Tuesday, May 26, 2015

40 Awesome Things to Share on Twitter Business Handle




Twitter website mentions that Twitter has 302 million monthly active users and 500 million Tweets are sent per day! But even today, I very frequently answer questions like “Does Twitter work for businesses?” or “What can a business tweet about?” or “I don’t have time to be on Twitter – it’s for people who have no work”…arghhh…



Anyway, I have made peace with such questions – because I think these are simply because of the unawareness about the platform or the genuine lack of knowledge as to how powerfully businesses can leverage Twitter to connect and engage with prospects and customers.



In this post I am going to share few ideas which you can use on the Twitter handle for your business –


  1. Link to a YouTube or Vimeo video relevant to your niche
  2. Link to a list of blogs which could be useful for your target audience
  3. A special offer – just for Twitter followers
  4. If there is a glitch in some platform, share it along with the resolution (if you know it)
  5. Connect two people, who you think will value the introductions
  6. Ask a simple question which your followers will like to answer
  7. A link to a new app/ tool you discovered
  8. Review of a new app/ tool – tag the people who you think will especially benefit from it
  9. Inspiring, motivational and relevant quotes –humor works well too!
  10. Link to an interesting presentation on SlideShare
  11. A collation of interesting industry stats
  12. Link to an interesting poll
  13. An infographic (there are tons of ready infographics at Daily Infographic if you don’t have time to create your own infographic)
  14. Behind the scene photos
  15. Access to beta of a new product
  16. Join the ongoing conversations with trending hashtags
  17. Ask feedback on new product
  18. Office photos – don’t forget to tag the employees
  19. A happy customer photo
  20. Recommend a tool which you have found useful for something specific
  21. Share a book if you thought you have benefitted from it
  22. Randomly thank followers for their RTs or Favorites
  23. Exclusive photos of your products  
  24. An event you plan to attend
  25. Be part of a Twitter chat
  26. Opinions about current events
  27. If you're planning to attend an conference, join he conversations through event #hashtag before / during / after event
  28. Logo or website design of the early versions of your product!
  29. Link to a relevant podcast or webinar recording
  30. Random posts like dinner plans or weekend plans – Yes, it’s okay to share it from business handle because it will show that you are a real person
  31. Share popular, trending Reddit topic
  32. Share video testimonial
  33. Post a picture and ask followers to come up with interesting captions for the image
  34. Breaking industry news
  35. Wish your followers on holidays
  36. Offer free eBook
  37. Feature a star employee
  38. Share industry research with your point of view
  39. Humor – cartoons work the best at the start of the day!
  40. Finally, don’t forget to respond to a tag

Got any more to add? Share your ideas through comments.

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Seven Deadly Sins of Startup Social Media Marketing





Yeah, I made mistakes but…life doesn’t come with instructions.

Sure it does not. But that’s not the case with social media - there is certainly some good advice out there to help you avoid blunders on social media. After all, mistakes are meant for learning and not repeating, right?
So what are some of the common mistakes which companies, especially startups, make while defining and executing their social media strategy? Here is what I have found -

#1 Incorrect Platforms

Agreed – Facebook has 1.44 billion monthly active users (as of Mar 31, 2015). But you can’t have the whole universe as your target audience. In today’s time and age, when everyone is spoilt for choice, the most important marketing decision you need to make is defining the target audience. Targeted marketing is the key of the game – and targeted marketing is by definition exclusionary. You need to clearly define your target audience and once that is done, you need to identify the platforms on which YOUR target audience is active. Remember – nobody searches for a job on Facebook or looks for a Hotel review on LinkedIn. Being present on the most popular platform does not make sense if your target audience is not active there. Here is some quick help when it comes to popular platforms:

Facebook – It’s a good platform when

  • You have highly visual content. 
  • You want to leverage the community effect
  • You want to build trust in the minds of the users by leveraging their friends network
  • You are ready to spend on ads – the recent changes in Facebook algorithm have made it very difficult to organically reach out to the fans 

Twitter – It is a good platform to

  • Broadcast your message
  • Join the on-going conversations 
  • Connect with thought leaders and people that matter to you 
  • Build a position for yourself

LinkedIn – Consider using it when

  • You are a B2B company
  • You want to connect with the professional audience and establish your thought leadership within a group of homogeneously targeted audience

Google+ - Good platform to

  • Help you with your SEO efforts
  • Participate in Google communities to connect with like-minded people

Pinterest – You can use it when

  • Your primary target audience include women
  • You have highly visual content to share


These of course are just guidelines. You need to do a more thorough research and brainstorming to finalize the social platforms for your brand.



#2 Doing Too Much or Too Little

Once you choose a social platform, you need to commit to it. Having an inactive presence on any of the platforms creates a bad impression. Having the last tweet date as 2 years back is worse than not having a Twitter handle. You need to show activity on the social platforms and need to have consistency. The opposite is also true – you just can’t do too much. Don’t bombard your LinkedIn company page followers with 10 updates a day just because that will give you more number of impressions!



#3 Ignoring Content Marketing

Content marketing is the gasoline of your social media efforts. You need to have good blog articles to showcase your expertise. You need interesting infographics to share with your audience. eBooks are good to share as a free giveaway. Whitepapers are excellent way of establishing your thought leadership. You need content. Period. Just don’t ignore it from your social media strategy. Not having enough bandwidth to create content cannot be an excuse today.  

#4 Inappropriate Content or Self Promotion

Each platform has different content need. Don’t make the mistake of pushing the same content on all the platforms just because there are tools available which allow you to do so. Each platform requires different tone of messaging and different type of content. More importantly, you also need to mind the timing of your updates. Your audience is not going to be present on all the platforms at the same time. Social media does require some serious time and attention commitment and it demands that. Don’t get away with easy options of auto schedule without giving it a serious thought or having a proper plan in place. Another thing to keep an eye on is the type of content you share. Too much of self-promotion is a big turn-off. Just because you are excited about your product or services does not mean that you can talk about it all day long. Have a good balance of education, industry insights, engagement, and self-promotion in your content sharing. 

#5 No Personal Branding

People relate with people – and this is especially true for startups where people are buying the services from the founders more than from the company. So it is important that startups include the personal branding of their founders in their social media planning and strategy. You need a face for your company.


Photo Courtesy: http://bit.ly/1P0yIp6




#6 Canned Responses to Negative Comments

Lot of companies shy away from social media because of the fear of negative comments. But note that negative comments are in-fact good opportunities for you to build trust in the minds of your readers. Read more about it here. One of the foremost thing you need to remember while handling negative comments on the social platform is that you should NEVER give a canned response to any negative comment. Be personal and show genuine interest in solving the problem. Acknowledge the issue, take genuine actions to resolve it. If the there is a mistake, accept it and take all efforts to resolve it. Check this example here from Zappos – simply brilliant. Isn’t it? 



Photo Courtesy- http://bit.ly/1dNplZm 

#7 Not aligning with the target audience in terms of tone and messaging

Try and align as much as you can with your target audience – if you are targeting the youth, introduce some quirkiness in your overall messaging. If you are targeting CXOs, maintain a professional tone. Just make sure that your marketing tone matches with your company culture. After all, today, marketing is no more the job of marketing department only. It is the job of each and every person representing the company. Here is a latest brilliant example of this –





Do share your experience on what worked and what did not work for you. It’s all about sharing knowledge, isn’t it? 

This article was originally published at yourstory.com/2015/05/social-media-marketing-deadly-sins/ 
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