Social media continues to grow and weave its way into
people’s daily lives. Specifically, I am
talking about Twitter. It is no longer a
place where celebrities and athletes update their fans with what they are
wearing that day or how good their gourmet salad was for lunch. Businesses have adopted the social media site
as a way of integrating their advertising campaigns into people’s social
lives. It is everywhere and hard to
avoid noticing. Nearly every advertisement these days wears the stamp “Follow
us on Twitter” at the bottom of the ad.
Posts are limited to 140 characters each; it’s not the size of the post,
but the size of the audience the post reaches that matters.
While advertisers have taken the reins using Twitter to
spread their ad campaigns, organizations can greatly benefit from using it to
promote news, events, or anything they need to make public. Websites like TinyURL.com and bit.ly will
help cut your URL link to fewer characters, so your remaining post can really
draw attention to what the link is for.
Bit.ly goes a bit (no pun intended) further with their free membership,
giving analytics tracking of how many people clicked on your shortened link. It
is so easy to write a quick title for a link to your feature article or press
release and post it for your followers to view.
Having a catchy post is extremely important, because if the reader
doesn’t know what it is for, they will probably skip right over it. Using #hashtags and tweeting at other users
(done by using the @ sign in conjunction with a user’s Twitter handle) can also
make your post pop, attracting followers to the link provided. Not only does the use of #hashtags and
tweeting at people draw attention to your post, it can also expand your
influence, increasing the size of the audience that sees your post.
A substantial number of journalists and bloggers use Twitter
these days, so connecting with them and making new contacts for future stories
could expand your company’s reach even more.
Start following reporters you’re
interested in, retweet something they posted if it’s relevant to your
area of business, and send them a private message if you have an appropriate
pitch for them. As with pitches in any
medium, show interest in a reporter’s recent stories and do your research to
ensure you’re targeting the correct person for the pitch in question. My junior industry status has taught me to
really do my research on reporters and their stories because it could mean the
difference between making a new contact or sounding inexperienced and being
discarded for wasting the reporter’s time with material that is irrelevant to
them.
It is also important to keep a constant flow of news and updates
going to your feed. Social media like
Twitter has a large mobile user base that has access to their news feed at all
times, so it is important for your followers to see you posting regularly. Posting a news story only every few weeks
will drop your presence to the very bottom of your followers’ feeds, and they
may forget you are there. Having said
that, quality is better than quantity, so make sure all posts are high quality
and you’re not tweeting just to tweet.
Connecting with reporters on Twitter is a great forum for
pitching your stories, but I also want to stress how important your following
can be. Anyone can have a Twitter
account and have great compelling content being posted to it on a regular basis. The key factor to a successful social media
campaign is your following. Who is
viewing your content? The content may be
great, but without the proper following, that compelling content could mean
nothing. There are several ways to
increase and improve your following on Twitter.
One method is to #hashtag and tweet at as many relevant contacts as
possible – focus on those who have a larger following, in order for your tweets
to end up on other people’s (their follower’s) feeds. If these people like your tweet, then
hopefully they will start following you too.
Adding #hashtag key words can also increase your search
engine optimization (SEO). Another way
of increasing your SEO is to link all of your social network posts together so
they appear on every social network site you use. With the same posts, key words, and links
appearing on several different networks, search engines will have more than one
place to link people to.
In short, Twitter is everywhere and it is here to stay. If you are using it already, great --keep
expanding your following and releasing quality content. If you are not using Twitter, don’t be afraid
to start. It is easy to set up and will
prove to be a valuable part of your communications toolkit. I’d love to hear
additional Twitter tips from other communications professionals – you can reach
me at Thomas@adviceunlimited.net.
And you can follow me on twitter at @adviceunlim.
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