Sales Engine International is hosting this free webinar on Nov 19th at 2pm EST. Ad Operations Online has more info.
To Twitter or Not To Twitter
Twitter has become fairly popular over the last year and is a powerful tool for communicating with your customers. However, as with most business decisions, you should consider some things before you make your decision:
- Is Your Audience on Twitter? Search for some of the keywords important to your industry to see if your audience is on twitter. Even if there are only some, it may be worth at least monitoring twitter.
- What’s being said? – If your customers and industry is on Twitter. What are they saying? You can use tools such as Tweetscan, Twitscoop and Twist to take a look at conversations and keywords.
- What will the effect be on your brand and reputation? For some brands, their reputation may be negatively affected if they are not actively participating on Twitter. Everyone should be aware that anything said on Twitter will be around in the future via search engines.
- Who will tweet and monitor? It may be helpful to have multiple people using Twitter, but they should have a general idea of what is ok to say and what the plan is for using Twitter for the company.
- What persona will you use? Does your brand or company have a mascot or other persona you should use? If multiple people are tweeting, make sure they aware of any personas.
- How will you integrate Twitter with your website and other marketing efforts? Twitter makes it fairly easy to include your tweets on other websites. Where will you include it? How will you let your customers know about it?
- To follow or not to follow? When people start following you on twitter, will you follow them in turn? This may make it easier to follow conversations (and it is a nice gesture), but following unsavory feeds may not be a good idea either. Deciding on a follow policy beforehand can make it easier.
If you are already using Twitter for your business, what did you consider beforehand? What advice would you give to others who are trying to make the decision?
Technorati Tags: twitter, social networks, social media, internet marketing, internet consulting, internet business strategy
How Not to Comment
Commenting on other sites and blogs can be a great way to extend your network. However, there are some ways of commenting which can actually hurt your reputation and brand. If in doubt, ask yourself whether you would want your comment on your own site. Here are some things to avoid:
- “great post!” with your name and website – These types of comments don’t add to the conversation and most people will see through your attempt at linkbait.
- “I agree and you can get a great deal on ___ at ….” – No one wants a blatant advertisement on their website and you just look like a jerk.
- “asdlkjasfoweiu” – Ok, now you’re not even trying and it really looks like spam.
- “You are totally wrong. How can you be such an idiot!” – Would you say this to the person if they were in front of them? How about in front of other customers? Consider that anything you publish is permanently available via search engines.
- “some very controversial subject to get people angry” – This is called trolling if the purpose is just to get people to react. Having a calm discussion of differences is different. Sharing your opinion is fine, just remember that it’ll be available for all time and does affect your reputation.
So what type of comments should you leave on other sites? Take a few minutes to think of a response that adds to the conversation. Being respectful and insightful will go a lot further to enhance your reputation than any of the comment types above.
(photo by kevindooley @ Flickr CC)
Technorati Tags: comments, commenting, social media, social media strategy, social networks, social networking, social media strategy, internet marketing, marketing