A little bird told me that many of you do not really know how to Tweet effectively. A lot of businesses – including some that should know better – have embraced Twitter and hired a Tweeter to send out blasts about their company. And blast after blast comes out – but is it just filling the Internet with the same old Tweets day after day?
An SEO firm that should know better regularly Tweets – “Daily Breaking News” followed by an incomprehensible URL. Would you click on that?
Most of us won’t and here’s why: Even at only 140 characters you have enough space to say “Google Bought IBM” followed by your tiny URL. Look at how long newspapers have been creating short compelling headlines of far less than 140 characters to get people to buy the paper and read the story. This is not a new art, this is commonly understood wisdom that just needs to be applied to a new venue. Tweets seem short but look at what businesses do with 15 second spots during the Super Bowl.
Travel companies, department stores, technology companies all need to remember that consumers are following them for a reason and, surprise, it is for specific reasons It is because they want to travel to Tibet, buy a new tablet computer, purchase a purse or golf clubs. So if you tweet be specific about what you are offering. If you have a set of golf clubs on sale say so. If you hope to draw in more than the golfers say “Golf clubs and more 20% off” and then your little URL. Counting spaces that was only 27 characters.
I know, I know, it is much easier to have some staff member just load a social media dashboard with a daily message that is always the same but links to whatever specials page you have. But that’s not effective. That’s not good business. Your sale needs an effective vehicle and a vague “click here” is not gonna bring in the buyers, and your customers want you to respect their time. They are already interested in your company, they are likely to buy your product or service, just don’t waste their time with vague tweets that have links to things they are not interested in. How many times do you think they will click just to see if the link was worth following? How much more seriously will they take your competitor’s tweets if you have wasted their time?
In a nutshell: your tweet needs to have a what and a why. The what is a call to action and the why is why that customer would want to do that. If you don’t have both, you are wasting your tweet.
Make it short, make it sweet, and make it count!