An Urgent Message For All Businesses on Twitter
Forget everything you’ve learned about having a presence on Twitter. Start over.
Twitter has never been about incessant self-promotion but, luckily, people have put up with businesses like yours repeatedly reminding them of your groundbreaking 10% off sale for quite some time now. The charade is over and patience is wearing thin.
Check out your past ten tweets. If more than two of them are telling your customers something about yourself, I’m willing to bet you’ve become white noise by now. Marketing is changing. At first, businesses thought it was good enough to just be on Twitter. That was never good enough and now, being a business who interacts a bit but spends most of your tweets bleeding brand information is the same as “just being there.”
The change is apparent. It’s 90% about what people are saying about you and 10% about what you say about yourself. Twitter and other platforms exist to allow you to listen – not to allow you to shout. It’s not an opportunity to be the one in a one-to-many scenario. Flip that megaphone around and be the one who listens to many. If someone’s mentioned you or your business on Twitter and you haven’t responded, take whatever cash you have in your pocket, crumple it into a ball, and toss it at the nearest waste basket. This is exactly what you’re doing. A response to one person is likely worth more to your company than a blanket promotional tweet to no one in particular. Not responding is the quickest way to form negative brand impressions in a world where there is no such thing as a neutral one. Grab that low-hanging fruit.
Luckily, the overwhelming majority of people and businesses are doing things horribly wrong. It’s never been easier to stand out. Create contrast. Think like Will Smith and flip that school uniform inside-out.
Your ears grow until the day you die. Your mouth does not. Coincidence? No.
Use platforms to be the one learning from many – not the one yelling at the desensitized masses.
You can start right now:
Three Simple Ways to Listen Online
