Buddhist Marketer

Five Common Twitter Mistakes That Companies Make

Seems everyone is tweeting these days, and as with most things that are enjoyed by the middle of the standard normal distribution, there are a lot of companies whose twitter and Facebook presences are godawful.

Here are the five most common errors I’ve seen that companies are making with respect to Facebook and twitter.  Note that they are not discrete:

1. They tweet too often. Before coming up with a twitter execution plan, a brand needs to ask itself, “How often do my followers expect to hear from me?”  Just as pounding your email list too frequently will drive unsubscribes, so too will too-frequent tweets.  There’s no reason, for example, for any one brand to appear on my twitter front page more than twice, especially since I’m following 67 people.  Tweeting too often has additional negative implications; I unsubscribed from dictionary.com’s “Word of the day” email list because I started following them on twitter [link].  But they tweet 250% more often than once a day.  So I stopped following them.  And now, because of a poorly-executed twitter presence, dictionary.com has no relationship with me whatsoever anymore.  FAIL.
2. They update their Facebook status message too often. Same problem as with twitter.  I have 734 friends on Facebook.  There’s no reason that any one brand should appear more than once on my front page feed.  Goodbye, Newsweek.  And sorry, but, once you finally do find and hire a community manager for your Facebook and twitter presences, it’ll be too late; I’m never going to follow you ever again.  You’ve lost my trust.  FAIL.
3. They hire a 22 year old to be their community manager. Bad idea jeans.  22 year olds have a very different “This is an acceptable communication frequency” baseline vs. 32 year olds.  Who’s your company’s most valuable segment?  How often do they want to receive status updates?  If you have a rock solid social media strategy and operational execution plan, then sure, you can hire a social media analyst to execute for you.  But don’t go thinking that just because some Strattera’d out kid blogs, tweets, flickrs, and YouTubes 24/7/365 that they’re qualified to be a community manager.  At the core of effective social media is intellligent marketing, and just because someone has memorized their A B Cs does not mean they’ve got what it takes to craft beautiful prose. Tactical fluency is the former; comprehensive and intelligent social media is the latter.
4. They don’t ground their efforts into a comprehensive strategic marketing plan. If you are nodding your head right now, then I’m preaching to the choir.  If you have no idea what I’m talking about, then it’s going to be difficult for me to convince you that I’m right.  So I’m not going to try.  But to the head-nodders, as you know, illuminating MARKETING FAIL to the inexpert is akin to getting someone who is color blind to see that their socks don’t match.  (By the way; I like your shirt!)
5. Their status updates are off-brand. Sorry, but, you’ve got to be mindful about the characters you plop into a status update box.  And with notta lotta characters, each one becomes that much more important when it comes to brand stewardship.  So hire a top notch public relations or strategic communications guru and get them to help you figure out your content strategy and guidelines for your status updates.  Because, sorry Dictionary.com and Newsweek, but your status updates make you sound like a 22 year old moron.  UNSUBSCRIBE.

If you’re interested in hiring CATEGORY:OTHER to help you architect and/or execute your social media strategy, call me at (212) 360 2363.  Otherwise, may I recommend any one of the following:

• Brooklyn-based Vital Communications ghostwrites blogs for C-levels and brands
• Denver’s Brevard Neely provides exceptional strategic copywriting solutions
• Chicago’s Natiiv crafts social media strategies for bands and artists

And no, you can’t follow me on twitter unless we met in person and are friends (as opposed to colleagues) … because I tweet too often and generally the content is inconsistent with my “thinking/writing/marketing/speaking” brand.  Plus, you can’t delete out your “on second thought” tweets, and when you’re tweeting from a cell phone …

Please don’t be the brand with the amateur-hour tweets.  Get professional help!  You can do it!  Go team!