Social Media Archives - Bluehive Interactive

06 Feb 2018

Increase Your Number of Followers on Twitter By Avoiding These 11 Mistakes

Congratulations! You have decided to create a Twitter account. You say to yourself “What’s next?”. You know that talking to an empty room will get you no where. You need to grow your followers.

You maybe thinking you need more manpower or additional costly resources. Twitter is one of the many social media channels which will allow your business to market and advertise without that overhead. The character count for a tweet on Twitter forces you to think about your. This concept enables you as a business owner to get a message out quickly and easily.

Twitter was the first social media channel to create #hashtags. They simply work as tags to group tweets together containing the same thought. With your Twitter account, you can retweet, share and follow countless sites which could help you to gain new followers too.

But I have Few Followers

As a brand new business on Twitter, gaining popularity requires a sound footing. You have researched social media marketing strategies. You may have even started following other business and possibly a few field influencers. You have retweeted over and over again and maybe even posted some of your own original content with numerous hashtags too.

But then when you take a look at your Twitter profile again, the number of your followers are way lower than those of the people you’ve been following. You may begin to second guess your approach and start to question why scandalous celebrities have greater number of followers and you’ve decided to create your own Kim K scandal of your own…okay maybe that is a bit tongue in cheek, but are you sure you are doing the right thing to be noticed? What could the issue be? Here are 11 mistakes that you shouldn’t be making on Twitter if you want to succeed and increase your followers.

1. Tick-Tock Stay Away From the Midnight Clock

When creating a tweet, the primary goal is to have your followers retweet your post, but that relies greatly on the time in which it was posted. Posting in the middle of the night is not the action of a success business person, no should it be yours. If the people who are responsible for liking and retweeting are already asleep, you tweet will fall to sound of the clock going tick-tock.

2. Hashtags You Say?

Look at your last tweet. Did you include hashtags in it? Maybe you put far too many in it, either way this isn’t going to get you anywhere fast. Referring back to the beginning of this blog post, I mentioned that hashtags work as tags to group tweets together containing the same thought. You should always include at least 1 hashtag in your post, but don’t clutter it either…we like to stick to 2. Your tweet is limited in character count and should be created with a single thought in mind. Hashtags create a higher visibility rate on Twitter. Offerpop reports that among all of the hashtags users, more than 70% of the people who use hashtags posting through their mobile phones compared to only 30% of those using hashtags on their computers. Remember, hashtags will help to increase your popularity in Twitter, but take it easy, no one likes a hashtag stuffing fool.

3. Following Everyone in Sight

Resist the temptation to take your mouse on a trip down Followers Lane. Following everyone may sound like a great idea, but it will not guarantee you a great number of followers. Just as in your everyday business, you should have a target audience for which you use to leverage your popularity on Twitter. One often overlooked feature in Twitter is located in the sidebar. Twitter displays recommendations on who to follow based on your industry. When decided on who to follow, do so with a strategy in mind. You want to identify those who would follow you back based on the balance between their followers and following numbers. Image if you tried to follow someone such as Ellen DeGeneres, with 76.6 MM followers, its doubtful that she is going to follow you back.

4. No Interaction with Followers

Engagement! Engagement! Engagement! Engagement! Wow, I feel like Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer’s rant. But in all seriousness, engagement is the one thing that most followers and loyal brand fans prioritize above all else. The act of getting people to follow you is not all about your posts but mainly on how you engage with them via replies and direct messages.

We use a tool designed for Twitter users, Followerwonk, which allows you to preform a search for key terms pertinent to your industry’s nature, and view the topics which have the highest response rates. This allows you to expand your social graph and through this, you could engage with them using the same key terms. One of our favorites queries is to compare the followers of any 2-3 users to find overlaps and new audiences. This powerful tool will surely help to find new avenues for followers.

5. Don’t be an Egg in A Sea of Tweets

In order to be taken seriously and appear as an active Twitter user, you should take a moment to spruce up your profile. Be sure to upload a picture or your company logo. No one would follow someone who doesn’t even bother to edit their profile. Don’t be shy here. Include your website URL and tell everyone a bit about yourself or your company.

6. Lengthy Tweets

Twitter has a limited number of characters per post and it just got a boost. Remember, Twitter is for people on-the-go. If your tweets are too long, some users will skip through it. Go for short and punchy tweets. “According to Social Media Examiner, shorter tweets get 17% higher engagement from other users. Short tweets allow room for conversations, and a greater audience for retweeting and commenting.”

