Think of a Twitter account, especially a corporate Twitter account. It’s a very interesting dance of balance that I imagine a lot of companies are going through. I’ve been asked by different companies over the years how they might approach finding their voice on Twitter. To a single one, these companies all wanted to go in what I consider the “wrong” direction. They wanted the accounts to be wholly corporate.
Communication is a Snowfall
Conversations and relationships are based on several touches. In the traditional marketing and communication world, people would use each touch to ask for something, to issue a call to action. This isn’t how social networks work. They’re not there to do your selling. They are there to give you permission to reach someone who has opted into a relationship with you. A relationship, not a sales channel.
It’s a snowfall. Every individual flake doesn’t mean a lot, but the body of work can change everything. If someone judged me for every tweet that I sent out, I’d be very ineffective. I respond to people a lot (that’s not selling). I tweet music lyrics. I send absolutely silly humorous comments that have nothing to do with anything.
But those are currency. Those are permission to sell something. Those are part of the snowfall that makes the landscape of what I say effective overall.
My Recipe for Corporate Success
If you’re looking to use a social network to build business relationships, there must be a blend of personal and professional. No one (NO ONE) wants to read about your job all day. They want to know you. They want the “behind the scenes” of your communication. They want the “liner notes.” If you have to talk official all day, then brand it and stick a logo on it, and people will or won’t talk to it.
The humans, however, want to talk to humans.
And, they want YOU to talk about other people and not just your job. They want you to talk about them. They want you to wish them well on their spelling test. They want you to mention the great deals, but only once in every 12 tweets or posts. They want your account to be a snowfall, not a blizzard of business.
Ask anyone who’s receiving your message, and that’s what you’ll get for an answer.
Is there such a thing as too much activity on an account? I suppose. But what’s too much? 20 touches a day? People opt into your message. If your message is 20 different things about various business and non-business issues, then I think it’s not too much. If you’ve sent me 20 posts about your company’s agenda, I’m probably no longer subscribed.
How Do I Know?
I’m in the valuable crossroads of being both the creator and the consumer of such messages, plus I help really big companies do this kind of thing. So, with all three mindsets at my beck and call, I’ll tell you that the snowfall mindset is very important to how you go about crafting your message.
Sell. Yes, by all means sell. You’re wasting your company’s time if you’re not selling in some form or another. But you have to blend it into the rest of the other fluffy powder of sustained conversations. Otherwise, it doesn’t stick.
What say you?
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