With caution. If you’ve been using Twitter for a while, you’ll remember the first case of ill-conceived hashtag hijacking via Habitat, the British furniture store. Two years ago the company used trending hashtags in an attempt to raise their profile. Sadly they chose words relating to the troubles in Iran, resulting in quite astonishing tweets: “#MOUSAVI Join the database for free to win a £1,000 gift card”, for example.
Angering Twitter even further, designer Kenneth Cole repeated the faux pas in 2011:
Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online.
The offending tweet was still online even after an apology was eventually posted.
There are some less sensitive hashtags, such as the popular “#FF”, which can be used more subtly if the tone behind them is genuine. Alex Burmaster, communications director at research firm Nielsen Online, put it succinctly:
The art is in being able to tap into those conversations without alienating people.
2. Tell the time
Bear in mind your audience, their routine and their location when you tweet. Many services which auto-post from RSS feeds, such as dlvr.it, can be set to stop posting at certain times. Unless you are trying to engage a global audience, there are usually certain times of the day which should be avoided.
The best times to tweet may surprise you: a recent study by Mashable suggests that Mondays are best avoided, and late night tweets well outside working hours convert to clicks far more effectively than you’d expect.
3. Crowdsource
Engaging the CEO is a tactic recommended elsewhere, and in Lord Sugar’s case it seems to have been a very savvy move. Having raised awareness of his autobiography, “What You See Is What You Get”, he has more recently crowdsourced the cover for his next book from his Twitter followers – a posse nearing the 1 million mark.
Lord Sugar may benefit from a great deal of behind the scenes advice on Twitter marketing, but there’s no doubt his tactics work, albeit with a few hiccups. A few comments on his potential book covers were less than favourable, and he halted a subsequent competition intended to attract new followers when he realised savvy Twitter users were crudely manipulating the stats.
4. Give something back
Small companies have huge success with giveaways and prizes on Twitter, and many are coming up with far more sophisticated ways to spread the word than asking their followers to retweet a marketing message (although this can be equally successful – it’s a tactic used by Korg and Eyeko, to name but two). Hip camera manufacturers Lomography regularly run games of Jeopardy through their Twitter account, offering cameras and accessories as prizes for the quickest correct answers. It’s a stroke of genius – a game perfectly suited to 140 characters that gets a marketing message out interactively.
5. Stay professional
Don’t hound those who unfollow you. Many will have good reasons for doing so. There’s nothing less attractive than a brand publicly chasing an ‘unfollower’ (particularly when they begin retweeting their meek and apologetic responses). Likewise, don’t retweet those who criticise in the hope you can mobilise your army against them.
6. Automate with care
Many guides and walkthroughs advise easy automation of Twitter feeds. In fact, fully automated feeds come across as little more than visual noise. Linking a blog with Twitter is generally considered acceptable, as long as the subject – as posted in the tweet – is descriptive enough to pair with the link to your blog post. However, most of your customers will not want to know when you post each of your 300 holiday photographs on Flickr.
Once you’ve linked up two or more social networks, have a look at the results. Truncated tweets with links back to Facebook are a particularly ugly outcome of automation which should be avoided.
7. Engage
Many companies now actively seek out less than favourable tweets. This kind of active support catches customers off-guard and is incredibly effective. Companies successfully employing this tactic include the Halifax bank, who have recently been responding to angry tweets when phone lines were busy, and Virgin Media. Providing a direct line of communication back to the source – such as a direct email address – is a sure fire way to make your customers feel wanted and create a positive user base who are more responsive to your tweets.
It also reflects the most important aspect of the Twitter marketing experience: be human. The more human your company is on Twitter, the more real life humans will want to know what your company is up to.
