Keeping us on our toes - Twitter

The best thing about social media is that it keeps us on our toes. Yet the worst thing about social media is that it keeps us on our toes. If you embrace social media, you must be prepared to learn, as well as keeping up to date and in the game.

Companies use platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Flickr, You Tube and Instagram to communicate to their target audience, and these platforms are forever changing. The rules remain the same, yet the boundaries and the means to get the end result, whether that is a sale or to increase brand awareness, are ever moving. So how do companies keep on top of such changing platforms and make sure they are using them to their advantage?

In organisations large enough to have an extensive marketing budget, roles such as Social Media Manager, Editor and Community Manager are appearing as job tiles. However such a luxury is not always the case and therefore the role of managing social media often falls to the marketing department.

At Box PR we manage our own social media pages and we work alongside clients to help to position their pages accordingly and develop their own social media platforms. As the boundaries move we work with our clients to make sure they adapt with it.

We were recently involved in an online seminar led by Twitter. Our philosophy has always been to give a little to receive a little and therefore we use this blog to share some tips so you can get Twitter up and running effectively for you and your organisation.

Here are a few pointers to get you started.

Tone and behaviour:

• Be human
• Be responsive
• Be Flexible

Uses of Twitter:

• Share helpful informative content
• Make it playful, give teasers, jokes and questions to grab your followers attention
• The use of photos and videos will make your tweet more engaging

What is the purpose of being on Twitter? There are over 200 million active users on Twitter, with around 500 million tweets being sent a day (figures according to Twitter CEO Dick Costolo in October 2012). These figures are likely to be higher today as Twitter gains pace and people use it more to interact with friends and their favourite brands.

With such a large number using Twitter your tweets can easily be lost if they are meaningless, so therefore it is important that you have a clear strategy based around your corporate message.

Think about who you connect to and associate yourself with. The whole thought of creating content to keep a constant flow of tweets to your followers can appear quite daunting, but it doesn’t have to. Connect with influencers in your industry and associate yourselves with them. You don’t always have to be a producer you can share news and information others have created that you feel is of interest to your followers.

Things to help you get started:

• Listen and observe. Monitor the conversation around your business and be responsive.
• Find your own voice. Help potential customers relate to your business.
• Plan your content. Just like planning your gifts for Christmas, use resources and assets you already have.
• Create shareable content. Is your content re-tweetable, will it help you reach new audiences?

Don’t be shy, give it a try!

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