7. You Don’t Ask for Retweets

It may not seem obvious at first, but for business brands, there is no reason to be shy or hesitant about giving it a try. Trying to ask for retweets may feel as though you are groveling, but it is a huge opportunity that most brands simply fail to realize. Reports say that asking for retweets results in 12 or more times RTs. Moreover, spelling out the entire word, ‘retweet’ than the abbreviation RT is 23 times higher than the latter. Then again, make sure that your requests are once in a while; too much might be annoying.

8. Posting too much

Just as quick as someone clicked the button to follow you, they can click that same button to unfollow you and you end up back to square zero. A Forbes article states that the more you tweet, the more likely you could have followers. However, this is not entirely correct. Though posting promotes visibility for your company, too much of it is appalling. So how much should you post on Twitter? It really is different for each and every industry and business. This is found through researching your competitors, reviewing how many times they tweet and engage each day, while striking a balance with what feels right for you. We’ve found that tweeting 5-6 times per day works best for us.

9. Your Posts are not Worth Retweeting

Crafting an excellent tweet involves both quality and quantity. When social media expert, Avinash Kaushik was asked, he revealed that content is important to gain the applause of your audience. The key is to make your tweets short and catchy. Going back to what we said before, your strategy must involve tweets which are relatable to your target audience. Producing content for the sake of producing content will surly fill your Twitter feed, but producing quality content will go far and above to help you gain the attention of users and may well gain the retweets your page needs.

10. Including Bad Links to Your Posts

This may seem like a no-brainer, but each week I encounter a handful of tweets which you click on the link in the tweet and it does not work. Always double check the links you include in your posts. We love to use link shortening services like Bit.ly to track our link clicks. It’s important to fully verify your link works before you create your Bit.ly link or you will have skewed data.

Your aim should be to create posts which are both quality and credible, and have a target audience. You wouldn’t want to lose those followers who spent so much time acquiring by having something as simple as a bad link.

11. Don’t be BORING! Post a Picture

The old adage, a picture is worth a thousand words, rings true in social media too. Every marketing strategy, pictures are like a moth to porch light. Tweets which contain images or even better, videos, have a greater chance of getting retweeted and engagement as well.

Social media marketing strategies may differ from business to business, but these tips ring through regardless of the industry. In addition to the tips in this blog post, consider looking at conversation, amplification, applause, and economic value, the four tips of Avinash Kaushik’s social media metrics to help you in your campaign.

Have you decided what to do with your Twitter followers problem? Scandals are for the desperate! Maybe it’s time for you to retweet more, change that profile picture, and tweet more! Take charge now and if you’ve resolved these issues, your Twitter account might fly as high and as viral as Flappy Bird!

31 Mar 2017

Color Me Crazy – What is Your Social Media Strategy?

Color Me What?

In case you haven’t heard, on social media, Crayola announced that they will be replacing their long standing color Dandelion. Today happen’s to be National Crayon Day – who knew! With such an important day in the life of crayon artists everywhere, it seems fitting that Crayola decided to make the big announcement today.

People on the Twittersphere have taking to the airways to voice their concerns.

Gael Fashingbauer Cooper – columnist at CNET wrote an open letter to Crayola saying:

Not to throw shade at you, but I don’t like your tone. What do you mean by retiring me, and the day before National Crayon Day of all days? Do you disown your mother the day before Mother’s Day to save yourself the cost of a greeting card?

Not surprisingly the number of suggestions for a replacement color have been endless. Along with parodies of existing colors, some of the suggestions have ranged from Moral Ambiguity Gray to Singing Like a Canary Yellow and even Fake News White

Crayola has taken a tongue-in-cheek approach to this. The decision to retire Dandelion didn’t come easy. This is the first crayon which has been retired in 100 years – but let’s be honest it was named after a weed.

What is Your Social Media Strategy?

Creating controversy is just one of the many ways to cause a fury of conversation for your brand. In the lead up to the retirement, Crayola planned a live stream on Facebook. They chose to announce their decision on a “holiday”. They also encouraged their audience to make recommendations for a replacement.

When you are planning out your social media posts, have you employed any of those tactics? Social media is one of the most powerful tools in your marketing arsenal. When used correctly, you can create a strong personal connection with your prospective customers. At Bluehive Interactive, the part we enjoy most about social media is that it is just that social. Social media should not be owned by just 1 person within your organization. It should always be a team effort. Let the voices of all of your employees join the conversation.

