Don't Make This Mistake on Twitter

FILM-BUZZ

Over the past week, I’ve traveled past a major billboard that featured the Twitter handle for a major company. Initially, I didn’t pay much attention to the ad, however after seeing it so often; I decided to take a look. A quick sidebar: smart marketers know that it usually takes multiple impressions of an ad to illicit a response – not just a one-time shot.

So back to this advertised handle; I eagerly hopped on Twitter to see what interesting info could be gathered from this promoted account. I was stunned to realize that there wasn’t a lot to see.  I was completely dumbfounded as to why a renowned operation would forego advertising dollars on something so underwhelming.

For you small business owners out there, I wanted to share this occurrence with you. Despite the fact that the company I referenced is quite large, they made a major blunder with respect to using Twitter as a marketing vehicle.

For today’s piece, I want to give you a few pointers that will turn up the volume on your small business Twitter account.  And unlike the company in my example, you don’t have to waste money to do so.

Retweet. Retweet. Repeat.

A key way to bring visibility to your Twitter account is retweeting relevant posts from other users. Doing this accomplishes several things. This first is that it makes it clear to the Twitter community that you are there to participate. Also, those that made the initial tweets are likely to follow you because you shared their thoughts with your audience. Finally, gaining these new followers will now place you in a position to be seen by their network.

Respond to Complaints

Consumers are increasingly taking to Twitter and social media to air their complaints.  Keep an eye on your account in order to head off trouble. If you see an issue, address it professionally and openly (stay away from direct messages/DM). Tweet your responses where everyone can see. When you do this, the public will know that you are engaged and concerned. If you’re not proactive about this, you’ll wind up with a fiasco similar to the one that hit Subway recently regarding sandwich length.

Use Automation for Visibility

Have you seen how many tweets come through your account within an hour? If you are only tweeting every so often, you’ll never be seen due to other posts. Use a free program such as TweetDeck to schedule tweets. Try composing 50 different tweets at one time. Go to your TweetDeck account and spread the premade messages out over a 24-hour period. After you’ve done that, spread the day’s worth of messages out over a week. When you do this, you’re tweets will be working – even when you’re away from the computer or app.

Get In On the Action

If you know anything about Twitter, hashtags are the keywords that can bring attention to what you’re promoting. Find out what everyone is talking about with a site such as www.hashtags.org and tweet about a hot or trending topic. As you do this, use a maximum of 2 hashtags per tweet.  Also, use capitalization to make multi-word hashtags more legible, e.g., #YouReadFoxBiz, rather than #youreadfoxbiz.

Walter Dailey is a proven creative strategist. He’s the lead consultant and executive producer for Dailey Sound Vector, a creative services organization that specializes in jingles, radio ads and music licensing development for small and mid-sized businesses.  Walter is finally on Twitter. Follow him here: @wrdailey