S is for…….Strategy!

 

When people ask me why I love Twitter, I always say it’s because you should never underestimate its potential! 9 times out of 10 that’s usually met with ‘well I just don’t understand it and I don’t have that much time to make it worth my while’ Well that’s where I think they’re missing a trick, because they’ve got no strategy!

Now, I’m not talking Chess or Battleships strategy ;) I’m just talking about having a clear objective about what you want to achieve with Twitter, or any social media platform for that matter!  

When I first started on Twitter I have to admit I spent a LOT of time on it to start building relationships and just get to grips with it, but now I’ve pretty much got it down to about 1 hour in total across the day. By working smart and having auto tweets/posts going out through the day and using my Twitter lists to their full potential it really helps make the whole process a lot easier. I also find using Facebook & Twitter on my phone is a god send as it means if I have a spare 5 minutes in between meetings I can quickly pop on, see what’s happening , reply to people who may have mentioned me and do some re-tweets/posts.

Of course the real main reason any business starts using any social media is to generate leads, but it can be so much more than that! I’ve met some amazing people who I may never have met anywhere else and they’ve all given me ideas, motivation or support with moving my business forward. I think the key thing to remember with any social media platform is you get out what you put in, if you make it all about you, you’ll probably not see great result, but if you engage, interact and put a little bit of ‘you’ into it, you’re onto a winner!

So, here are some things to consider when thinking about your strategy:

1. Don’t become a slave to it – it shouldn’t take over your life! It doesn’t make sense to spend hours on it and not see any results. Keep a track of how much time you’re spending so you can see what the return is on the investment of your time; your most precious commodity!
2. Use apps like Hootsuite to schedule your ‘business card’ messages so you can spend the time you do have interacting and building relationships with people; it will make all the difference!
3. Use your lists on Twitter – they make it feel so much more manageable! When you’re following thousands of people they really help you filter out some of the ‘noise’
4. Don’t make everything about you! The hard sell approach doesn’t work on social media, the clues in the name ;)
5. Use hash tags – if your business is location based make sure you’re putting your location in! Nothing more frustrating than seeing a great tweet about a brilliant service/job opportunity or the like but no idea where! I suppose I’m lucky in that respect, my business is virtual but I still use applicable hash tags in my ‘business card’ messages to help spread the SAS message further ;)

Excuse me! That's my tweet!

I’m not trying to be controversial with this post - promise! I just wanted to put something out there for people to think about.

I am always VERY grateful to anybody that takes the time to re-tweet one of my tweets and help spread the SAS word! Re-tweets are an integral part of Twitter and they help you find new people to follow and are a great way to show support to people who you engage with on a regular basis.

The only little niggle I have, OK big niggle I have is when someone uses an app (I believe Hootsuite is the main culprit) and they re-tweet my tweet so it shows up as “RT @SAS_Stacey…(TWEET)…..” with their profile pic next to it.

Now, please don’t think it me being precious about my picture it’s more to do with the fact how it may be read by other tweeps, especially those new to Twitter.

Lots of the people I’ve introduced to Twitter have asked what it means and get confused by the layout as they think it’s a tweet from the person with their picture next to it – they don’t understand it’s an app and that tweet actually came from someone else.

It’s even harder to explain when the tweet gets cut off and the last part of the tweet or more importantly any links are lost. I write my auto tweets/tweets specifically to get the most out of the 140 characters so it’s a little disheartening when they get cropped.

The last thing to think about using this method of re-tweet, is how it will look on your account feed. Take a look a mine for example:

There is varied mix of my tweets and those that I’ve re-tweeted so you can see a variety of profile pics. When you use the RT@..... method your account feed will only show your picture and at first glance people may think you’re just all talk, so it may be losing you potential followers; especially if new users are looking at your account and don’t understand how to read the tweets in your feed.

I know no one is doing it intentionally, I expect the majority of people don’t even realise they’re doing it! It’s just something to think about when you hit that ‘re-tweet’ button. 

The only time I think this works is when you do a 'quote' to add a comment or something to the tweet; this is engagement and what Twitter is all about.

Regardless of what method of re-tweet you use though, I’ll always thank you as I’m always very appreciative :)

Oh, one last thing – please don’t think I don’t like Hootsuite, I LOVE it! I use it for setting all my auto tweets – but that’s it. I don’t use it for my interactions, the main Twitter desktop version is my usual tweeting perch! ;)

Social Media - a numbers game?!

