Everyone in business is talking about the exponential growth of the social media, and how it is changing the marketing landscape. It was not so long ago that these same companies discounted the service as unproductive or another bubble waiting to happen. However, the first few voices that captured its power benefited tremendously, and as it became more of a mainstream craze, it became cool to have your business on Twitter.
What has happened now though, is that the Twitter-sphere has become extremely cluttered, and overrun with white noise. Marketers have swooped in on the site and forgotten why people actually use it – to interact. It’s like going to a party and expecting to socialize with your friends, catching up on the latest gossip and news, only to be approached by a swarm of salesmen trying to push something totally irelavent and useless into your face. “Try this soap!” “Swing by my store on 8th Street” “Book a trip to Jamaica!” But you just want to here if Mike and Gina are still together.
There are countless blog posts about “How Twitter Can Work for Your Business” and “Expand Your Twitter Following for Viral Promotion.” The result has been a bombardment of rude promotions that lead to a mass consensus of distaste for any commercial presence on the site. For commercial profit, the videos of the product can be posted on any other account like Instagram. The buying of views instagram video will be a good source of income for the person.
As a marketer you cannot ignore it, at the risk of losing valuable branding and customer service potential. You also can destroy your reputation with it, and even give yourself a label as a spammer. There are good ways to introduce your brand to the community. However, for every successful Twitter execution there are 10 missteps that can render your company irrelevant, unhelpful, or worse, plain annoying. Here are three of the most common mistakes the companies make:
1. Sales Pitches. The field of marketing has changed, and so have consumers. There is an unlimited supply of companies to buy from or websites to visit, so nobody wants to be sold something anymore. People want the thrill of finding it themselves. Look at all the most viral content on the web. None of it is advertised. It all follows the exponentially growing cycle of being found, then passed on. So many new marketers on Twitter get caught up in the old sales lingo that might have worked in the old marketplace, where the customer had to learn from the salesperson. You need to adjust your strategy to be one of light and helpful relationships based around the genuine needs of the customer, seeing them as a person and not a sale.
2. Serial-following. Everybody can tell when you’re following them just because they were on a big list, because they can see all of the other people that were on that list that you clicked “follow” on, hoping they would return the favor (it’s obvious by a profile that reads “16,839 following, 135 followers.”). Instead of randomly selecting people and hoping they will follow you, search for people using the various tools available on the web and seek to help them with a particular problem they are having. For instance, if you sell vacuum cleaners, look for people that are tweeting “vacuum problem” or “broke vacuum.”
3. Provocative Tweets. Of course you want to post things that will get re-tweeted, but doing so at the expense of your brand’s reputation or dignity is a terrible mistake. Not only will it reflect poorly on your company, but a controversial tweet could lose you a good portion of your followers and drive others away from your profile.
First and foremost, remember that Twitter is a community, not a marketplace. You can guide people to your marketplace, but only after you gain their interest and trust. View every user as a potential relationship, not a sale, and the traffic to your site will come naturally.
