The Twitter Conversation

Twitter is an awesome tool, especially for brands. It’s a communication channel that offers so much and not enough users take full advantage of the channel’s potential.

Twitter isn’t like other marketing channels where you put your message out there and then let go. Twitter is a conversation. It seems like a general concept in marketing courses that it is cheaper to maintain existing relationships than to build new ones. That means to keep your clients involved.

What I’ve noticed on Twitter is that many of us clients try to have that conversation on Twitter with our brand but we’re talking to ourselves. For example, I tweeted about my awesome cruise vacation and I tweeted @ the cruise line (don’t worry, I was not aboard Carnival’s Splendor!). I got nothing in response. I actually tweeted @ them several times and not a single “enjoy your vacation” response was made. Wow!

That was the cruise industry. I decided to try the wedding industry. I tweeted @ my wedding dress designer about how awesome my dress is. Nothing. So I tried something a little less global, I tweeted @ my university. And again, I got nothing.

There are many questions that can be asked from this experience and some insights that I simply want to share. First, the cruise and wedding industries rely heavily on referrals. Therefore I say to them: have the conversation! Talk to your cruisers, wish them happy travels. Talk to your brides, if they don’t feel connected they won’t recommend you to their friends. Follow Friday is a cool concept, but don’t make that the only time you tweet @ someone else.

So my questions are:

To facilitate the conversations, am I as the consumer not saying the right things to my chosen brands?

If it’s cheaper to keep a relationship with me, someone who has already spent money on the brand, why not join the conversation?

Or do they just need their dedicated “tweeter” to take some lessons in Twitter as a conversation channel?

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