Yes, I am back! After feeling totally inspired after watching ‘Be Your Own Boss’ with Richard Reed CEO of Innocent on Wednesday night, I felt the need to write!

It was fantastic to see so many people looking to set up on their own business, and seeing the amazing creativity out there, especially amongst young people! Although, there were some, how shall we put it, unique ideas ;-)

The thing that hit me most when the final 3 made it through to meet with Richard Reed and pitch for the seed funding was the lack of understanding of social media. One of the teams said they had over a 1000 likes on Facebook so expected to see massive sales once their website went live. Richard very quickly put them right that ‘Likes’ do not equate to sales!

My ’concerns’ with Facebook over other social media platforms such as my beloved Twitter, are well documented. However, over the past few months I am beginning to see some benefits – shock horror! I still whole heartedly believe though that it is very much dependent on your type of business if it will work for you.

I was recently asked by a friend to like a Facebook page, so I duly popped over to see what it was all about and I was disappointed to see that they hadn’t posted in over a month and were just ‘chasing numbers’ thinking that the more likes they had would increase traffic to their site. Now of course all likes are good, but asking someone just to a like page when you aren’t posting interacting with people just defeats the point!

Sadly, Social Media is not the quick fix solution to building a new business it takes effort and a LOT of time! It’s an immensely powerful tool but you have to be committed.

It goes back to my little old analogy about social media and how it relates to ‘real life’ networking as I believe they should be treated exactly the same!

• see your auto tweets/posts as handing out your business cards to people telling them what you do

• your interactions are your conversations amongst the people in the group and connecting possible contacts (re-tweets/re-posts)

• And your DM’s/ Personal Messages are for the next stage when you start talking about possible business together, where you wouldn’t want the whole world listening!

I believe Social Media is not a numbers game! When starting out it is far better to have 100 quality followers/likes that re-post/re-tweet your content rather than go out all guns blazing after thousands. Growing your accounts organically is the key to success!

Missing the point?!

Haven’t blogged for a while as had a crazy few weeks but I saw something today on Twitter and it really got to me! I have been followed by a company, who then decided to tweet me saying that they had followed me would I please follow them back? Now normally I have no issue with following people back as I love connecting with the wonderful eclectic bunch of people on Twitter but this approach really aggravated me! I then decided to look at their account and low & behold their entire feed was the same tweet, asking people to follow them back with every hash tag known to mankind for business networking on the end of it!

For me they have missed the point of Twitter completely & are only in it for the numbers! There were 3 re-tweets I could see within the last few days of feed but not one interaction with another account!

As I always say, I am in no way a Social Media expert but I think everyone knows of my Twitter addiction ;o) I am currently looking after 5 different accounts for various clients that I work with & I understand that each account needs a slightly different approach in what they want to achieve but the key thing with all of them is engagement! People don’t just want to be bombarded with constant sales tweets without a little bit of something back, a re-tweet here & there or a comment on something they have said.

It makes me quite mad that people take this for granted and don’t see what an amazing tool Twitter is in their marketing strategy. I had the pleasure of sharing my love of Twitter with a friend of mine earlier this week as she wanted to promote her photographic business & within 4 days she now has over 120 followers all of which she has had some interaction/engagement with. She knows it is not a race to hit x of amount of followers but that her account should grow organically as she develops relationships with people.

During the time she was here & I was explaining Twitter, she was gobsmacked at the information I knew about my Twitter pals, like what they sold/did, where they were based, even sometimes how many kids they had! But, that is just because I have taken the time to get to know the people I am interacting with and that is why I love Twitter! It is no different from me going to a weekly networking meeting, where I would chat to people about their businesses and what they did and then maybe connecting them with someone who might need their product/service, so why are people still missing that on Twitter?

I know for sure that I won’t be following that particular company back because I don’t want to have those constant pushy ‘follow me back’ tweets in my feed & why should I follow them if they are not going to support me in return? Also, if I ever did require their service or know someone that did, I would think twice about using them as they have now dented my confidence in them as a company, pushy sales = no sale to the SAS!

At the end of the day reputation is everything! Don’t forget that people :)