Want more Twitter followers for your business? Twitter can be a great way to market to and engage customers—but the key word is “engage.” Ten engaged followers are much better than 100 passive auto-followers or, heaven forbid, 10,000 paid followers.
Here are six ways to build and maintain an engaged Twitter audience for your business:
Provide. We can’t all be witty or insightful or clever. But we can all offer something: discounts, samples, promotions, advice... offer something of value. Followers will appreciate the gesture, and if what you offer really is worthwhile, they’ll spread the word for you.
Twitter offers are also a free way to sense-check customer interests and do a little market research; if you offer a promotion and no one is interested, you learn more about your market—without spending money on conventional advertising. Use special offers and promotions to find out what customers value. When you hit on the right mix, your current followers will retweet to their friends... and your following will grow organically.
Talk about others. A great way to make a connection is to simply respond to something another person or business tweeted and mention them. Most people can’t resist checking out what other people say about them, so slip in something like @[insert Twitter name here] to make sure they notice. (Be honest: Don’t you spend way more time checking out who talks about you than you do checking out your Twitter steam?)
But don’t tweet or retweet unless you also feel your audience—and potential customers—will benefit from what you send. Always think value first, potential connection second.
Play in your sandbox. It’s tempting to tweet about a broad range of topics. Don’t. Stick to your area of focus. For example, I’m an avid MotoGP racing fan, so I follow @MotoGP. I don’t want tweets about bike manufacturers or motorcycle safety or epic rides; I can get that elsewhere. Too many off-topic tweets and I’ll unfollow.
The same is true for you. Choose a niche and stay there. If you’re a green space architect, be that guy. You will slowly build an engaged following when people know they can get lots of useful information—and zero fluff—about your niche.
Any followers not interested in your niche are of little to no value anyway.
Forget the schedule. Many people recommend following a tweet schedule to create a sense of consistency. That’s fine, but only if every tweet is valuable to your audience. Never tweet just because your schedule says you should.
Tools like Buffer let you schedule tweets. That’s great if you want to be sure to tweet at a specific time, like to announce a contest or a limited-time offer. Scheduling also lets you tweet when your followers are more likely to notice. So by all means schedule individual tweets, but never become a slave to an arbitrary tweeting schedule.
Only tweet when you have something valuable to provide or say.
Be quick... Commenting on breaking news is smart, since timely relevance attracts interest. But there’s a definite timeliness window; fall outside it and you always lose. Either tweet breaking news about your niche immediately, or wait a few weeks or months and let hindsight and reflection add flavor to your tweet. If you can’t be (relatively) first, let it go. Never send out stale tweets.
And be responsive. An incoming tweet is like an email; whoever sent it expects a response—a relatively quick response. Make it a goal to answer tweets within one to two hours max. Remember, engage is a verb—if you’re lucky enough to have someone initiate the process don’t spoil it by waiting too long to respond.
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Fix Your LinkedIn Profile: 6 Steps6 Ways to Write a Bad BlogBest Way to Become an Expert Laurie Ruettimann rose to the top of the HR game, holding positions with Fortune 500 companies (including Pfizer). But a few years ago, she just couldn't take it anymore.
In the past decade, layoffs have become routine, which she says even the most heartless, soul-less person can only stomach for so long. So in 2007, she left the corporate world to blog about HR and careers, spurting out all the information she'd picked up over more than a decade of experience.
Now, four years later, she's recognized as one of the web's top HR bloggers for her work at The Cynical Girl, where she espouses on office etiquette and hiring strategies, with a hefty dose of humor.
We caught up with Ruettimann to find out how she thinks companies need to improve. Here's what she shared with us:
What's your background? How did you get into HR and hiring?
I was planning on graduating [college] with a tremendous amount of student debt, and so I finagled my way into an unfilled intern position in a human resources department. I went into the company and I was told this would be a really great way to learn about the organization, to learn about what companies do, to develop some skills, and lo and behold, I developed an expertise at recruiting. This was the summer of 1995, and what I thought was going to be an internship for 8 bucks an hour in a human resources department ended up being a lifelong career.
I've done everything from hiring people, working on major transformational projects where I outsourced a lot of jobs, I've worked to help acquire companies in the insurance/pharmaceutical industry.
Why do you blog at The Cynical Girl?
What you get is a point of view from a woman who has seen it all and is not really all that happy with what she's seen. I've been privy to really high-level dealings within corporate America and I've also worked in candy factories. I just tried to take this whole experience and write honestly.
I'm very lucky to have made it in my life, but I've also seen all the things that have gone wrong on my path to success. All the ways that labor has not been valued, the way that labor is seen as a commodity and not necessarily part of a strategic initiative within an organization, and it's heartbreaking. I try to talk about the good at work, I try to talk about the bad at work, and I just do it honestly.
You wrote a recent post I'd like to ask you about specifically. It featured a 60 Minutes clip report on homeless families, and you called it "Tis The Season To Hire Someone." I'm interested in hearing why you believe that.
I watch media like a hawk. I specifically watch the way that we talk about labor and we talk about workers. I think more and more, media's catching up to reality and 60 Minutes is a good example of this. We're starting to talk about the real impact of poverty and homelessness on our society.
One of the things that we always hear with capitalism is that labor is an expense, and we should try to minimize expenses, and we should try to maximize profitability and maximize productivity. And when business owners and shareholders make more money, there's a value for everybody. Well that turns out not to be the case, because when we maximize productivity and we lay people off, even when the people at the top are making more money, it's not cascading down.
