Remember those awkward 1 sided conversations you have had when you meet someone new at a business function? Either you or the other person talks the entire time, and the other person can’t get in a word edgewise, so eventually one of you looks for an excuse to leave the conversation?
Twitter can be like that. One way message. One way communication. Unless you are actively engaging in a 2 way conversation with those who are RT’ing your tweets, responding to tweets – even to just say “thanks” or asking questions to elicit a response from followers. Hashtags are good to use too to engage in conversation with other Twitter users.
Recent social networking news indicates that Twitter is creeping up and over Facebook as far as social engagement goes. Hmm, think mobile users have an advantage here . A global social network platform, Twitter, is and should be part of your viral marketing campaign. Take for example, the death of singer Amy Winehouse on Saturday, July 23, 2011. The news first hit Twitter before traditional news sources could even get to the scene.
According to an article on SitePronews.com, “Twitter is being used worldwide to educate, sell products, and socialize.” Even though Facebook was the forerunner for marketing businesses online through the use of Fan Pages and business apps, Twitter is likely to win in the long run.
Tips for Social Engagement on Twitter for Business
1. Quantity does not equal Quality. This goes both for followers as well as tweets. You can have hundreds of followers and tweets, but if you’re not saying anything of value or builds your reputation or leads to proactive engagement, you might as well not say anything. Peruse top brands such as Huggies and Starbucks and you may not find a million tweets, but Starbucks does have over a million followers. And makes these 2 brands stick out amongst the other millions of Twitter accounts? Quality engagement with followers.
2. Finding Neverland. Just as any other venture, web site, or business, if you make it, one doesn’t automatically find you (unless it’s a spam bot) or your Twitter profile. So do some legwork here, or have someone do it for you to find your followers. Follow a few, follow their followers, get listed in Twitter directories, etc. Eventually they will come.
3. Share and Auto-tweet are good for business. Part of engagement is sharing others tweets with your followers. Auto-tweet via RSS is also good. Subscribe to an RSS feed from a blog, website, PR, news feed, etc – but not too much. 1-2 auto tweets a day is sufficient. Add a hashtag or prepend the tweet with something original to add your own spin on it. You’ll find more people replying and re-tweeting as well.
Follow @SearchCircus on Twitter for more social networking trends, news and social engagement!
