In March 2010, BuzzFeed Founder/CEO Jonah Peretti sent shockwaves through the Internet with just one tweet: “Twitter is a simple service used by smart people. Facebook is a smart service used by simple people.”
Regardless of the individual’s intelligence, there are a combined one billion monthly unique visitors on these two leading social media websites (750 million on Facebook, 250 million on Twitter). The question is: how do you get your Twitter business page to have more eyeballs and stand a solid ground with your Facebook page? No matter how “simple” a service it may be, there are always ways to be smart about using it:
Who Are You Following?
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.”
We all want to post tweets that get favorited or retweeted hundreds (or even thousands) of times. In order to get eyeballs on these tweets, though, you first need followers. And in order to get followers, you have to follow others.
Take a look at your contemporaries. If you’re in the computer business, for example, follow Intel and IBM; if you’re a newspaper reporter, follow other newspaper reporters. Keep track of who your competitors are following, as well as who is following them in return. Adjust your following/follower ratio every day. Make sure that you are sending out quality tweets and you will be surprised at how quickly new followers find their way to your account and how many Twitter users you can influence.
Get Creative with Your Tweets
With a tweet having an average shelf life of just 18 minutes, it is imperative to produce compelling tweets worthy of retweeting and favoriting. Be creative with your tweets: add pictures, start a conversation, share relevant links and inject humor when appropriate.
For example, Nonprofit Tech for Good, a social and mobile media resource for nonprofit professionals, recently tweeted “8 Common Mistakes Nonprofits Make When They First Join Twitter.” This tweet accomplished the following vital tasks:
- Providing useful information on another site
- Sharing a shareable visual along with a tweet
- Driving conversation
There are a lot of Twitter accounts involving your industry so take great measures to be the account that stands out. Think of unconventional posts that you can construct. For example, if you own a local restaurant, take a picture of your customers and mention them in the post. If you get a great email from a customer, ask them for permission to post a Tweetpic of the note.
Create a Personality
Even a large corporation should feel like a unique individual on Twitter. Taco Bell, for example, projects the image of a young, irreverent jokester. A typical tweet from the company will be: “Friends are temporary. Taco Bell is forever.” A company like Microsoft might not able to pull off such an attitude, but every Twitter account should have a distinct voice. What’s yours?
Like the Internet itself, Twitter is constantly evolving so as a marketer it’s important to stay in touch with new trends and never despair if you’re not quite up to your ideal number of followers: all it takes sometimes is one great tweet.
Edited by
Carrie Schmelkin
