This is a guest blog from Sue Windley, Marketing Director for Pragmatic Performance Group Ltd, a business acceleration consultancy specifically for small and medium sized businesses. You can follow her on Twitter as @DangerousMkting or read her blog on http://dangerousmkting.wordpress.com/
As a Marketing Communications Strategist, I use psychology to help small businesses punch above their weight to win business against larger competitors. Using emotionally intelligent communication greatly increases the likelihood of any business message being noticed – and acted upon. Here are some tips on the psychology of tweeting to attract prospective customers’ attention:
- Write your tweets with an individual in mind. Picture your ideal customer: what do they do? How do they behave? What type of information would most interest them? Put yourself in their shoes and make this the basis of what you tweet. It’s not about what interests you – it’s about what interests them!
- Only tweet/retweet when you have something relevant (and current!) to say: give away useful information! Don’t worry – only having 140 characters means you only have the space to impart the “what”, not the “how”! Natural human curiosity will entice others to start a conversation with you to find out more.
- Be real – it’s far better to tweet out less frequently when it’s obviously a human writing the message rather than send hundreds of automated messages. Yes, it takes more time, but you will be more participative and reactive – and much more likely to be re-tweeted or invited to engage in conversation.
- Don’t get hung up on the number of followers you have – quality is more important than quantity! Twitter is a great communications channel for small business but it only works if you engage with other Tweeters most likely to have an interest in the products or services you provide. Your tweets are about creating connections – and humans only want to connect with like minded other people. We crave similarity and compatibility – not something that applies to a mass audience. In real life you get a much better response when engaging in depth with a few people rather than shouting “sound bites” to an audience of thousands – same rule applies in the virtual world.
- Most important of all – stay in control with a plan for why and what you tweet! If humans feel out of control, they get stressed. When we are stressed, we are more likely to say things we did not intend or the meaning is unclear. Having a plan maintains the balance between remembering Twitter is one communications tool among many and getting caught up in the social media frenzy – Twitter can be highly addictive. Everything you tweet must be with purpose and for a reason as this defines your audience’s expectations of what it will be like to deal with your business.
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