Twitter Strategies – How to make it relevant
I have to take time out and write this down before I forget it all, it is becoming increasingly important and vital to form a Twitter Strategy so that you can and might even stand a chance to ‘make-something-out-of-it’, I warn you now, this will be a ramble. I recently ventured to ask can we ‘Over Market’ ourselves – what then. If you’re order book is full or you are too busy servicing existing clients – what’s the point of Twitter, Social Media and doing more marketing. So you need a reason.
If you are hungry for more business and you want to use Twitter (I am concentrating on Twitter) there are a lot of factors to take in. Here’s a list:
1) Your Twitter Name – do you make it personal, corporate – or perhaps meaningful… should you name be Twitter name be johndoe, acmelimited or webhostingforbusiness. I think we can forget the first, you get a chance to state your name. I also think it maybe a mistake to use your company name – if you want to ‘gain’ business through Twitter – would would make you react… acmelimited or webhostingforbusiness. I’m tempted to think the latter. I suspect the real issue depends on what your trying to do. eCommerce should aim for the latter, pr and corporate profile should choose the former.
2) Your photo – make it personal, or use the company logo… This is a really gut wrenching choice. Okay you’ve started you’ve started using Twitter already – now have a look at all those people you’re following. If you have not started using Twitter go to http://twitter.com/#!/ncompass/following – WOW – it’s nearly all Logos. If you are trying to use Twitter for Business purposes using a company Logo should be much better. Now look at your Followers – the people following you… If you’re eCommerce and B2C then your followers should be people (i.e. photos) if you’re B2B then they should be logos. i.e. business following you.
3) You Bio – Twitter offers you 160 characters to sum up your service, what’s interesting is that few people make it that look… Look again, many don’t bother at all. But your choice is again, personalise or commercialise… People follow you based MOSTLY on what they read in your Bio. Most Bios seems to say ‘Social, Media Expert, father of three, love to play golf’ or something to that effect… you see it time and time again. business, personal, hobby – the concept is to reach out to as many people as possible. But is that what you want? I’m torn… If I’m offering eCommerce I really cannot start expounding about my favourite color. My recommendation is Truth. Say what you’re using Twitter for. It’ll hurt and switch a lot of people off, but ultimately you’ll have a more loyal following.
That is enough for the moment, but on a slightly more humorous note, I am SEVERELY tempted to call myself ‘apple_iphoneapp’ to use an Apple Logo as my image and to write my Bio as ‘Apple Employee for over 8 years, loves Twitter and family of small children and sailing in the Med’ – because that will get everyone under the sun following me…
The lesson here is that you could cheat very easily and it WOULD work… do not think it wouldn’t.