Missing the point?! - Part II

 

I was quite astounded by the response to my last blog post ‘Missing the Point’ so I thought I would follow it up with Part 2!

There is no denying Twitter is amazing, whether you are selling a product or service, looking for a lost dog or tweeting a celebrity, the possibilities are endless! There are no hard and fast rules about how to use it, and I would like to think common sense applies – but to my horror it doesn’t!

 

OK, common sense in general seems to be disappearing before our very eyes but that is a whole other blog post! However, when it comes to Twitter you would have thought that a little would apply! Maybe? Well apparently not!

So what I am referring to you wonder? Well, the fact that people follow people in the same industry as they are in & then tweet them offering them their services! Surely if you have read the bio about the person you are following you shouldn’t have the ‘one tweet fits all’ approach? Auto responders are one of my pet hates as it just shows people are not interested in what someone is doing and just chasing the numbers. I get followed by lots of VA’s and that is absolutely fine, it is great to connect with other people doing the same thing, but then don’t tweet me telling me how you could support my business!

Now I have ‘process’ when deciding who to follow, yes a little Monica but as we all know, that is what I am about ;-) So I am going to let you into a little secret now & tell you my process!

• Profile Pic – still an egg? Not a good look!

• Bio – blank or little or no information – still not looking good!

• Twitter feed – this hard to judge but generally I will look for at least 2/3 interactions with other accounts within the last day or so to give me an idea of how active they are of if they are just trying to tell/sell me something. If it just constant tweets & re-tweets, sorry not going to get a follow.

I may not always get time to do a personal thank you or my SAS tweet to all my new followers, but I would never send my ‘Business in a mess, call in the SAS’ tweet to someone I can clearly see is in the same business, I would adjust my tweet accordingly to reflect that I have taken the time to see what they do.

I know people will think I am being more than a bit Monica about this (and yes I probably am!) but I see Twitter like one giant daily networking meeting. My latest little analogy on how you should use Twitter is:

• see your auto tweets 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)

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

Maybe I am over analysing and I am missing the point, I don’t know! All I do know is Twitter has been fantastic for my business and long may that continue, with a large side order of common sense pie on the side ;-)

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 :)