So you finally decided that your business should be on Twitter! That’s great, right? You bought the Twitter books, followed the Twitter instructions and have a really kick ass Twitter page set up. You started strong, added followers, have your friends following you and growing followers quickly. You tweet consistently, push out a handful of updates daily, but now it seems like things have slowed down for you. You are getting less followers per day, tweeples retweet you less and you’re interacting less.
So what is this happening to you? what can you do to ensure your business maintains a consistent and strong presence on Twitter? My first suggestion is to reassess your strategy.
1. Failing to plan. Getting on Twitter without a strategic marketing plan is the first mistake you can do. Always ask the question why, how, who? Why are you sending out tweets? Do you want to update your followers on your daily whereabouts, how are you going to engage with your followers and who do you want to attract? For example if your business is a restaurant in Queens, NY you want to try to engage with as many people locally, you want to target a specific restaurants or perhaps you want to attract local press. Whatever the case maybe make sure you have a plan and follow through. I recommend listening to what’s going on in your area and researching. Where are your customers, what sites do they visit, where do they live and are your customers talking about your brand? A helpful hint is to use the #hashtag when looking for a group of people that are tweeting about the same products and interests. If you are a makeup artist use #makeup and you will see how many tweets you get of others discussing this subject.
2. Feeding the Beast: This doesn’t mean your pet! An online community is a beast, it reaches millions of people worldwide and it’s your job to feed it. Twitter is like a game, it’s about who has the most followers, who has the most re-tweets and best original content. Think about who you are gong to tweet to? What kind of content will you create? How often will you create it? What’s the mix you want to provide and why? Determine your strategy and stay consistent, people want to see you are on Twitter daily, they want to know what you think and what you are doing this is the reason why they are following your business in the first place. Remember if you’re not entertaining or providing value eventually your followers will trail off.
3. Push away from “Business Talk”: Your twitter followers want you to be authentic and personal, they don’t want to what ingredients your products have, but how you made them and how it will help them. Often businesses will get too “corporate” and feel that this is their way of targeting consumers. For example DKNY twitter handle is ran by their publicist @dkny she doesn’t tweet about sales or how much revenue the company is generating, instead @dkny pr girl tweets about her whereabouts, the fashion shows she is working on and sometimes she will even tweet out her to do list. This goes without saying businesses need to develop a unique yet personal voice and consumers want to be part of your story. To do so you need to be engaging, authentic, credible and have personality. Leave the corporate speak for the boardroom and entertain your followers instead.
