The other day, someone said to me, “Wow, I had no idea people still used Twitter. I thought it was just a fad.”
Well, sorry to break the news, but Twitter isn’t going anywhere.
Of all the social networks we have at our disposal, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram, etc., Twitter is my personal favorite. Mainly because it is the most “open” social network in my opinion.
What do I mean by that? Well, if you wanted to connect with an influential person, or an author, or a celebrity, or even a Fortune 500 company, Twitter is almost always your easiest path to making it happen.
Facebook requires “friend requests,” and has pretty much created a wall around all of our profiles. LinkedIn on the other hand feels fake at times, as if everyone is trying to project their “ideal self” with everything they say. Also, if you’ve noticed, there isn’t much engagement going on (outside of Groups) on LinkedIn, when compared to other networks like Twitter. As for Google+, it is just a train wreck.
Yes, I just called Google+ a train wreck. Sorry Larry and Sergey. But down deep, I think you know where you went wrong. And when Vic Gundotra, the head of Google+ and a senior vice president at Google, left the company, you know times must be tough.
Then there are what I call the “micro networks,” such as Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, Vine, etc. They are all great for specific purposes and specific audiences, but none of them are general enough to be considered a preferred engagement channel for a general marketing campaign.
So that leaves us with Twitter. Back in the early days, people shot it down because they “didn’t want to read about what you had for breakfast.” But that attitude has largely been eradicated. I think we’re finally catching on to what Twitter actually is.
And what is it you ask? It’s an engagement tool.
Silly Rabbit, Twitter Is for Engagement http://t.co/K7T8EAHuDh #SocialMediaMarketing #TwitterMarketing pic.twitter.com/drbSPWEDx5
— Nicholas Scalice (@Earnworthy) July 3, 2014
Believe it or not, if all you’re doing is posting link after link to the articles you find interesting, you’ve got Twitter all wrong. Sure, social curation is a part of it, but the bigger game in town is actually responding to the tweets of others, rather than posting your own.
Think of it like this: The vast majority of Twitter users fall into two groups. First, there are the lurkers, who browse and never tweet. Then there are the pushers, who constantly push out tweets and never browse.
But there is a smaller third group, and these folks are reaping the true rewards of the platform. They are the ones who take the time to respond to other tweets. They are the ones “favoriting” tweets that they like, based on strategic keyword searches. They are the ones balancing out their posts with a variety of links, quotes, statements, questions, and more. And they are the ones participating in “tweet chats.”
And of course, they still lurk from time-to-time and they even push out links from time-to-time, but they know how to balance all of these efforts around the right engagement strategy.
So don’t just be a lurker and don’t just be a pusher. Be a hybrid, but make sure you’re adding a level of personalized interaction to your efforts as well.
If you do this and do it consistently, you’ll stand out from the crowd and gain a following for being different and refreshing. Yes, it’s more difficult than just scheduling out a bunch of link tweets, but the more effort you put into actual engagement on Twitter, the more you’ll get out of the platform.
Makes sense, doesn’t it?
If you have any questions at all about Twitter and how to implement this engagement strategy, feel free to send me a Tweet or post a comment below!
