Savvy online merchants know what Twitter is, but many are still grappling with how exactly to use it. In a previous blog, we explained that marketing with Twitter could be done in two ways: 1) Rapid fire promotional posting or 2)  Relationship centered marketing.
If you’ve chosen number one, the easier route, then at some point you might be asking yourself “why won’t anyone re-tweet me.” The answer should be obvious: You haven’t taken the time on Twitter to build relationships. In fact, if you’ve been totally dedicated to only posting your own promotional materials, then there’s a high probability that you’re now questioning how Twitter could actually be considered a social media platform. This is where the gap really begins to widen.
Once you’ve decided that Twitter’s only use is as a bulletin board where you drop by and stick in your advertisement, then you might even find yourself getting extremely tired of¬† posting something to which no one responds. Sure, using Twitter in this way might boost your SEO (if you’re using the proper keywords and linking back to your site) and tweeting on Twitter might help your branding, but people immediately filter through promo posts, casting most into the dark regions of the mind where things are instantly forgotten. At this point, some number one marketers may decide to subscribe to a Twitter auto-posting service so they won’t have to log in daily to post their ads. If it comes to this, it’s easy to see where Twitter could, for all intents and purposes, be abandoned.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with putting your promos out there, but there’s a balance. To really make Twitter work for you, you must get out there and make some friends. Remember what we told you before about “social validation“: “you’re not great until someone else says you are.” How do you get others to say you’re great on Twitter? How do you get them to say anything at all about you? Outside of being a real life rock star who people love already, you have to make friends. Once you’ve done that, others will not only have dialog with you, but they’ll even start re-tweeting you (this is where others re-post something you’ve already posted, which is the ultimate score in online viral marketing).
Here’s how to bring on the Twitter Synergy:
- Cut back on your advertisements and actively seek out customers, clients, vendors, fellow staff etc. Go ahead and follow them. Chances are they’ll follow you back. (make sure your profile is complete and that you’ve added a photo or logo).
- Take the time to watch what others are talking about. Start some dialog…use the “mention” function so that your posts stay public. This is how the synergy starts.
- The focus doesn’t have to be completely about a business sales campaign at first. Let’s say you develop and sell language learning software. You see someone posting about going to France. Give them a hearty “bonjour” and ask them what part they’re going to.
- If you’re having trouble engaging your friends, no worries. Use the keyword search to locate people talking about something you can jump in and have a conversation about.
- Once you’re getting to know folks (and assuming you’ve taken the time carefully select people from what you believe is your target market), they’ll read your profile and over time begin to see you as one of the “real” ones on Twitter (vs. the auto-tweeting marketing type you used to be).
- Go ahead and take the initiative to re-tweet your new friends’ posts and many will naturally reciprocate.
- Watch out for getting in the habit of expecting others to re-tweet or re-follow you just because you did it for them. Yes, it’s supposed to be a synergy, but being a grouch like that will only isolate you from others and your marketing objectives.
Now get out there and make some Tweet-pals.
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I frequently see Tweets that I think are worthy of retweeting but have used up all but a few of the 140 characters. If I have to edit your tweet, I’m not going to retweet.
If you want folks to retweet, keep your tweets short enough that they can be retweeted without a lot of editing. It makes it easer for folks to retweet. And it they have to edit your tweet, you may not like the result.