Don’t Drink and Tweet: The Twitter Don’ts

There’s a tremendous amount of information out there now about how to tweet. Most people have a good understanding of the Twitter basics: connect, engage and offer value to build your brand and your followers. However, I’m amazed at how many people continue to make mistakes on Twitter that cost them followers, friends and potential clients. Because of the ease and speed of the medium, it’s just as easy to fall out of favor as it is to engage and entertain. I can assure you that you don’t want the reputation of a pest, a bore, or even worse, a spammer.

Keeping this in mind, here are six “Twitter Don’ts” to keep you on track:

#1 Don’t Overpromote – You will lose friends and followers quickly if all you do is talk about your products or services. Don’t only offer links to your own website and blog. The key here is balance. It’s okay to promote yourself or your products, but if it’s all you do, it will likely irritate a lot of people.

#2 Don’t Repeat The Same Message – There are quite a few people out there who think if they repeat the same promotional message a gazillion times that it will help drive sales. The only thing it will get you is unfollowed. If you have an important message or offer to put out there, tweet once early in the day and again later in the day to reach friends and followers in all time zones. Re-craft your tweet to send out again on a different day. Anything more is just considered spam.

#3 Don’t Abuse Hashtags – Hashtags can be extremely useful, particularly when referencing a fresh, hot topic. But they are frequently abused by spammers, marketers and applications. Choose which ones you do use wisely and keep it to a minimum. There’s even a fairly popular #twitter hashtag now. For goodness sake people, we’re ON Twitter! Common sense and good judgment are the order of the day here.

#4 Don’t Tweet In Rapid-Fire Succession – You know the guy who always sends out a couple dozen tweets all at once? Ugh. Some people tweet endlessly about things that you may not find interesting at all. Or they use an application that allows them to store and schedule tweets and send out 20 at one time. Mostly, this is just downright annoying and clogs up cyberspace. It’s fine to tweet often, especially if you have interesting things to say, but please don’t hit us over the head with everything at once.

#5 Don’t Beg For Retweets – Asking “Please RT” just makes you look desperate. If your content is interesting and you are consistently sending out something of value, your followers will retweet you over and over again.

#6 Don’t Drink And Tweet – You are what you tweet, so think twice before tweeting under the influence. Once you hit “update” it’s out there forever. Better to drunk dial your ex than to put something rude, offensive or God forbid, stupid, out there for all to see for eternity.

©Liz Dennery Sanders 2009

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The Twitter Do’s: Build A Powerful Personal Brand One Tweet At A Time

 

There are three important things to remember when engaging other people on Twitter. First, they want to be a part of the group and feel popular. Second, they want to have a good time and be entertained, and third, they want to be acknowledged and recognized. If your “tweets” meet the needs of your target audience, then you’ll be well on your way to growing your followers naturally and building a powerful personal brand online.

Keeping this in mind, here are six “do’s” for best using Twitter to build your brand:

Twitter Do #1: Be Interesting – It’s fine to tweet about what you’re doing or what you had for lunch, as long as you do it in a way that’s entertaining to your followers. Twitter is considered micro-blogging (you have 140 characters to get your point across), so if all you do is give a play-by-play of your daily mundane activities, you will lose followers fast. However, if you find a way to incorporate a little humor, a little of the unusual or something off-the-beaten-track, you’re much more likely to engage and amuse. If someone reading your tweet thinks, “wow, I know what she means!” or gets a good chuckle out of it, you will never be lacking followerers. Not every post has to be funny or clever, but when you are sharing your insights and happenings, try to make it interesting.

Twitter Do #2: Be Informative – Not every tweet has to answer the question, “What are you doing right now?” As a participant in the Twitter community, you have daily opportunities to give something back. Post links to helpful articles or tweet bits of advice and information. Including educational tweets as a part of your repertoire is an effective way to add value and variety. You’ll know if you’re on the mark because you’ll get positive feedback in the forms of replies, re-tweets (RT) and direct messages.

Twitter Do #3: Be Helpful and Interactive – If someone posts a question, reply with a thoughtful response. Send out links to articles that would be helpful to your target audience. And re-tweet (RT) relevant information, tips, ideas and insights. Re-tweet others when they post tweets you like and want to share with your audience. The more you help others, the more they will want to help you, so re-tweet generously. Twitter is a conversation, not a monologue, so the more you engage and participate, the more successful your relationships will be.

Twitter Do #4: Promote With Care – It’s fine, and even advisable, to promote your own work, just as long as it’s not all you’re doing. Take the time to introduce links to your blog posts in a thoughtful and interesting way. Mention something that you’re working on and even ask for a bit of advice.

