Social media is very much an evolving phenomenon. New forms of communication and ways of making connections arise frequently in the digital space. Occasionally one of them sticks – think Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. More often, one has a 'moment' but doesn't quite stick. Think Google Plus, Quora and Flickr.
In the early days of social media, sites we thought had stuck came unstuck, or were usurped by young pretenders. Friends Reunited made way for MySpace, which in turn and despite numerous attempts at revamps, acquiesced to Facebook.
Twitter is only the second social network to truly stick fast. It has evolved since its inception to house photographs and other media, and successfully monetised itself without driving loyal users away. Crucially it has remained free at the point of use. We have reached the stage whereby companies must add 'a Twitter feed' to their increasing list of things to do, on top of the phone number, website, contact email and Facebook page.
This important background explains why certain brands and businesses have opted not to have a Twitter feed. To leap on every social media bandwagon could turn out to be a waste of time. However, given Twitter's huge success relative to other platforms, it also shows prioritising Twitter is essential for brands if they are to successfully engage audiences.
Flawed thinking
Given the proliferation of social media and the increasing ways in which customers can contact businesses – phone, email, website, Facebook – some businesses might consider a Twitter feed superfluous, taking into account the wide range of alternative methods by which customers can get in touch. This thinking is flawed.
If your customer or potential customer is on Twitter and can't talk to you, they won't necessarily switch to another method or channel that suits your business. They will, instead, talk to another brand or company that is on Twitter and will engage on this preferred channel.
As a result, a Twitter strategy is essential if brands are to simply stand still, let alone engage new consumers and drive growth. It doesn't matter if your company deals in media and communications, orange juice or sanitary towels. Somebody, somewhere is going to be talking about you and they will expect you to be listening.
Customers also want to feel a connection with the brands with which they choose to interact. They want to feel their choices say something about them, that their tastes and preferences are reflected, and that their ethical and moral position is upheld or even demonstrated by the brands they choose to buy.
Twitter statement
A Twitter feed acts as a short, succinct insight into your brand and company. It tells customers about you and your brand, in a language they can understand. Customers aren't going to read lengthy mission statements and press releases written in corporate jargon. Your everyday interactions will tell customers everything they need to know.
In one sense companies don't need to think a great deal about a Twitter strategy, because social media is very transparent. A successful Twitter feed is simply an authentic representation of the person or company it speaks for. What this authenticity looks and sounds like is the area in which more thought is often needed.
There is no magic formula for the perfect tweet. But there are some guidelines you can follow to ensure that the content on your Twitter feed is relevant, useful and interesting to the people who follow you.
Get the tone of voice right
A Twitter feed must reflect the 'voice' of the overall brand or business it represents, and in a way it also becomes the voice. For this reason, a successful brand or business Twitter feed is often manned by just one person.
If more than one person manages the feed, companies have two options. Firstly, they can create a style and tone of voice guide and ensure everybody with access to the feed is familiar with it. While this will help to maintain a consistent tone, the disadvantage is that a company-based, as opposed to people-based, strategy can run the risk of sounding bland and colourless.
The second option is to have different staff members introduce themselves at the beginning of their stint manning the feed, and sign off at the end. Some companies even ask staff members to conclude their tweets with their initials, so customers know to whom they are talking at all times. This is a useful way of ensuring a Twitter feed can remain authentic whilst hosting multiple voices.
Be careful, however, of allowing too many individuals free rein on your Twitter feed. In 2012, the Swedish government took the unprecedented step of allowing different citizens to run its @sweden feed each week, and while some were successful, others were less so, with individuals expressing rather controversial and forthright views on Hitler, the Jewish population and even tweeting pictures of strawberries covered in "milk and urine".
For a brand interacting at a consumer level, an irreverent but non-offensive tone may suit. Stay away from disparaging brands, politics, hearsay, rumours and anything that could be considered offensive.
For a corporate feed, it is possible to strike a balance between professional and accessible. Keeping jargon to a minimum and simplifying the messaging wherever possible are two good starting points.
