One of the difficult things about Twitter for business is the need to strike an appropriate balance between promotion and conversation. Many companies I encounter think of Twitter as a new marketing channel but don't realize they need a different marketing mindset with Twitter and all the other social media tools.
Understanding The Old Mindset
The old mindset was one in which marketers just talked about themselves and their products. The assumption was that people were interested in them. In some cases they were. In a rare few cases, they still are. For the majority of businesses, however, we're just another one of a thousand people wanting someone's attention.
With Twitter and other social media/social networking tools, a shift is occurring where people can more easily choose not to pay attention to a marketer's self promotion. Marketers still need to get attention, but rather than screaming for it, they need to earn attention by being valuable to the people they want to reach. To earn attention with Twitter you have to understand it to be the conversation tool that it is. Twitter is a conversation tool that also does promotion. Many marketers seem to think it's the other way around. As such, I have observed companies that don't understand this strategic mistake and don't have the restraint to keep from over-promoting on Twitter. It's fine to promote sometimes, it's not fine to promote all the time.
Scoring The Right Balance
To help businesses strike the balance, I'm proposing a self-imposed Twitter Balance Score that is weighted toward conversation and sharing before promotion. The idea is that once a company has scored 10 points, they're free to promote, sell, or otherwise bring attention to something they've done. Until the points are scored don't promote anything. Be part of a conversation or start a conversation.
Keeping Score
The easy way to think about a Twitter Balance Score is to think about sharing as the most valuable portion of a conversation and then listening, then talking. With that perspective in mind, here's the Twitter Balance Score:
- Share a link: 3 points
- Retweet: 3 points
- Ask a question: 2 points
- Respond/reply to someone: 2 points
- Update about what you're doing/thinking/eating/etc.: 1 point
The goal with this scoring system is to Tweet at least four times between promotions.
Negative Points
The downside to keeping score with anything is the ability to "game" the system. As such, someone could look at the scoring method above and just share a lot of stuff but still never talk to anyone. Beyond that, there are numerous tools available that give the appearance of activity and sharing without actually requiring the person to participate, which should result in negative points. Here are a few scenarios where negative points would be applied:
- Provide links in three consecutive Tweets: -3 points
- Three consecutive Retweets: -5 points
- Retweeting compliments: -10 points (I think this is a big Twitter sin as I've written about in the past.)
I'd love some feedback on this. I'm planning to implement this with at least one client very soon to see how it works in a corporation. If you think some adjustments need to be made to the scoring system, I'm interested in your views on that as well.