With any social networking you’re doing it isn’t enough to just talk at your followers and fans. They’ll quickly turn off to your incessent stream of links. The reason people join social networks is to talk to their friends and make new ones, so the most effective social media strategy will look for ways to join in the conversation.
Tips for how to engage and become part of the conversation:
- Talk to people - watch what your followers are saying by following them back. Then reply to comments, questions and articles.
- Retweet people – if someone posts an interesting article that you think your followers will appreciate, retweet them. See Retweeting made easy for tips on how to retweet.
- Monitor what people are saying about your brand using Twilert. Then follow them and talk to them. If their comments are positive you can thank them, if they’re negative it is an opportunity to respond.
- Always follow people back – if someone follows you and you follow them back they will instantly feel more positive about your brand. Don’t become like the celebrities who follow a select 50 or so people, Twitter is not a one way stream. (The only occasion when I’d recommend you don’t follow someone back is if they are obviously a spammer or a bot.)
- Use an application like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck. These are both great services that help you organise your followers, making it possible to follow hundreds of people. By organising your followers into groups it is far easier to sort through the thousands of tweets in your Twitter stream.
- Write a good description of your business and what you’re going to be tweeting about in your Bio. Try and identify the person who will be tweeting or the team, so that people know who they are talking to.
- Always use an image, either your logo or a picture of the person who is tweeting. If there are a team of people tweeting from different accounts then each person should have a personal picture.
