As I spend more time on social media, I'm amazed at the sheer number of entrepreneurs who treat Twitter like a therapist's office.
I totally understand that many of the folks online are solopreneurs and small-business owners, and that for them a social media site like Twitter serves as a virtual water cooler. But if you are one of these people, I ask you to rethink your strategy.
If you have a personal profile that has nothing to do with business, then go ahead, do what you want. (And by "do what you want," I mean: Be very careful, because just like a court of law, anything you say can and will be used against you in the future.) If you are using your accounts for business in any way, however, then you really need to think about your objectives.
Let's take Twitter, for example. People follow you so that they can read your tweets. If you are cultivating your business online, then ostensibly your followers want to hear about business. That's not to say that you can't engage in dialogue, build rapport, and put out some other content that you think your followers would be informed or entertained by, but you need to be careful. More importantly, you need to think carefully about your intent.
I may have a random thought like, "I wish the bejeweled fashion trend would die" (which I do think, by the way), but is this something that I should share on Twitter? Probably not, because it's just my stream of consciousness, and the people who follow me probably don't give a rat's ass about the bejeweled fashion trend (or what I had for dinner, or whatever).
From time to time, it may produce a bonding effect to share some personal information with your followers, but put yourself in your readers' shoes: Is that what you would want to be reading from you?
Here are a few other therapist-office violations that business owners are likely to commit on Twitter:
Twitter worship: I recently saw a tweet that said, "Sending my dad lots of healing energy today so his fever comes down quickly." I am not sure if the sender thinks that God or the head of the Mayo Clinic is following her on Twitter, but I have no other explanations for her tweet.
Is the point to solicit empathy? Why would your Twitter followers need this information? I can understand the temptation to upload your brain to Twitter, but that doesn't mean it's effective. Call your dad directly, for goodness sake!
Spam is as spam does: There are a number of people who get irate at spammers on Twitter. They vent their frustrations at these individuals for sending them auto DM's (Twitter jargon for "automated direct messages"), general spam tweets that mention them, and other issues.
The problem is that by calling out spammers in your stream, you are basically spamming your own followers. Don't bring attention to these idiots by sharing their behavior with your followers -- and more importantly, don't clog your followers' Twitter streams with the same nonsense that makes you so upset.
Over-sharing your personal views: According to a University of Colorado at Denver study, politics and religion were the two status-update topics most likely to get you "unfriended" in social media. So, if your business is to be a political or religious pundit, then sure, make your views known. If not, save them for more private venues.
I am all for taking a stand and being contrarian, but do it in a relevant arena, or you may find your social media strategy unraveling. Business is business - keep it that way.
Work venting: "OK," you say, "I will keep my tweets all business, all of the time." Yet you still need to be careful.
Tweets that vent about difficult or stupid clients, project-related problems, or other business issues don't show you and your business in a good light. They may also give your clients cause for concern that your M.O. is to share anytime something goes wrong. Does anybody want to hire someone that airs their dirty business laundry online?
I'm with the cool kids: Twitter and social platforms are all about engaging with followers. And sometimes there are great reasons to keep your back-and-forth conversations going inside your stream rather than taking them private. For example, I had a dialogue with @ConversationAge recently about sites that steal content. This was a relevant back and forth discussion to keep public, because it is a topic of interest to both of our followers.
On the other hand, sometimes this back-and-forth turns into silly banter that makes it look like you just want others to know that you are friends with some person or group. It's OK to start conversations online, but if it's going to get lengthy or personal, move it to a private forum (such as Twitter DMs). We already know that you're popular; you don't need to prove it ad nauseum.
No comments:
Post a Comment