Should you have a Twitter strategy?
Of course you should. If you are tweeting for business, you have to have a strategy complete with goals and objectives and saddled with metrics that will tell you if you’re doing well. But there is something about having a structured strategy that doesn’t seem to fit with the personal and interactive nature of Twitter.
The people/companies I like to follow on Twitter sound like people. They don’t sound like ‘the voice of the company’ or like they’re trying to pitch something. There is nice mix of personal tweets so you can get a feel for what they are about and professional info that keeps you current in your field or area of interest.
And it’s clear that traditional metrics don’t apply here. Twitter metrics should sound something like ROE (return on engagement), #hashadoption, twitter handle mentions, replies, retweets, T2C conversion(tweeter to customer). If you measure followers you’re not getting it. Who cares how many followers you have if they’re not interacting with you. Rest assured, no matter how many followers you have, if you’re not interacting with them, they’re not reading your 140 characters.
Back to the personal and interactive nature of Twitter: You’re not going to know exactly how people will respond to you until you’re in the thick of it. So you have to be flexible and ready to adapt. Embracing the unknown needs to be worked into your strategy and into your metrics. The strategy will get you started, the metrics will guide your activity and your followers will tell if you it’s all working.
Kristy
