Twitter introduce a mute button – so what?

How often should we tweet?

We get asked this all the time. There isn’t really a definitive answer, though the closest to an answer we can find is:-

 

However, for Twitter at least, that recently changed quite significantly.

You see finally, Twitter have added a mute button. This enables your followers to shut you off with a single click. So from now on, the answer changes to,

For a long time, the social networks were building their presences. This meant that they needed businesses and brands to use them to engage the users – who coincidentally, are also our customers.

However, once they became established this relationship changed dramatically. You see we have gone from building their social networks, to funding them.

Users don’t pay to access Twitter, Facebook and others.

We do! 

The Social Network Paradox

The problem is that in the early days, social networkers like you and me, only had a few friends, family and businesses to listen to and engage with.

Now we have hundreds or even thousands of people and businesses trying to get our attention.

That means someone is going to miss out. That someone is probably your business. Let’s face it in a battle between KFC and our family, KFC would lose.

Well OK, maybe it would come a close second…

If Facebook were to show your business’ little ‘advertorials’ in place of a person’s best friend’s new baby pictures, that person would stop using Facebook. Simple.

Facebook would therefore be self destructing by showing your posts. Unless of course, they are REALLY engaging!

So how do you get your updates to be REALLY engaging?

That is the secret of doing social media well. Many businesses and even social media ‘agencies’ we meet, seem to think that they have found a ‘free’ unlimited marketing channel. On that basis, they hammer Facebook and Twitter with every piece of information they can think of. But guess what.

Yep – they are completely destroying your engagement and your customer relationships forever.

A quick question.

If we gave you an email list of your best most loyal customers – those who are your most frequent high spenders, would you email them 10 times a day to tell them everything you are up to?

Erm, no.

Because if you did, they would simply opt out.

The Twitter mute button, the Facebook Hide button – they are exactly the same – an opt out from hearing your updates.

So why on earth would you do that on Twitter and Facebook?

We see it all the time. Restaurants and hotels that have spent years building up a good following and then a ‘social media expert’ permanently obliterates it, by over-communicating because they have no idea what they are doing.

By the way, this is fantastic news for Facebook, as you made their job easier. In order to engage with them in the future, you will now have to pay Facebook for the privilege by ‘boosting’ your posts.

Here’s an example.

One of our clients has 301 likes on their Business Facebook page. Sounds pretty low huh?

We posted an offer on the page this week. It got 32 likes, 3 shares and several bookings.

The other extreme

A restaurant we spoke to this week, told us that their Facebook page is ‘amazing’ because the have 4,500 likes and have spent 5 years carefully building it up.

Their last 5 posts have generated less than 20 likes between them. No bookings.

Using the same ratio as our client, they should have 480 likes and 45 shares on those posts as well as dozens of bookings. This means that their Facebook presence has a serious permanent engagement problem.

Why?

We haven’t audited the page completely, but last week they did 23 posts.

We did 3 for our client.

But those three posts were properly timed, correctly constructed and designed to be engaging, with a fully formed customer journey leading to the website and additional content. Funnily enough though we don’t think that 3 is the magic number either. We constantly analyse the engagement to decide when we are ready for another post.

Next week, we might do 5 or 1, depending on what is happening.

How can we do it for you?

We haven’t been training companies in social media for 7 years for nothing. Our clients during that time have included British Red Cross, HSBC, Hiscox Insurance, Holiday Inn and lots of others.

We built our marketing support packages because people asked us to, not because we wanted to get rich ripping people off.

After 20 years in the marketing industry, working with thousands of businesses, sometimes, reputation and experience counts for more than just an idea and a computer.

Do yourself a favour and give us a call on 01772 978 101 before you permanently destroy your audience. Once you have blown it, it can’t be reversed.