Thursday, May 2, 2013

My Company is Failing on Twitter



I have to admit I’m not the social media person in my company, though this class is fortunately forcing me to start looking at these marketing sources.  We currently have an office assistant that takes care of all our Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin updates and outreach. The current Twitter assignment made me curious to review my current Twitter program and followers. To my disappointment I found that the majority of “followers” my company has are other plumbing and HVAC companies, non-local people, and personal friends. In terms of actual buying customers we have virtually no followers. Obviously competitors, non-locals, and a couple friends here and there does little if any good for my bottom line.

Additionally I found our Twitter posts to be boring and run of the mill. A lot of the things we’re tweeting about are the same thing other plumbers are tweeting about. Things like change your filters, don’t put grease down the drain, reduce energy usage. These are all things that even as a plumber I don’t really care about so why would my customers. Tying back to Seth Godin’s video How to Get Your Ideas Spread we’re doing an extremely poor job of engaging and communicating any real unique message.

In response to these finding I did a little of my own research on how to improve my current Twitter marketing efforts. One blog I stumbled upon is Tracy Gold’s post How To: Get More Qualified Followers on Twitter. Tracy suggests that being less self-centered and instead try to tweet more about others and local events. I agree this might be more attractive to followers as it’s easy to become bored or turned off by people and companies that only talk about themselves. Blogger Liz Wright seconds this suggestion at the tail end of her blog. She states that most tweeters aren’t maximizing their follower based because their tweets are too self-centered. That to gain a strong following one really needs to engage and make the conversation about others. I agree with both of these authors and am curious to try in my own business.

http://socialmediatoday.com/tracycgold/260118/how-get-more-qualified-followers-twitter

http://mashable.com/2012/03/16/gain-twitter-followers/

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