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Twitter Is Not Social Media
Twitter! What an incredible platform for pushing content, spreading brand awareness and communicating with fans. We all push push push and then every once in a while, we get to thank fans for a retweet and better yet, we are sometimes privileged to receive an unexpected mention from a happy follower and are privileged to, in turn, retweet their kind exhalations in the humblest of brags.
Soap-box Twitter is an effortless trench that most of us have walked and that most of us would have no qualms tagging as futile.
So what else is there? What else is there to do, other than pushing your own blog posts and sending out ads and campaigns?
There is another way to communicate through these social mediums that doesn’t have to involve such self-proclamation.
Engage.
We’ve all heard this term, sorry to the person sitting in front of your laptop reading this with your left hand propped under your chin thinking to yourself “Great, I guess I’m the only person in the world who has never heard of this”. It has become a cute buzzword over the past couple of years associated with those that market to others, without marketing at all. Simply put, instead of standing on that soapy box, get yourself out there and start talking with people. Start conversations and include your own voice in other conversations,
You have people every day talking about your market, your industry and possibly your actual product or service. You choose whether to be a part of it. [...] Think of how much you would benefit if you engage with your fans. What would that do for your reputation? People want to be validated, they want to be heard, they want to feel they matter. You shouldn’t have to ask someone to be a fan. If you engage people, they become fans. Raging ones (Stratten, Scott. (2010). Unmarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging.).
As long as we persist with our soap-boxy Twitter content push, than Twitter is not social media. It is only when we decide to start engaging ourselves within the Tweet-o-sphere:
- starting conversation
- retweeting
- DMing
- adding our own (interesting) voice to other conversation
that Twitter becomes a platform for creating great relationships using Social Media.
This post has been inspired by Scott Stratten’s book Unmarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging. If you find this stuff interesting than check it out, it was definitely worth my time. You can visit Scott’s blog at www.unmarketing.com
