Question: Our company is a B2B that has started using Twitter. We share our content their all the time but it drives very little traffic. We keep hearing engagement is the key on Twitter. Why is this so important and do you have any recommendations for how we should do it?
I can’t even begin to emphasize how right the people are that are telling you the importance of engagement.
Believe it or not, the average Twitter handle has a mere 126 followers, and on average they follow twice as many. With that in mind of the near half billion people signed up for Twitter, only 40% have ever sent a single tweet and the average active user spends less than 21 minutes a month on the site.
So in short, while Twitter is a highly utilize tool for sharing of micro content and links, it is also not a place where users spend a lot of time. If you follow a few hundred people (or more) take a look at your stream sometime. The Tweets are sometimes flying by so there are many (most) you don’t see.
What this means for your brand is that if you are just Tweeting your links or promotions into a cave, even if you have more than the average number of followers chances are pretty slim that you are going to get much response, let alone many retweets or conversions.
This is where engagement on Twitter comes into play for both businesses and individuals looking to increase the benefits from using Twitter.
Picture yourself standing in the center of a shopping mall minding your own business and then all of the sudden a representative from every store came out and tried to pull you into their store. Hollering in your ear this promotion and that deal. “Here, Here, Here…they shout!”
There would be so much noise that you couldn’t possibly hear what they were saying let alone make sense of it.
Now think of Twitter as that mall, only rather than just retailers there are businesses of all shapes and sizes trying to share, show and sell you everything under the sun.
What would grab your attention?
For me, my attention would be drawn to those that don’t try to sell too hard. Companies that inform, share useful info and respond to me when I take the time to read and share their content. In a very simple form, that is engagement.
For businesses on Twitter looking to have more success the first thing they need to do is listen. Start looking at what other brands (ideally successful) in your industry or related are doing. Are they just firing out links and promos, or are they sharing and conversing?
By engaging your brand will draw more followers and those followers become potential advocates and sharers for future content.
I guarantee you the companies having the most success on Twitter are very active, but they aren’t just pushing links and promos. They are talking to their audience and sharing relevant content (both owned and curated).
For most brands if they hope to grow a big Twitter following, then they better plan to take the time to nurture the relationships with those they follow and their followers. Like every community Twitter takes time and effort, but can be quite rewarding when done correctly.
How does your brand use Twitter to engage and build community?
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Daniel Newman is the co-founder of V3*Broadsuite and is an experienced C-level executive, serving as a strategy consultant for small and mid-sized businesses. He’s also an insight/analyst partner to four Fortune 50 enterprises and previously served as the co-founder and CEO of EC3, a hosted IT and communications services provider. Prior to that, he served as the CEO of United Visual, Inc. in Chicago Illinois.
He is a widely published writer who contributes weekly to Forbes, Entrepreneur, Huffington Post and industry publications such as Commercial Integrator, Sound & Communication and Corporate Tech Decisions. He’s also author of three best-selling business books including The New Rules of Customer Engagement, The Millennial CEO, and just recently Evolve: Marketing (^as we know it) is Doomed.
Daniel has established a reputation as a leading thinker in topics such as Social, Big Data, Cloud and Mobile. He has been named to many top influencer lists in all of these areas, including recognition by the Huffington Post as one of the 100 business and leadership accounts to follow on Twitter. He is also an adjunct professor of management at North Central College.