The reason I'm going to do this is to show off for you guys -- you're going to know that I am the LORD; you're going to have some incredible stories to tell your kids and grandkids."
I think it's fair to say the Israelites had it much harder then than American Christians have it now (strangely, we seem to complain at least as much as they did). But my point is this: it's pretty easy for us lately to get discouraged by how hard things are getting.
Let's face it, the economy stinks. A lot of us are out of work, have been out of work for months, or don't have enough work. We're wondering where the rent it going to come from or how we're going to buy groceries.
The dominant culture runs counter to everything the Christian stands for -- fornication, adultery, perversion, sodomy, sexual immorality have gone from grave sins to prime time laugh lines in a few short decades.
Our political reality is one where our elected leaders listen to us and get shot down (at best) or arrogantly vote contrary to our core values (at worst).
I could go on, but who needs to? In short, things are getting hard.
Frustration comes because we expected something different. Somewhere we were told that if we just prayed a prayer and "asked Jesus into our heart" that the rest of life would be The Brady Bunch meets Touched by an Angel. As Paul would say, by no means! Jesus said he came to give us life abundantly, not life easily. Yes, God wants to bless us, just as it is natural for earthly fathers to want to bless their children. But blessing your children does not mean paving their streets with gold and helping them avoid any and all adversity (actually, it means just the opposite).
I heard the Lord say this morning that sometimes life isn't easy -- but -- it's for a reason. It is so that He may perform miraculous signs among us that we can tell our children and grandchildren and their faith may be strengthened. It is so that we may know that He is the LORD.
Later in this passage, the LORD tells Moses about His plan to kill the firstborn male in every household in all the land. "This one will do it," He tells Moses, "so get ready to go" (I paraphrase Exodus 11:1) He then tells Moses to tell His people to ask their (captor) neighbors for silver and gold. (That must have been interesting. "Listen, I know I'm your slave, but do you think I could have the flatware and your earrings?") But the word tells us:
Which tells me that the LORD does want to bless us and that adversity is not incompatible with blessing but often precedes it.
So I started by asking the Lord to speak to me through a passage of His Word that I'm pretty familiar with. God is faithful, and He did it. Here's what jumped out at me for the first time:
I have hardened [Pharaoh's] heart and the hearts of his officials so that I may perform these miraculous signs of mine among them that you may tell your children and grandchildren how I dealt harshly with the Egyptians and how I performed my signs among them, and that you may know I am the LORD.
Exodus 10:1-2
Here's what I found interesting. God is speaking to Moses and He tips His hand a bit. He says, "Hey Moses, here's what I'm going to do: I'm going to cause Pharaoh to resist you, and, by proxy, Me and what I'm eventually going to do anyway. The reason I'm going to do this is to show off for you guys -- you're going to know that I am the LORD; you're going to have some incredible stories to tell your kids and grandkids."
I think it's fair to say the Israelites had it much harder then than American Christians have it now (strangely, we seem to complain at least as much as they did). But my point is this: it's pretty easy for us lately to get discouraged by how hard things are getting.
Let's face it, the economy stinks. A lot of us are out of work, have been out of work for months, or don't have enough work. We're wondering where the rent it going to come from or how we're going to buy groceries.
The dominant culture runs counter to everything the Christian stands for -- fornication, adultery, perversion, sodomy, sexual immorality have gone from grave sins to prime time laugh lines in a few short decades.
Our political reality is one where our elected leaders listen to us and get shot down (at best) or arrogantly vote contrary to our core values (at worst).
I could go on, but who needs to? In short, things are getting hard.
Frustration comes because we expected something different. Somewhere we were told that if we just prayed a prayer and "asked Jesus into our heart" that the rest of life would be The Brady Bunch meets Touched by an Angel. As Paul would say, by no means! Jesus said he came to give us life abundantly, not life easily. Yes, God wants to bless us, just as it is natural for earthly fathers to want to bless their children. But blessing your children does not mean paving their streets with gold and helping them avoid any and all adversity (actually, it means just the opposite).
I heard the Lord say this morning that sometimes life isn't easy -- but -- it's for a reason. It is so that He may perform miraculous signs among us that we can tell our children and grandchildren and their faith may be strengthened. It is so that we may know that He is the LORD.
Later in this passage, the LORD tells Moses about His plan to kill the firstborn male in every household in all the land. "This one will do it," He tells Moses, "so get ready to go" (I paraphrase Exodus 11:1) He then tells Moses to tell His people to ask their (captor) neighbors for silver and gold. (That must have been interesting. "Listen, I know I'm your slave, but do you think I could have the flatware and your earrings?") But the word tells us:
The LORD made the Egyptians favorably disposed toward the people.
Exodus 11:3
Which tells me that the LORD does want to bless us and that adversity is not incompatible with blessing but often precedes it.