Page 167 - Social Media Marketing for Dummies

Responses

It’s not enough to just listen in on the conversations. You have to participate in the
conversations, too. This means responding to questions directly addressed to your
Twitter username, whether the questions are customer service–related or more
general. It also means watching your brand mentions and correcting misinforma-
tion (although you don’t want to appear defensive when you do this because it can
backfire), providing helpful advice when and where appropriate, and broadening
relationships with the people who are talking about your company.

Part of being a good social voice is allowing your own personality to shine through,
which means opening up and being willing to talk about your own life and not just
the brand you represent.

But there can be challenges in being personable and open. For example, if you’re
a mass brand with lots of followers on Twitter and lots of people talking about
you, you may have a hard time responding to everyone. It can become cumber-
some and resource-intensive, and worse still, it may make your Twitter account
look like a series of individual responses versus being one that balances responses
with fresh, original content.

Managing such a situation can be difficult. If your company receives lots of
customer service queries, you may want to set up a separate Twitter handle to
manage those. Similarly, if your brand has lots of consumers asking questions,
you may want to create FAQ pages on your website and direct your consumers to
those pages. Answering everything completely via Twitter may not be always
possible, especially when you’re restricted to 280 characters per tweet!

Keep in mind that when your customers talk about your brand, they may not
always expect or demand a response from you. Knowing when to join Twitter
conversations about your brand and, more important, how to do so is very much
an art. Don’t try to join every conversation, and at the same time, don’t ignore all
conversations. Apply common sense, try to understand the people behind the
conversations, think about whether you can add value to it, and then choose to
join or not.

Following and followers

The core of activity on Twitter is following other people, viewing their tweets,
responding to them, publishing your own, and getting followed yourself. First and
foremost, make sure that you consider following anyone who follows you. Second,
consider following all the employees at your company who have Twitter accounts.
You’ll build goodwill with them, and they’ll generate followers for you.

CHAPTER 9 Marketing on Twitter 151