We all know the importance of periodic website redesign. Over time, you'll find that your site has outdated contact information, old photos that need updates, or design features that do not reflect current standards. However, though most of us keep up with our websites, often we don't give the same attention to our social media accounts.
Twitter, perhaps more than other social networks, has somewhat of a reputation for marketing spam. Quite often you'll see companies using their Twitter accounts for nothing but self-promotion, to the point where the entire tweet stream becomes tantamount to spam. Not surprisingly, this is a good way to lose followers fast, and what these companies are not realizing is that there's a reason the word "social" is the first part of social media. Here's how you can avoid making the same mistake.
In many ways, when you first have a look at Twitter it seems like a free-for all. Millions of users, everyone talking at the same time... it can be both exciting and frightening. Although it may look like there's no rhyme or reason to it and that you can say anything you want, how you present yourself does matter, especially if you're representing your business. Here are four things you want to avoid when you're trying to build a good social media reputation.
We've all been there: you're building up your company's social media accounts, and it just seems to be going so slowly. You get a trickle here, a trickle there, but in the end the growth is not nearly what you'd hoped it would be. You look at the social media accounts of your competitors, of celebrities, even of your personal friends, and wonder why your numbers aren't up where theirs are.
If you're spending a significant amount of time on Twitter trying to increase your presence there for marketing purposes, it can be frustrating when you don't get the level of following you expected. What's even more frustrating is when people do follow you, only to unfollow again a few days later. If you're finding that your Twitter following is waning despite all your efforts, here are three issues you might want to have a look at to help turn things around.
If you were a business owner before Twitter was around, chances are most of your marketing messages (aside from maybe your company slogan) were at least somewhat longer than 140 characters. With the explosion of Twitter both as a marketing tool and a social media platform, you may feel like the medium places difficult restrictions on the types of messages you can reasonably fit into the space provided. However, this may work to your advantage - here are some tips on how to use Twitter more effectively for spreading the word about your business.
Sometimes in the world of social media, it's easy to get caught up in the idea that a greater following equals greater success for your business. So many people focus on "getting the numbers up" - increasing Twitter follower numbers, Facebook fans, YouTube channel subscribers, and so forth. However, there may be a sobering wake-up call if you manage to get your following to snowball somewhat, but aren't managing to convert those followers into customers. As so many social media marketers can tell you, just getting the following isn't enough - those numbers don't mean anything unless you can also engage with your audience in an effective way.
It happens even to the best of us from time to time - something thoughtless, inappropriate, or downright dumb gets said on a social network, people react, and next thing you know you've got a big scandal on your hands. In the context of a small or medium-sized business, even a minor uproar on a social network can spell big problems for you in terms of unhappy customers and a dip in sales. Just like in every other aspect of business, mistakes will be made from time to time on social media. Even if you're extremely diligent with your social media policy, there's not really anything you can do about the fact that people are human, and sometimes they say damaging or offensive things.
