Twitter Use

[Smirnoffmark]

Morning all,

How many of you use Twitter (business and personal) and do you think it helps either bring in business or helps fulfil business?

Anyone want to share Twitter ID's? We're just jumping on the digitial bandwagon although appreciate we're about 5 years behind everyone else!

@visualanalytic

Mark.

[Ken Sington]

Tweet for 2 businesses, @RichardHenryCo and @BactonGreen. Can't say it has done anything for either. Seems to me that unless you are a "celeb" of some description followed by many, or you say something controversial that brings you to the attention of the authorities, then tweeting and hoping to be noticed is a bit like coughing discretely at a Metallica concert and hoping that someone will hear.

[BillyWhizz888]

I've just joined from a beginner point of view ill find it hard to get your business floating without adding 100k+ and constant tweeting sadly be waste of time and effort

Personally Facebook is the main one for social media and they've started selling advertising space

Also there's the idea of advertising on a race car In motorsport and team offers to advertise your business throughout fb as part of sponsorship packages ;-) with added press and tv coverage

Be time consuming on twitter and time is money

[Simpo Two]

I'm going to be old and cynical and suggest that playing on a mobile phone is more fun than getting on with finding work/running a business.

[Truckosaurus]

I'd suggest Twittering is only worth it if you run an 'interesting' business eg. race team, car tuning shop or something else related to a hobby or interest where you could be followed by enthusiasts of that genre.

[D4SH]

Agree with Truckosaurus - I started with the business intention of promoting pumps, but find following the likes of Bob Houghton, SuperVettura et al much more interesting

[cornet]

I've seen this quite a lot. People sign up twitter accounts, send up vaguely related tweets then give up because they aren't getting anything from it.

The thing with twitter is you actually need to engage with people. Find people that have the problem you're trying to solve. Follow them, tweet them, invite them to contact you for more information, offer it as an endpoint for support etc...

Make good use of hash tags. Don't use random ones, actually spend a minute working out which ones are popular and used rather than just appending #werock or something equally useless.

Also don't be afraid to go off-topic occasionally however most (75%+) of your tweets should be on-topic.


Take a look at these twitter accounts for some good examples:

https://twitter.com/freeagent - Company I work for, we get a lot of support queries and love via twitter
https://twitter.com/SolihullPolice - Someone here understands twitter
https://twitter.com/tampercoffee - Local coffee shop only open
https://twitter.com/O2/with_replies - Surprisingly good

[V8mate]

One bizarre behaviour I've recently discovered - having launched a new consumer business with a focus on social media marketing - is that other businesses (who are not competitors but do have wholly aligned target customers) made a dash to follow my brand's feed, and encouraged me to follow them, and then... nothing.

Initially, I thought this is great! I'll retweet the stuff you tweet at your followers, and then you retweet the stuff I tweet to ours. But they don't. They don't do anything.

So... what's the point?

[Simpo Two]

cornet said:

https://twitter.com/SolihullPolice - Someone here understands twitter

Frankly though at best that's just PR and at worst, needless junk. 'It's important to ensure you have sufficient fuel for your journey, especially when collecting a new bike!'

Crikey. I'm so impressed I'll sign up to Solihull Police instead of Essex...

[limpsfield]

V8mate said:

One bizarre behaviour I've recently discovered - having launched a new consumer business with a focus on social media marketing - is that other businesses (who are not competitors but do have wholly aligned target customers) made a dash to follow my brand's feed, and encouraged me to follow them, and then... nothing.

Initially, I thought this is great! I'll retweet the stuff you tweet at your followers, and then you retweet the stuff I tweet to ours. But they don't. They don't do anything.

So... what's the point?

It could be by following you and others like you, they then come up as suggestions for other people to follow.

So if I am a seller of second hand Alfas and follow all other Alfa related stuff, Mr Bloggs who likes Alfas and follows lots of Alfa Twitter but not me, will end up getting suggested to follow me by Twitter.

I am guessing that's how it works. I have been on twitter for about three years now - @JonesTheMarkets - and follow loads of financial stuff, so that's what ends up getting promoted to me.

With regards to some of the comments above- twitter is a slow burn from a promotion point of view and takes effort and engagement in the beginning to see results further down the line. I was very sceptical when I started but not now.

