The Cardinal Rules of Tweeting and Posting
Social media is a very potent force in the world today. It can launch a businesses or a career, determine the success of volunteer efforts, keep open lines of communication across the globe and allow people to be in contact with anybody regardless of distance or status in life. However, major or consistent blunders can also be equally disastrous.
Here are two cardinal rules for tweeting, posting, pinning and so forth to get your tweets noticed and foster customer interaction.
1. Speak the same language as your audience.
If you get that right, you won’t face too many problems in conversing with customers and attracting the attention of other people. It will be very easy for you to create a relaxed atmosphere where people won’t be hesitant to post or tweet on your wall.
Learning how to speak the same language as your audience is sometimes difficult for some people. Here are some useful pointers regarding this matter:
- Don’t overuse technical jargon.
- Learn the terms that are frequently used by audiences who are actively participating in your wall, especially the acronyms.
- It doesn’t hurt to use the terms invented by your audiences as well. Followers and fans are actually thrilled whenever a brand or high-profile individual they’re following starts using a term they coined (and acknowledged the audience’s genius for it too).
- Read conversations between your audiences and loyal followers.
- Be game in exchanging light banter with your audience. This is an excellent exercise in acclimating to the manner of speech of the crowd following your social media posts.
- Search for trending hashtags that you can use for your posts in Twitter. You can select hashtags related to your niche or anything else that are interesting to talk about. Don’t stuff each tweet with hashtags though!
- Ask questions.
- Talk about topics your audiences will like and can relate to.
2. Share, don’t just tell.
Sharing is very different from telling. Sharing an idea or a thought to other people invites them to also share their opinions, experiences, or anything they have to say about the topic. Telling on the other hand is like flashing a traffic sign.
You don’t argue with it, you simply have to take it and follow it. For example, instead of simply saying salads are good for your health, share your preference for salads with garlic-flavored dressing because you love how it tastes with fresh cabbage leaves.
If you want to keep your walls in Twitter and Facebook alive, you should encourage people to reply to what you’re saying and share their own thoughts so that the conversations will keep going.
Here is an interesting article by Stanford Smith which discusses the difference between sharing and telling, and how “telling” in social media will not get you comments from other people.
All other SOP for social media posting basically revolves around these two cardinal rules. If you can master them when posting for social media, you will have a very successful social media campaign.