Get the content right
Content is a crucial area for any business on Twitter. In order to gain followers and drive engagement, you need to share content that people want to read and talk about. It's not enough just to tweet press releases; you need to be actively starting and joining in with conversations that aren't directly related to your business.
Many successful feeds are dominated by content that doesn't directly relate to the brand, product or service being represented. As a general guide, aim for around 20% of the content you share to relate to the brand, including news, blogs and opinions from the company, news about campaigns, and campaign launches.
The remaining 80% can be content that has nothing to do with the day-to-day business of the brand. It could relate to the area in which the brand operates, or it could be humour, general miscellany and social media related news. It is possible to develop a feel for the type of content that people following the handle are going to like. For example, if you know that the majority of followers of the feed are female and interested in fashion and celebrity news, nonstop tweets about sport aren't likely to encourage the audience to engage.
Do share content from third parties but make sure it is always from respectable and reputable organisations. For a corporate feed, this should be reputable news sources and trade journals. For a consumer-facing feed, you can widen your net but be careful of gossip and hearsay.
Any data insight you can use will help you understand more about your audience. Use your CRM data and any other information you have to hand, to find out more about your customers.
It is useful to refer to third-party analytics like Klout, PeerIndex and Twitter's own analytics. When brands are first beginning to tweet, these services can offer particularly valuable insight into the type of content proving most successful.
Once a business has an established Twitter presence, it's likely its employees will have an instinctive feel for the sort of content that works, but analytics will remain a helpful sense-check.
Get the frequency right
Frequency of tweets is a very delicate balance. Tweet too little and you'll be overlooked – once a day isn't going to get you noticed and interacted with. But if you're constantly posting repetitive content, you run the risk of putting people off through overkill.
A business should typically post between eight and 15 tweets a day, not including responses. Put time and thought into the content you are going to share – it's entirely acceptable to spend 90 minutes or more every morning finding and curating content to share throughout the day if you run a busy active feed.
It's also important to respond to as many people as possible. If somebody contacts you through the Twitter feed with a question, always respond. If they have made more of a general comment respond if time allows. It is advisable to respond to as many interactions as possible, without getting drawn into arguments, because this helps build engagement and shows followers that the feed is manned by a real human being, and isn't simply a stream of scheduled tweets.
It's important to remember that scheduled tweets, while useful, are not a substitute for genuine human interaction. On rare occasions, they can land a business in real trouble if there has been a tragic event to which the tweet could be seen to relate.
Get the measurement right
Social media experts have been arguing amongst themselves for some time about what matters more: number of followers or engagement with followers. The simple truth is that both matter. Your boss, for example, is going to like the number of followers, as that's a concrete figure that sounds impressive. Those who live and breathe social media are going to prefer engagement. Quality does trump quantity, but anybody who says they don't care about number of followers is likely to be lying.
There's no one hard and fast way to measure engagement. Third-party metrics like Klout and PeerIndex are useful, as is looking at how the feed is growing. The number of retweets and interactions are also a helpful indication that you're moving in the right direction.
Get the results you want
While numbers of followers, replies and retweets can be an indication of a successful Twitter strategy, sentiment analysis is also important.
There's no point generating 1,000 engagements in a day if they were all to criticise your company or one of your tweets.
If your content is reaching and being discussed positively by influencers – individuals or clients among whom you want to raise awareness of your brand – then you can consider your strategy successful. For many consumer brands the ultimate goal is to achieve endorsement by a celebrity, but there are rules and regulations surrounding this kind of activity and users are very wise to any potential agreement between celebrity and brand.
A useful way to understand the impact of a Twitter strategy is to analyse sales figures, or similar metrics such as inquiries or leads, over a given time period when your Twitter activity is high. Or compare sales figures with a previous year when your brand was less active on social media.
This won't tell the whole story and you will need to take into account other marketing activity. But it is possible to put everything together in one place and look at number of followers, engagement, sentiment, Klout score and growth-related figures.
- Jon O'Toole is Global Director Community Management at dunnhumby
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