[V8mate]

limpsfield said:

V8mate said:

One bizarre behaviour I've recently discovered - having launched a new consumer business with a focus on social media marketing - is that other businesses (who are not competitors but do have wholly aligned target customers) made a dash to follow my brand's feed, and encouraged me to follow them, and then... nothing.

Initially, I thought this is great! I'll retweet the stuff you tweet at your followers, and then you retweet the stuff I tweet to ours. But they don't. They don't do anything.

So... what's the point?

It could be by following you and others like you, they then come up as suggestions for other people to follow.

So if I am a seller of second hand Alfas and follow all other Alfa related stuff, Mr Bloggs who likes Alfas and follows lots of Alfa Twitter but not me, will end up getting suggested to follow me by Twitter.

I am guessing that's how it works. I have been on twitter for about three years now - @JonesTheMarkets - and follow loads of financial stuff, so that's what ends up getting promoted to me.

With regards to some of the comments above- twitter is a slow burn from a promotion point of view and takes effort and engagement in the beginning to see results further down the line. I was very sceptical when I started but not now.

Thanks. That makes sense. I think it's a missed opportunity though.

[anonymous-user]

ours seems to be constantly on the cusp of being banned for spamming: the line between engaging with someone who has a problem that you can help them solve and spamming them is down to the way they interpret the offer to help

some people hit report for any (or even no) reason - as is their right

so we dialled right back for a while, just doing retweets and a low key advertising campaign

@SpiderVac

I don't buy the theory that "number of followers" is of much relevance to engagement / conversion

Edited by anonymous-user on Sunday 20th April 16:30

[Silent1]

JPJPJP said:

ours seems to be constantly on the cusp of being banned for spamming: the line between engaging with someone who has a problem that you can help them solve and spamming them is down to the way they interpret the offer to help

some people hit report for any (or even no) reason - as is their right

so we dialled right back for a while, just doing retweets and a low key advertising campaign

@SpiderVac

I can see how they think it's spam, you're just retweeting anything with a mention of spider in it and I presume you used to try and sell them a product whenever they mentioned spiders?

[anonymous-user]

Silent1 said:

I can see how they think it's spam, you're just retweeting anything with a mention of spider in it and I presume you used to try and sell them a product whenever they mentioned spiders?

It isn't the retweeting that is classed as spam - far from it in fact. The retweet is intended to catch the eye of the tweeter and cause them to look at our twitter profile / website etc. and, yes, buy a spider catcher. Twitter doesn't seem to mind retweeting.

The spam warnings were all as a result of searching for tweets such as the ones we retweet now and directly tweeting to them with a tweet from us. E.g. tweet from random twitterer 'caught a big spider under a glass and don't know what to do now' we would reply with something like 'exactly the sort of situation that made us invent this humane spider catcher, look http://youtu.be/bplt2U81EzE'

whilst the engagement level (in terms of video views as a percentage of tweets sent) was brilliant and the conversion rate was pretty good too, a few too many did get reported and we have used up all our warnings.

interestingly enough, paying twitter to show similar tweets on our behalf to users who tweet our keywords isn't classed as spam.... the engagement level is lower, but the conversion rate is still reasonable

[dacouch]

Silent1 said:

JPJPJP said:

ours seems to be constantly on the cusp of being banned for spamming: the line between engaging with someone who has a problem that you can help them solve and spamming them is down to the way they interpret the offer to help

some people hit report for any (or even no) reason - as is their right

so we dialled right back for a while, just doing retweets and a low key advertising campaign

@SpiderVac

I can see how they think it's spam, you're just retweeting anything with a mention of spider in it and I presume you used to try and sell them a product whenever they mentioned spiders?

I agree.

Spidervac needs to follow other people as they will follow spider vac, when you factor in all the people who follow them you have a much bigger audience.

The key to twitter is to tweet on a regular basis and to have interesting / funny tweets that other people will want to read and retweet.

People have a habit of clicking on trending topics eg if Eastenders is on then tweets about Eastenders and then retweeting and / or following people who post tweets they like about said topic

[Silent1]

JPJPJP said:

It isn't the retweeting that is classed as spam - far from it in fact. The retweet is intended to catch the eye of the tweeter and cause them to look at our twitter profile / website etc. and, yes, buy a spider catcher. Twitter doesn't seem to mind retweeting.