Understand your goals

Goals define your high-level aims and objectives use SMART criteria to ensure each goal has a measurable set of criteria against which to evaluate progress. As with any journey, the first step in creating a social-media marketing strategy is to understand where you want to go. What is the purpose of your social media marketing efforts? Do you want to create or raise awareness of your brand? Are you looking to increase sales, or website traffic, or both? Is your goal to build customer loyalty and increase retention? These goals aren’t mutually exclusive, but you should focus on one or two: If you spread yourself too thin, you’re not going to accomplish anything.

Target Audience

Who you want to reach via social networks? In order to do this you must first understand your core audience (personas, profiles, demographics etc.) and identify any new customer types that you want to attract based on your products/services. We like to divide this into three different types of social followers:

Loyal
Regular customers who are already connected to you via social media. You want to retain them and increase their purchases and engagement with your social profiles. Take the case of Crayola above. They obviously are a well established brand with a huge loyal following. They knew immediately that their announcement to replace Dandelion would spark a conversation.

Existing
Customer who have shopped with you before but aren’t regular shoppers and haven’t connected on social media. You want to nurture them, bringing them closer to you online and therefore increasing purchase rates.

Potential
People who have never visited the website or purchased from you but who are regular online shoppers, and users of social media. You want to use social media to bring them into contact with the brand, and ultimately move them to purchase

Look at the Competition

When it comes to social media, your competition can tell you a lot about what works and what doesn’t. After all, they’re targeting the same customers you are. If you ignore your competition, you’re giving up a fantastic opportunity to learn from their successes and mistakes.

Take some time to research and analyze the social habits of your competitors, start by picking three or four of the top ones. Find out which social networks they’re active on, and study their content. Is it funny or serious? What kind of cultural references do they use? Do they talk about their product primarily, or do they focus on other things?

For example, if you sell mountain bikes, do your competitors talk about how their mountain bikes perform, or do they post amazing mountain biking videos that just happen to include their products? Then, see how well each competitor is doing (e.g. how much engagement — comments, shares, likes) — they get on their Facebook updates.) This will let you determine which strategies work and which ones don’t.

Develop Your Messages

Now you have a handle on your target audience and your competition, it’s time to start building your messages. This isn’t detailed content; rather it’s the top level set of key messages that you think will resonate with your customers based on the personas you have created. Simply choose two or three messages, then break each one down another level creating a simple messaging hierarchy.

There’s nothing wrong with adopting some of your competitors’ successful messaging ideas but also try to create original messages that set you apart — this will help you to create a unique brand voice. Don’t be afraid to get creative as your social media presence should be exciting, not boring.

Define Your Social Channels

It is here that you will spell out what you’ll actually be doing for each social network to satisfy the goals of your social strategy. It is import to include all tactical elements and any related, process, people and tools.

Below is an example channel level plan for Twitter:

We will use our primary Twitter handle as both a customer service channel and a broadcast/interaction channel instead of having 2 separate handles. Twitter will be used to make us feel extremely accessible to consumers – real humans at the other end in real time (so we will initial conversations wherever possible). This will be beneficial in developing brand awareness and putting a real face to the products bought elsewhere.

Here are some key action steps to follow for implementation:

Housekeeping – follower clean up, including cross-referencing to email database using a tool such as FollowerWonk or SocialBro
Following key influencers and thanking new followers personally (and doing this regularly)
Tweeting at least x2 times a day (using a tool like Buffer to help schedule updates)
RT’ing useful / relevant stuff (kudos by association)
Sharing every blog post created twice a week (‘in case you missed it’)
Important to highlight personal customer service i.e. signing off tweets, not just taking all issues offline/other channels
Handling negative exceptions visibly to demonstrate the you take issues seriously but taking offline when appropriate
Being innovative with content formats e.g. testing Q&As with your product experts on specific topics
Twitter cards will be trialled around product launches or specific campaign pushes.

Build a content plan

Last but certainly not least, you need to set aside an appropriate amount of time to dedicate to developing a strong content plan that will deliver engaging material. The content needs to align with your overall messaging and be appropriate for the channels you’re using. This is more than just product information – think about how you can deliver real value to your audience. Don’t just stick to one type of media – a mix of videos, guides, infographics and other styles will engage your potential customers more effectively. Also, don’t think of content as something you post once. You need to have an ongoing presence on social media, and that includes delivering fresh content on a regular basis.

Most importantly, BE SOCIAL!

Archives: Social Media