Twitter: Serving a Purpose or Popularity Contest?
When I began to aggressively pursue digital marketing strategies, I decided to enter the world of Twitter. Marketing (especially digital marketing) is quite similar to IT in the way that it's ever-changing. You are only as good as the latest strategy. If you were a marketing guru on Myspace but haven't a clue about Facebook then dude.. you're behind the times. Myspace marketing is quite niche whereas Facebook is more mainstream. Linkedin has also come leaps and bounds when it comes to the implementation of market-friendly strategies. Then, there's twitter:
Twitter is a social media platform that allows you to type short messages in 140 or so characters or less. Since we now live in Generation teXt, instant gratification is a prerequisite for interaction in just about any form. So getting to the bottom of a message in 140 characters is appealing to many. Twitter also allows photos and clickable links and/or "cards" so that you can encourage others to click your content which will drive traffic right to where you want them to ultimately go.
Now that we have that covered, let's get to the meet of this post (instant gratification, remember?).
On Twitter there seem to be two things that people pay attention to: followers, and content. Whenever someone "follows" you, your inner narcissist does a shimmy. It's like Twitter Validation. Someone wants to "follow" you. Social media platforms totally know what they are doing with these terminologies. There is a psychology behind it. When someone "follows" you, you get to be the leader. The more followers you have, the more you feel like a leader. But maintaining followers isn't easy. You either have to be a celebrity, a content guru, or a mutual follower. Let me explain the last quality, mutual follower. Whenever someone follows you, it's twitter etiquette to follow them in return. If you don't, it's highly probable that that person will stop following you. So in order to be a leader, ironically you must follow.
If you have a significant number of followers there are some that will follow you without expecting to be followed because you are clearly cooler than they are and they know they aren't worthy of your reciprocated follow. Sounds dumb? It is. This is social media. It's no different on Facebook where people want to be YOUR friend and if you say something they get to "like" it. Who doesn't want to have plenty of friends and be liked by many? Most people do.
Whenever I create a marketing campaign on Twitter or Facebook I need to do a few things:
When I began to aggressively pursue digital marketing strategies, I decided to enter the world of Twitter. Marketing (especially digital marketing) is quite similar to IT in the way that it's ever-changing. You are only as good as the latest strategy. If you were a marketing guru on Myspace but haven't a clue about Facebook then dude.. you're behind the times. Myspace marketing is quite niche whereas Facebook is more mainstream. Linkedin has also come leaps and bounds when it comes to the implementation of market-friendly strategies. Then, there's twitter:
Twitter is a social media platform that allows you to type short messages in 140 or so characters or less. Since we now live in Generation teXt, instant gratification is a prerequisite for interaction in just about any form. So getting to the bottom of a message in 140 characters is appealing to many. Twitter also allows photos and clickable links and/or "cards" so that you can encourage others to click your content which will drive traffic right to where you want them to ultimately go.
Now that we have that covered, let's get to the meet of this post (instant gratification, remember?).
On Twitter there seem to be two things that people pay attention to: followers, and content. Whenever someone "follows" you, your inner narcissist does a shimmy. It's like Twitter Validation. Someone wants to "follow" you. Social media platforms totally know what they are doing with these terminologies. There is a psychology behind it. When someone "follows" you, you get to be the leader. The more followers you have, the more you feel like a leader. But maintaining followers isn't easy. You either have to be a celebrity, a content guru, or a mutual follower. Let me explain the last quality, mutual follower. Whenever someone follows you, it's twitter etiquette to follow them in return. If you don't, it's highly probable that that person will stop following you. So in order to be a leader, ironically you must follow.
If you have a significant number of followers there are some that will follow you without expecting to be followed because you are clearly cooler than they are and they know they aren't worthy of your reciprocated follow. Sounds dumb? It is. This is social media. It's no different on Facebook where people want to be YOUR friend and if you say something they get to "like" it. Who doesn't want to have plenty of friends and be liked by many? Most people do.
Whenever I create a marketing campaign on Twitter or Facebook I need to do a few things:
- Post like a lunatic: Social Media is made up of narcissists, businesses, and your average Joe. Because it's free for so many people (with the exception of the businesses who are aggressively marketing), it's inundated with all types of information in the form of "posts". So in order to gain visibility, you have to post frequently.
- Find content people give a crap about: I can't break this down much further. If you can't figure out what your people want to read, you won't keep their attention...that's if you ever manage to get it.
- Follow Back: When it comes to Twitter, thou shalt follow. If you are a small fry, you have to play the game and follow people that follow you. I even retweet content that I like and give a shout out to followers now and again. Sometimes a person won't acknowledge your shout out on a personal level but just retweet it to show people "hey, people like me." It's all very Junior High, but this is the world today.
I sometimes become frustrated with the whole damned thing because I feel like I am playing a numbers game with the wrong thing. Tracking how many followers I have and have lost versus tracking how many clicks the tweet got is absurd. I still track how many retweets, faves, and impressions I get on my Twitter posts, but amidst that very important info, I have to track who follows me because it helps my other metrics along.
At the end of the day,despite the belief that we are all having fun most times social media is no more than a numbers game that everyone is playing but no one wants to admit. The more followers, the more friends, the likes, the more favorites. the more effective. The truth is a relentless b*tch, isn't it? Maybe I should follow her.
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