Spread The Word With Twitter

With time being such a premium for everyone these days, even the instant nature of social media needs to be prioritized among one’s daily to-do list. Social networking continues to grow as a preferred communication method. Getting the most out of it requires some thought. Dawn McKinstry, outreach coordinator for the UF/IFAS Center For Public Issues Education, led a video presentation at the 2012 All Florida Ag Show on how growers can use social media to promote their farm. As part of the discussion, she stressed the importance of encompassing the “4 Cs” to make your social media efforts effective.

1. Content:

“Add to the online conversation with info about your product, business, or industry that is relevant and valuable to your customers,” McKinstry said. “That way, you connect with them and get into their social media network.”

Start Me Up

When signing up for Twitter, it pays to keep your username professional, relatively short, and unique. “It should be descriptive of yourself and your business,” says Dawn McKinstry, UF/IFAS Center For Public Issues Education. “The reason why you should keep it short is that when people re-tweet you (aka-pass along your tweet to their own followers), which is what you want, it will be included in the 140-character count. Of course, don’t keep it too short where it doesn’t make sense.”
Once registered, search for others in your related field or use keywords of interest to find and follow. When ready, tweet often — but not too much as to become annoying.

2. Conversation:

Use the content you are posting to stimulate conversations. “Allow the individuals within your business who are going to be running your Twitter feed and Facebook page to use their personal voice and tone to convey your message,” she said. “This will give them authenticity, which is key for social engagement. They want to know there is a person behind that account and not just a computer generating these messages.”

3. Community:

You are going to develop a following of people that matters to you and your business, McKinstry said. “Once you build that community of followers, you are going to feed that network with relevant content that stimulates meaningful conversation.”
This will hopefully lead to ...

4. Conversion:

Convert followers to customers. “You do this by engaging them socially online over a period of time,” McKinstry concluded. “Keep in mind, some will become clients and customers, others will become evangelists who help expand your network.”

What Are You Doing?

As McKinstry pointed out, keeping the “social” aspect in social networking is key to connecting with and keeping your audience. While this sounds logical, it can be a bit more tricky to stick to given certain parameters. For example, Twitter (Twitter.com) gives users 140 characters to let followers know what’s happening (at that moment) with the people and organizations they care about. The microblog is easy to check and update, but saying what you want about what’s in season, the latest promotion, new products, etc. in a compressed area is not easy. Characters include spaces, periods, commas, etc. The allotted 140 characters can and will go fast, especially when you add links to other multimedia content; though programming within Twitter and other Twitter-related delivery services like HootSuite and TweetDeck automatically shorten web addresses.

Short and tweet: Create a following 140 characters at a time.