What Some Businesses Who are on Twitter Might be Messing Up
Twitter is obviously one of the biggest, most widely used social media platforms and websites in general. The ins and outs and more importantly the spoken and unspoken ettiquette for using twitter can sometimes be hard to navigate. It can be difficult to determine what to tweet and when, and how you should go about finding the time for yet another responsibility for your business. From my own experiences on Twitter and from research I’ve gathered, there are some helpful pieces of advice that could help propel your businesses twitter feed and make the time you do spend managing your profile more valuable.
Here is an overarching idea to keep in mind — the majority of Twitter users are there to talk to their friends, tweet funny memes or catch up on some current events; it’s an outlet for relaxation and fun or else it would have 328 million users a month. This means that if you get to “markety” with them, its going to be a turn off. For example — automatically privately messaging a new follower with promotional marketing can seriously aggravate people, and they might not be your follower for that much longer. Of course, if a follow is showing consistent interest in your product and regularly engages with your profile, a private message could very well be welcomed.
But just how always dm-ing new followers can be overkill, not giving followers attention can be just as bad. Businesses who have decided to link to twitter shouldn’t only be using twitter to send out tweets. The purpose of twitter is to engage with people. When people comment or engage with you in some way on twitter, it is best to respond. You don’t have to always, but part of being a good twitter user (related to that whole unspoken part) is to actively communicate with your followers, especially the ones who consistently engage with your profile.
Now, how much you are tweeting and what you are tweeting can be difficult to gauge what’s appropriate. The problem many business owners who have a twitter page have is the timing — they have a job from 9–5 or 8–6 and they are only tweeting within that window which might not even be when most of their followers are active! There are websites such as Hootsuite that help manage you profile, can tweet predetermined tweets you have set up for you if you are busy, and give you helpful information as you use the service to widen your follower net.
But on the actual substance businesses are tweeting, this takes finding the proper blend. You do not only want to tweet promotional marketing info because that is going to deter followers, but you don’t always want to re-tweet and lack originals posts. Finding the balance on how much to tweet that is original content and either retweeting or quoting others takes time but it is vital to a businesses twitter feed. Additionally, you are more likely to get noticed on twitter by introducing your own creativity and personality to the platform rather than using someone elses.
“Using Slang and Jargon” — I believe part of what they are talking about here is slopiness. Your tweets shouldn’t be written in the same way 14-year-olds do. They don’t need to sound academic, but you should try to use proper English whenever possible and avoid acronyms and business oriented phrases that can go over the heads of and annoy followers. On the whole “personality” side of things, that seems to be referencing too many retweets: the people you might be retweeting could be chock-full of information and humor but since its not your own, your followers aren’t going to credit your account with any originality.
As for “Trying to Be Funny When They’re Not” … screw them! You keep being funny, personable and active with your followers. If the worst thing you are doing on your business accounts among all these things mentioned is making a bad joke, then you’re not doing half bad. If you take the rest into consideration, you will find yourself with a wonderfully active and naturally promotional business twitter account.