A survey showed the top 30 brands (excluding celebrity and media) on Twitter, based on their number of followers. Not surprisingly the majority of them are retail brands or online shopping sites, but there are also a few information sites like Visit Britain and Heathrow Airport.
The study looked at what makes these brands so successful using social media so we thought it was a good opportunity to look at why and what makes Twitter so useful for interacting, as lot of people are still unsure of how to use it, or what it's actually for. Twitter is a way of connecting with like-minded people who might share interests or your opinions. Although it can be used for traffic to your site or blog it’s about so much more than that.
Getting started
This is easy…you set up your account, write a bio of yourself, include your web address, upload a picture and start choosing people to follow. Hopefully the people you follow will choose to follow you back. Otherwise people will find you either by searching on topics you might be talking about, or because you follow someone they also follow.
How to grow your followers:
• Don’t just post about yourself – listen to what others are saying. Help out with problems, issues and questions. Post interesting, useful and relevant tweets to your followers. Don’t forget that in turn, you can use topics and information to create your own blogs – which you then tweet about.
• You can make a comment and include a link – shorten your link to maximize your characters
• Mention or reply to someone using @[twitterhandle]– this allows you to publicise yourself to their followers
• Re-tweet - RTsomething that is posted which you think needs re-posting – to add your response you can quote a tweet
• DM -Speak privately to someone - but they must be following you.
One thing that people often get wrong is that it’s not just about speaking/listening but also interaction (take note Top Shop no 1 on the list). So make like the big brands and think about the following:
1. Personalise your account – big brands should tweet from the owners
- Christopher Bailey from Burberry (no 2) takes time to tweet which adds a personal touch
2. Interact and respond to what people are saying about or within your brand/industry sector
- As @mattalder, social media guru, said in a tweet recently “Getting lots of new followers from the UK recruitment industry. Practically none are talking though, just tweeting links..... #FAIL”
3. Reply to followers queries
- O2 (no 5) and Vodafone (no 10) are increasingly using Twitter to respond to customer queries – thus publicizing their service to the world – not only letting everyone know not only what problems customers have, but how they are helping to resolve them
4. Share what followers are doing (retweet)
- Innocent drinks (no 6) are posting responses to their followers about the activity going on for their 'big knit' event
5. Publicise competitions and give-aways – encourage traffic to the site
- British Airways (no 7) offered followers the chance to win tickets on the newest 757
6. Make tweets personal, let people see there is a real person tweeting, not just an automated system
- No-one will want to interact unless they think they are talking to someone
So there you have it…some quick tips to get started with Twitter. Give it a go, start tweeting and then spread your social media wings and fly! We’ve done it (@HandleRecruit) and are really seeing the benefits.