I’ve been hearing from many clients more often now about Twitter and whether or not its something they should be doing. It’s certainly a valid question, but oddly none of them have even tried it to know more about what it is. It can be hard to know whether that service can work for your product or service if you don’t understand the audience or know how the service works.
I urge clients to resist jumping on Twitter without a game plan. First, if you are looking to create a following for your brand than I think Twitter is perfect for you. If you are just looking to promote a product or service than Twitter would be a disaster for you.
Basically, many clients who have tried to tackle social marketing on their own run into the same problem: They can’t help over-doing the promotion. Social marketing is not about promotion, its about establishing identity and allowing others to develop trust. No one in the social scene is looking for a sales pitch. Inevitably the do-it-yourselfer makes this mistake and is never able to recover.
So the best advice I can give is that you should treat Twitter as if it is a platform to talk to your friends. You wouldn’t constantly pitch your friends on your company or products so avoid it on Twitter. Instead, send “tweets” about opinions and ideas. Comment on your followers tweets as well. Have a conversation and see where it goes.
Either way, I encourage you to give Twitter a test drive. Then decide if its right for your business.
