A week doesn’t seem go by without some high profile CEO, Hollywood A-lister, or politician getting roasted for an ill-advised tweet. In the last week I can recall Elon Musk firing off a tweet about the possibility of taking Tesla private and catching his Board and financial staff off-guard. Weeks before it was for insulting a Thai rescue diver. A few months prior Roseanne Barr had her new hit show cancelled for a ill-advised tweet. The White House has had numerous media briefings regarding tweets: what they meant or didn’t mean more fully explained. Members of Congress and other political figures race to reply or “one-up” to fill the echo chamber.
With all this chaos, noise and unseemliness, some marketers have stool arms-length from the social media platform, not wanting to wade in…but Twitter is refocusing its efforts on making sure agencies and their clients are more comfortable with the platform. After all, many of its users…what Twitter calls “Affluent Millennials”…those 18-29 year olds who are most active on the platform use it for customer service with brands that they buy. Whereas an older cohort on Facebook might prefer calling an 800 number for customer service, this audience is different. Even if brands don’t seek an active Twitter dialog, they should monitor Twitter for customer service opportunities as those will surely happen.
Want a few tips on how to up your Twitter game? Here are three:
Make Sure Your Page is Set Up Right – Change your header image quarterly. Have a pinned tweet that represents your brand always at the top. Make sure to give a pithy and compelling reason to follow your brand in the Description, and Add your location to make local search easier.
Tweet well – Check out the service at analytics.twitter.com to get ideas on what tweets get the most engagement and how they are written and tagged. Use Image GIF’s to up engagement by as much as 56%. Make sure to include at least 1-2 hashtags to increase your engagement by 100%. Including Video is 6x more effective versus just a static image, so get those cameras rolling!
Engage and Follow others – Know your unique point of view and express it. Engage with customers, partners and employees to keep the conversation going. Also follow others that are aligned with your brand and engage early and often. Be respectful and don’t be afraid to take customer service issues offline for full resolution.
Image credit: New York Times – https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/13/business/dealbook/elon-musk-tesla-twitter.html