The spam warnings were all as a result of searching for tweets such as the ones we retweet now and directly tweeting to them with a tweet from us. E.g. tweet from random twitterer 'caught a big spider under a glass and don't know what to do now' we would reply with something like 'exactly the sort of situation that made us invent this humane spider catcher, look http://youtu.be/bplt2U81EzE'

whilst the engagement level (in terms of video views as a percentage of tweets sent) was brilliant and the conversion rate was pretty good too, a few too many did get reported and we have used up all our warnings.

interestingly enough, paying twitter to show similar tweets on our behalf to users who tweet our keywords isn't classed as spam.... the engagement level is lower, but the conversion rate is still reasonable

Sorry I was coming from the angle of the user, the reason they're clicking spam is because they'll click through to your feed and see you're sending it to hundreds of people at which point they'll become disengaged and click the spam button without ever actually considering the product.
I think your idea is clever and it will work but it just needs fine tuning in some way, perhaps more funny/interesting posts in your feed that aren't re-tweets would help, people won't follow a company hammering out tweets unless they're 'good', lots of users find constantly active twitter feeds distracting and so unfollow them.

[limpsfield]

Silent1 said:

Sorry I was coming from the angle of the user, the reason they're clicking spam is because they'll click through to your feed and see you're sending it to hundreds of people at which point they'll become disengaged and click the spam button without ever actually considering the product.

I would disagree with this. If I read a tweet I don't think it is just being sent for me - it's a broadcast medium, so of course it is being seen by hundreds if not thousands. I think the Spidervac twitter is an interesting angle but as someone else said above they need to follow more people.

[limpsfield]

V8mate said:

Thanks. That makes sense. I think it's a missed opportunity though.

I would agree - it would be much helpful for them if they were engaging with you as well as just the follow.

Lots of businesses really don't get Twitter. And if you chuck a copy of Hipster Weekly down a street in London you will hit 8 Social Media "experts". Using it is the best way to figure out how it might work for your business.

[anonymous-user]

limpsfield said:

I would disagree with this. If I read a tweet I don't think it is just being sent for me - it's a broadcast medium, so of course it is being seen by hundreds if not thousands. I think the Spidervac twitter is an interesting angle but as someone else said above they need to follow more people.

I disagree on the need to follow more people and have more followers - that is surely the way forwards to build a brand, but that isn't what we are trying to do. We are, essentially, trying to trigger a near impulse purchase, or maybe a gift purchase via twitter.

To get the product seen by a lot of potentially interested people, there are paid twitterers who do a very good (and much quicker) job. Some of them are very, very effective and, if there are any operating in your niche, you are well advised to find them; but you do have to sort the wheat from the chaff.

You may also have noticed, in our photos and videos section, a photo of Philip Schofield with the product. When he tweeted that (and two additional) photos to his 2.8m twitter followers back near the end of January... well, you can predict the results yourself.

I think twitter ads are the way forwards (for this product). The twitter ads system is very clever at making it easy to target people at the moment I want them to think of the product, e.g. when they tweet 'help there is a spider in my room and I can't catch it' I am not sure (m)any users really want to hear about different types of spiders being caught, see our cartoons, see the celeb endorsements etc. The success comes from 'interrupting' someone at the moment they are tweeting about some element of catching a spider.

The retweeting hasn't been successful and today will be its last day in its current guise. But it was a useful experiment - 1,000 retweets have brought only as much engagement as 80 advert impressions.

The level of engagement and conversion we got with the behaviour that got us into trouble for spamming was fantastic - the responses were, generally, very positive. But clearly there were also enough complaints to get us suspended half a dozen times too....

If twitter ads could get the same engagement without the 'spam' complaints, it would be good value at 12x the current price.

Also, paying twitter to do it for us means it is much nearer to set and forget than manual tweeting. Which is nice.

[V8mate]

I don't like Twitter advertising. I've set up a couple of campaigns (i.e. completed the design exercise but not pressed 'go') and it's just too expensive.

Bid prices have ranged from £1.15 to £1.85 for each engagement. The thing is, they charge that for *any* engagement. The most valuable engagement is a Follow, but that is charged the same as a Favourite or a reply, or even simply a click on the Tweet, perhaps just to see an image.

I'm not sure I could justify those prices even for a Follow; the rest are worthless.