It’s Monday. It’s 4.54am. I’ve been up since 2.30, courtesy Mr 3 and a couple of nightmares. I’ve just finished my weekly blog entry for Bloxham Marketing, and I’m pretty proud of it (considering the time of day, and the lack of sleep, I’m quite impressed with myself) but right now I’m feeling too lazy to think up another post for “Hmmm…” for my regular Monday entry… so I’m going to cheat and re-post the same content here. Sorry! (Actually, I choose to think of it as sharing my granule of wisdom with my ‘personal blog’ audience as well as my ‘work’ one… LOL) Plus there’s a bonus – it won’t be posted there until 8.30am today. So – those of you who are up early – get to read it first. Yay! (LOL again) Here tis:
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The ‘Survivor’ Guide to tweeting for your business
Survivor: Outwit. Outplay. Outlast. It’s exactly these three ideas that you probably want for your own business, right? To stay ahead of your competitors; to remain viable in your marketplace? Me too! So – what can the Reality TV show Survivor, the creator of this phrase “Outwit. Outplay. Outlast.” teach us about using twitter for our businesses? Read on!
1. Form alliances
From that very first season, the importance of ‘alliances’ was obvious. Those in an alliance, got to the final tribal council. And the strongest member of the alliance, won. It was as simple as that. On twitter, we need to do the same. Form alliances. Follow others. Engage with them (retweet their good stuff; reply; converse) and respond genuinely when your followers retweet, reply to, or engage with, you.
And the idea here is to be genuine. People don’t readily ‘form an alliance’ with automated tweets. Okay – I admit it – I used an auto-responder on my @BloxhamMkting account for a while back there, which automated ‘Thanks for the RT” and “Thanks for the mention” and “Thanks for the follow” – until I realised just how quickly this was turning off the exact sort of people I wanted to engage with. The genuine ones; the leaders in the fields I was seeking to be a part of; and (of course) my own followers. I also realised how much I hate automated responses filling up my own @mention stream – even worse, my DM inbox. This convinced me. Now I use auto-responders only for the tweets I send (and no, not to just send the identical content to Facebook as well!) Want strong ‘alliances’? Engaging with others is the best way to form them.
2. Honesty – always the best policy
On “Survivor”, it’s always easy for the audience to spot the fake. Watching the show then becomes more interesting, as we’re waiting to see when the double-crossing character finally gets ‘caught out’ in their lies and deception. Often it’s those who’ve been the most ‘honest’ who get the fartherest. Likewise on twitter. If you’re tweeting for your business, realise that there are people out there who don’t like your business (especially if you’re a big company!) and that you’re going to probably get some flack for things that you have, or haven’t, done. So be honest when people tweet that negative stuff. Acknowledge that something’s gone wrong. Use the instantaneous nature of twitter to try to rectify the problem. Your community will appreciate the honesty.
3. Loyalty will get you further
Loyalty. Let’s face it – in business, that’s what we want, right? A loyal customer base. But there’s only one way to get their loyalty – be loyal to them. Be dependable. Be consistent. Be the brand that they know that they can rely on. On Survivor, those who remained consistent throughout, engendered the most respect – and that’s whether they were consistently ‘nice’ or consistently ‘evil’ (to use ‘Survivor’ terminology, here) – wholly and solely because they were consistent. The people who formed alliances with them, respected them because they were dependable. Those characters who (again, using ‘Survivor’ terminology) flip-flopped, back and forth between different choices or different strategies? They lost the respect of the other players extremely quickly. When you’re tweeting for your business, this is the last thing we want! We want the respect of our customer base, right? So be loyal. Be consistent. Be dependable.
4. Have a strategy
Think ahead. Know your business plan. And – sparingly, and where appropriate – share parts of that plan with your followers. Use your strategy to inspire your loyal customer base, just as those who were the leaders in their tribes shared their vision of the next strategic move with their allies. On twitter, use the functionality to reward those most loyal; and also to get your message out and extend your reach. New eBook? First mention of a new product release? Just a thought – let your loyal followers be the first to know! Whatever your strategy; devise it, and follow it!
5. Adapt to the situation
Some of those ‘Survivor’ challenges are absolutely crazy. But that’s what makes the show so entertaining. Likewise, some situations in business are going to see you doing things that you never would have expected. Three years ago, you never would have been reading a blog post about how to use twitter for your business – and what tips a reality TV show can give you on the topic!!! But you’ve adapted, you’ve changed, as the world has changed. Kudos to you! Just don’t stop now. The world *is* changing – faster than we can even realise it – so we need to adapt. Yes, today we need to ensure that we’re tweeting for our businesses; retweeting, replying, and genuinely engaging with others, however… who knows what may lie around the corner? We’ll need to rise to conquer these new challenges. If we don’t, we’ll end up in the business equivalent of Tribal Council, where the real world equivalent will snuff out the remnants of all of our hard work and say “The Marketplace has Spoken”. And none of us wants to be there, so we?!
So – five ideas that ‘Survivor’ can teach us about tweeting for our businesses. What did you think? Did I miss any? I’d love to hear your thoughts!
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Well, that’s been my thinking over the past couple of hours (in between settling my little man from his night-time horrors). Sorry again that I’m not feeling up to writing a whole heap here. But I’d love to hear what you thought of my BloxhamMarketing post!
And have a great day, dear readers! (I think I might head back to bed now. It’s cold out here and it may (please, God!) remain dark and quiet for another hour or so yet…)