Twitter Do #5: Variety is the Spice of Life – If all you do is promote yourself, people will tire of you and you will quickly lose followers. If all you do is update your mundane daily happenings, people will get bored and disinterested. No one is that important or that interesting. Balance and variety are key. Tweet with a healthy mix of personal, business, informative, quirky (or funny, if you have the gift) and helpful.

Twitter Do #6: Be On Brand – Twitter allows you to build relationships relatively quickly. Use this opportunity to share information about your area of expertise – give away valuable tips and ideas that your target audience might be able to use immediately. Constantly remind yourself of your brand attributes and express them with your tweets. For example, if one of your brand attributes is to inspire, then perhaps you will want to tweet an inspiring quote every day. Or you can send out links to inspiring stories. If you Twitter often enough in a targeted way, your followers will start associating you with a particular attribute or area of expertise.

The winning strategies for building your brand on Twitter are to consistently provide value and engage your target audience in an interesting way. If you are a small business owner and you’re not tweeting, you’re missing out on a worldwide virtual networking event that’s at your fingertips 24/7. It gives you the opportunity to build your brand, stay informed, drive traffic to your website and attract new clients 140 characters at a time.

©Liz Dennery Sanders 2009

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Discover Your Marketing Mix

 

While every personal brand is unique, they all have one important thing in common: they communicate confidently with their target market. To position yourself as a thought leader with a strong brand, you must be clear about who you are and who you are not, and consistently communicate your message to those who need it most.

Richard Branson is someone with a clear, consistent brand message. He is not your typical stuffy CEO in a blue suit, white shirt and patent leather shoes. Instead, he’s a risk-taker who sold airline tickets for Virgin before he even had a plane and signed the British punk-rock group the Sex Pistols on his record label when no one else would consider them. Outside of the professional arena, Branson stayed true to his daredevil ways and circumnavigated the world in a hot air balloon.

Once you know yourself, your unique offer of value and have a clear understanding of the needs of your target market, you can identify the right combination of communications tools to increase your visibility and credibility – making you the go-to person for your area of expertise. Your marketing plan needs to include a lot more than traditional tools such as your business card and brochure website. You need to consistently communicate your thought leadership by expressing your point of view and demonstrating your expertise through a customized marketing mix.

Everyone’s marketing mix will be different depending on their goals and the needs of their target market. Here are just a few areas to consider:

1 Speaking Engagements – Public speaking is an excellent way to communicate your brand message to multiple members of your target market. The words you choose, your facial expressions, the tone of your voice and the way you dress all give you the opportunity to communicate your passion, expertise and personality.

2 Article Marketing – In this new world of marketing we can now harness the power of the Internet to position ourselves as authorities in our industries. Writing articles and white papers that express your opinions and expertise allows you to get your brand out there in a big way. Getting published on multiple article submission sites (such as ezinearticles.com and e-how.com) will improve your search engine rankings and you’ll be more in control of the content that is actually getting picked up. Regularly submitting content to the right article sites will consistently drive members of your target audience to your website or blog.

3 Develop a Newsletter (or Ezine) – One of the most important factors in creating a powerful personal brand is engaging your target market and offering information of value. One of the best ways to do this is to write a newsletter. Pick the main theme for your brand (mine is “building a powerful personal brand with style”) and then create an “opt-in” box on your website that expresses your brand message through your newsletter so that people can sign up for it. You will need to use a contact management program such as Constant Contact or 1 Shopping Cart to manage your database and broadcasts. Ask your clients on a regular basis what they are struggling with or what are their greatest challenges; you will never be at a loss for content ideas.

4 Join the Blogosphere – Blogs (web logs) are an excellent platform from which you can promote your personal brand online and build both visibility and credibility. By creating an informative, engaging blog that is related to your area of expertise, you position yourself as a thought leader and stand out in a crowded marketplace – especially when used with these other components of a powerful marketing mix. You can also encourage an interactive community by inviting comments from visitors – all strong brands solicit feedback and conversations from their target market. Blogging will also improve your search engine rankings, as the engines love new content. In other words, the more frequently you post, the higher your search engine rankings will be.

5 Get Social – Whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ryze or a combination of many social media sites, this is one of the easiest (and cheapest) ways to get out there in a big way. The point is not to overtly sell your product or service, but to connect, engage and converse. Offer tips, ideas and links that you think people will find helpful. Social media is not the forum for self-promotion; it’s about sharing information – be it funny, enlightening, newsworthy, helpful or just plain random. You can stay on-brand and still engage and be of value to people.

To establish yourself as a thought leader and build a solid brand reputation, you must be clear and consistent. You can’t be all things to all people. It’s imperative to build you personal brand around who you are, what you stand for and what makes you relevant to those people who need to know about you most. Creating a customized marketing mix will allow you to communicate your brand message consistently, establish yourself as an authority in your industry and ultimately attract more clients – online and off.

©Liz Dennery Sanders 2009

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