There are professionals, entrepreneurs, businesses and organizations that seem to feel that social media equates to marketing.
Twitter folk are those who are clearly connected to the world; they are a slight cut above your average audience because they at least understand how the Internet and social media work. They can see a marketing tweet a mile off and, quite frankly, none of us like it – unless you are actually offering free tickets, then you can tweet all you like.
Twitter is part of social media… businesses and organizations need to realize what these two words mean. Social is the interaction of individuals or groups in a social manner, ie, talking, engagement and communication. Media is communication through text, image, video, devices and the Internet. To put it simply, Twitter is a communication tool used to create dialogues. A dialogue or an engagement with your audience and, most importantly, with your potential future audience.
A dialogue goes two ways. It doesn’t involve a single wavelength of broadcasting which doesn’t get a response. Twitter is about the engagement, the communication and the interaction. So why do certain businesses and organizations seem to be on a mission to alienate their audience by getting them to plug in to a constant stream of marketing material?
Twitter is communication. It’s about breaking down barriers, it’s about the immediate and it’s about the informal look at an organization. If those of us working in the arts honestly can’t produce anything other than marketing material to promote our work, then they shouldn’t be using Twitter.
Stop treating your followers as potential clients and customers, and start seeing them for who they are: passionate lovers of conversation and interaction. Start offering them “exciting insights” into your business or organization. Let’s do away with marketing, let’s move beyond building stronger relationships, let’s think strategically and do what we do best: generate dialogue – and let’s do it on Twitter.