The Main Artery

With Twitter approaching 200 million users, it may be time to re-think your strategy.

I know a lot of savvy marketers who will admit they’re still a little insecure about their Twitter efforts.  I recently came across a post that offers some great tips to avoid common mistakes.

1. Put a Human Face on Your Tweets – Since social media is about creating human interaction, it’s critical to make sure your audience understands your tweets are coming from a human, not just a health-care organization.  Some experts suggest putting pictures of the people who are tweeting for you on your profile background.  You could also have employees use initials at the end of each tweet.  Alegent Health in Omaha employs this strategy on its Facebook page, as the person who posted signs their name.
2. Monitor Your Following Versus Followers Ratio – Your Twitter Following versus Followers ratio is an important indication of your willingness to be social. If you really want to build up a relevant following, you have to follow people back.   Social media has leveled the playing field between businesses and consumers.  Following people back acknowledges their importance to you and increases the chance that they will become engaged brand advocates.
3. Tweet Strategically – Do you have a Twitter content strategy?  Think about it: Twitter isn’t about you, it’s about them.  What information and communication do they want to hear?  Start tweeting it!
4. Leverage Twitter Lists – One easy way to communicate with the right people is to  create a Twitter List of the people you want to engage with.  You are allowed to create 20 lists, each with 500 members.   Once they are on your list, you have the additional benefit of being able to easily monitor their conversations and look for more chances to engage with them.
5. Create an Industry Chat – Twitter chats, give you the ability to network with real people, many of whom are joining the conversation to learn about any given topic.  Twitter chat can be an extension of your content strategy.  It’s a great way to attain thought leadership, grow your following, engage with social media users, and spread the word about your offerings.  Cardiovascular marketing is a topic that is perfect for a twitter chat because there are so many aspects to discuss.

Please feel free share additional Twitter strategies that are working for you.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 8th, 2011 at 10:00 am and is filed under Engagement, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.