People go to Twitter to share what they know and learn in return. Twitter users are hungry for new ideas, opportunities, information, services, and products. If your business is not part of this exchange, you're leaving two huge opportunities untouched—growing your business and improving it.
Business of all sizes use Twitter for a variety of reasons, from marketing to customer service, but for the small- to medium-sized business that's still finding its footing on the microblogging site, we offer these five tips and best practices.
1. Define Your Purpose and Goals
Why is your business on Twitter? If the primary (or only) reason is to drive traffic to your website, you need to rethink your strategy. The Twitter community values interaction with real people. If the only thing you're adding to the conversation is a push to visit your website, you aren't going to have a strong and valuable reputation on Twitter. Some people will still follow you and click your links, but you'll be leaving several unique opportunities on the table, untouched.
Setting Twitter aside for the moment, what does your business or organization need to do better? Some misguided business leaders think they need to be Twitter because "that's where our customers are," and don't see that Twitter is a tool that can help a business achieve its real goals. Is the business growing rapidly, and you need to find new employees or contractors? Is one of your business's pain points that it doesn't listen to its customers or clients? Do you need to improve internal communication between employees? Twitter can help you address those issues and many more—read on to learn how.
2. Assign the Right Tweeters
You've just hired a young, bright intern who's active on plenty of online social networks, which is why her first assignment will be to set up a Twitter account for your business. Bad idea! If you want to really leverage Twitter for your business, you need dedicated employees involved. The intern can certainly help you monitor the account and maybe teach your staff basic Twitter etiquette, but she should not be the sole person behind it.
Knowledgeable. Depending on what goals you've set, you need someone who knows the issues related to those goals inside and out. Let's say your business is growing and you need to hire six Java programmers in the next three months. The person you want tweeting in that case would be someone who codes in Java, not the human-resources manager. If your goal is to better address customer comments—and these will include complaints, questions, and praise—you need someone on Twitter who handles customer service, which in a very small business might be the CEO.
A good listener. The person or people you assign to manage the Twitter account should be as good at listening as they are at speaking and writing. It's very important on Twitter to respond to people who post messages at you (using the @ symbol next to your Twitter account name, and through direct messages that are more like email). I've interacted with several professional businesses on Twitter who have never once answered my messages. I no longer follow them. You don't need to say much to acknowledge another person's existence on Twitter. A simple "@TwitterName It's a known issue. We're working on it" or "@TwitterName Thanks!" is all that's needed.
Trustworthy. Most important of all, put people you trust behind Twitter. It's a powerful platform that spreads information to millions of people very quickly, and one misguided employee can cause disastrous effects. You need to trust the people who represent your company on Twitter completely. Larger businesses may want to have their employees agree to a few basic guidelines for social media, although I personally feel that a contract-style social media policy is usually unnecessary. One of the problem of contracts is that they don't convey trust. The employees representing your business on Twitter need to feel trusted in order to cultivate their voices and write like a human being. Twitter is not an advertisement or slogan—it's a real person talking with a community of other people. Find people you trust completely, and give them reasonable autonomy.
Business of all sizes use Twitter for a variety of reasons, from marketing to customer service, but for the small- to medium-sized business that's still finding its footing on the microblogging site, we offer these five tips and best practices.
1. Define Your Purpose and Goals
Why is your business on Twitter? If the primary (or only) reason is to drive traffic to your website, you need to rethink your strategy. The Twitter community values interaction with real people. If the only thing you're adding to the conversation is a push to visit your website, you aren't going to have a strong and valuable reputation on Twitter. Some people will still follow you and click your links, but you'll be leaving several unique opportunities on the table, untouched.
Setting Twitter aside for the moment, what does your business or organization need to do better? Some misguided business leaders think they need to be Twitter because "that's where our customers are," and don't see that Twitter is a tool that can help a business achieve its real goals. Is the business growing rapidly, and you need to find new employees or contractors? Is one of your business's pain points that it doesn't listen to its customers or clients? Do you need to improve internal communication between employees? Twitter can help you address those issues and many more—read on to learn how.
2. Assign the Right Tweeters
You've just hired a young, bright intern who's active on plenty of online social networks, which is why her first assignment will be to set up a Twitter account for your business. Bad idea! If you want to really leverage Twitter for your business, you need dedicated employees involved. The intern can certainly help you monitor the account and maybe teach your staff basic Twitter etiquette, but she should not be the sole person behind it.
Knowledgeable. Depending on what goals you've set, you need someone who knows the issues related to those goals inside and out. Let's say your business is growing and you need to hire six Java programmers in the next three months. The person you want tweeting in that case would be someone who codes in Java, not the human-resources manager. If your goal is to better address customer comments—and these will include complaints, questions, and praise—you need someone on Twitter who handles customer service, which in a very small business might be the CEO.
A good listener. The person or people you assign to manage the Twitter account should be as good at listening as they are at speaking and writing. It's very important on Twitter to respond to people who post messages at you (using the @ symbol next to your Twitter account name, and through direct messages that are more like email). I've interacted with several professional businesses on Twitter who have never once answered my messages. I no longer follow them. You don't need to say much to acknowledge another person's existence on Twitter. A simple "@TwitterName It's a known issue. We're working on it" or "@TwitterName Thanks!" is all that's needed.
Trustworthy. Most important of all, put people you trust behind Twitter. It's a powerful platform that spreads information to millions of people very quickly, and one misguided employee can cause disastrous effects. You need to trust the people who represent your company on Twitter completely. Larger businesses may want to have their employees agree to a few basic guidelines for social media, although I personally feel that a contract-style social media policy is usually unnecessary. One of the problem of contracts is that they don't convey trust. The employees representing your business on Twitter need to feel trusted in order to cultivate their voices and write like a human being. Twitter is not an advertisement or slogan—it's a real person talking with a community of other people. Find people you trust completely, and give them reasonable autonomy.
No comments:
Post a Comment