28 Jul 2011 10 top tactics to take advantage of twitter
Twitter is a must. Everyone knows it’s important but those that know why seem to be few and far between.
We get the ordinary social media. People can engage on-line with friends, colleagues – even strangers with a common interest. And it not just fun – it’s a really useful tool to mobilise people whether that’s for a spontaneous party in Time Square or a political rally in Tunisia. We get celebrity twitter too. It is so easy to communicate to eager fans and keep them engaged whether that’s with serious commentary on the current affairs or simply feeding them celebrity tittle tattle. But what about corporate twitter? Is it really that important to corporates and if it is – what should businesses be doing about it?
Here’s 10 top tactics to take advantage of twitter
1. Twitter, like your web site, is your window display. Make sure it is current, relevant and that the twitterverse sees you as you want them to see you.
2. Take twitter seriously. Don’t hand it over to an enthusiastic intern. Your corporate reputation is at stake.
3. Are you the marketing voice, the CEO or do you want to represent the CSR voice of your business? Select your twitter role – then stay in character.
4. Speak with a single voice. Your marketing organisation may be geographically dispersed or fragmented but allowing multiple twitter accounts will make you look disorganised and parochial.
5. Your follower numbers are less relevant than your follower ratio. Having a good ratio of followers to following (greater than 5:1) shows potential followers that you have something to say that people want to listen to. A ratio of about 1:1 shows the world that you have yet to get beyond the follow you, follow me game.
6. Spread your tweets. 10 tweets in quick succession fills your followers screen. It’s annoying. Spread them throughout the day.
7. Repeat good tweets but make sure that they’re tweeted at different times of the day to catch a different audience and make sure that there’s a few days between repeats.
8. Share the love. Only tweeting about your own organisation is OK but sharing other stuff that is relevant to your market is more valuable to your audience and will engender loyalty.
9. Be selective who you follow. Block and report spammers. People judge you by the friends you keep.
10. Last but not least – review and adapt. Measure the response to your activity. Use tools to measure your true audience , who’s retweeting and what they’re retweeting. Build on successes and stop doing what doesn’t work.