Sometimes, there just is a value in employing people even if that job isn't 100% productive or efficient. There is a value in society by employing people. It keeps people off the street, it keeps them insured, it keeps their families intact.
Even if you have a job that's been unfilled and you can't necessarily find someone who 100% fits the qualifications, it's a benefit to society and eventually to you as a business owner and taxpayer to hire someone who's a 40% fit, a 50% fit, or even a 60% fit, and just train them.
If you're an HR professional and that idea resonates with you, how do you convince your company leadership?
It's a bit difficult, because people who are [currently] in a position to make hiring decisions feel ... there are millions of different options out there and [they] are paralyzed into not making a decision, because there are almost too many options. If you go to Walmart and you see all these different socks, sometimes you just end up not buying any socks -- and that's kind of the labor market right now. There are so many people out of work or looking for a job that we often continue to look, thinking that we're going to find somebody better out there.
We can talk about very important things to influence our leaders like character and history. So if we have a candidate who doesn't fit the bill 100%, but fits it 60% and can demonstrate strength of character and the ability to learn [and] aptitude, that's a worthwhile hire to make, because that's actually an investment in the future of your company.
If we let it go, what's happening in our economy now is that we're cycling through hundreds and thousands of applicants and we're letting positions stay open. It's just too many choices and no ability to make a decision.
What exactly do hiring professionals have to adjust in this totally saturated job market?
Unfortunately there's not a Step A, Step B, Step C.
Many companies are now investing in apprentice programs and going all the way into high schools to identify people. They're starting internships earlier and mentoring programs earlier, because there genuinely is a lack of educated, talented people who are good at math. You need to identify them earlier, provide them with opportunities earlier to get them interested in that career path, and ultimately, in your company. That's the thing human resources professionals can absolutely spearhead and absolutely do.
But I think in ... a lot of these corporate jobs where there's one job and 600 applicants that come in and yet we're still not making a hire -- this requires a paradigm shift. This isn't just something that you can prescribe a solution to. This requires you taking some leadership in your organization and saying, "Out of these 600 people who applied, we're going to hire somebody."
What kind of roadblocks can enterprising HR professionals expect to face?
I think there's a lot of assumptions we make about the current work force. I think that business leaders and human resources professionals assume a couple things. They assume that if you're unemployed, you're unemployed for a reason, or you're desperate, or you're willing to take a lower salary because your choices are limited.
We also assume that we can make an assessment of somebody's abilities and qualities and characteristics based on a resume. I challenge employees and human resources executives to do not to Google candidates and make decisions based on social profiles that they see out there, and that's happening quite a bit right now. … You see all this information that may change your perception of a candidate, even though that information is neither valid nor reliable or even legal to consider, we're doing it in corporate America and we're doing it at a higher rate.
The other thing that I see quite a bit of, is that even when there are pretty clear trends in our data, we're also missing some of the color and some of the context out of it. I'll give you an example -- it oftentimes does not make [financial] sense to have a diversity program in corporate America. But it doesn't mean it's not worth doing. We have to spend money, we have to source candidates, because it has a bigger impact down the road. Even if it doesn't necessarily make sense financially, it's important to have women and minorities in leadership programs in your organization because, we're America, this is what we do, this is what our civil rights movement is built on.
Going back to the idea that there are hundreds of applicants going after a single job, how can you best recruit or sift through so much material?
if I had a really good answer to that, I would end up being a millionaire several times over. That is the issue in recruiting today.
I would start with the very initial proposition of, you have an opening. Who do you know that would be a good fit? If you're doing your job right as an HR professional, you're developing talent internally. And if you're not doing that, who do you know within your network? Who have you interviewed in the past?
There are regulations oftentimes about having to post a job and go through that process, but the best HR departments, even in small companies, already know who they want to hire when that vacancy happens, and oftentimes before that vacancy happens.
It's almost like, if you have to post a job and you have to sift through 600 resumes for one opening, you've already failed. You're doing recruiting wrong, because through social recruiting, through LinkedIn networking, through in-person events, you should have an idea of who you want to pursue before the job even opens.
So for the HR professionals reading this advice and thinking they need to do things differently, how would you suggest making improvements?
I think a conversation needs to start happening with hiring managers.
They need to start thinking a little bit more about workforce planning, and I would also start to involve hiring managers a little bit more. Make sure your hiring managers know they're just as -- if not more -- responsible for driving a candidate pool than you are. It requires hiring managers to think about their jobs differently. They have to start making connections at alumni groups and associations, and making sure their own LinkedIn networks are up to date.
Have a proactive conversation about, "Who are we going to have to replace this year? What kind of jobs do we think we're going to have to fill? How do we start to develop that candidate pool now? Who do we have to take for lunch in the marketplace? Who do we need to get to know?" And sometimes, it's recruiters in the marketplace to get to know. If we don't know who's available and out there, third-party recruiters can help us.
Start those conversations in January as opposed to having them the minute the position opens. Every HR person says, "I'm too busy, I'm doing payroll, I'm doing benefits, I'm doing this." That's great, but it's just like anything -- you invest time in the strategy initially and that helps you avoid the administration and the triviality of the stuff that comes up later.
Now see what employers need to do to recruit top talent online >
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