Twitter for the Win

            Twitter campaigns are a huge craze now for businesses small and big. “Retweet to win...” “Follow back for our prize...” “Answer this question to be considered....” All these Twitter campaigns are basically contests that are very easy to enter and that use you to promote their brand or product. More than likely you will not win that $50 gift card, or that meet and greet with the hot singer. However you will talk about that brand and that person to all 200 followers you have. Some people will simply glance over the silly contest, but some will be intrigued. They will go, follow the brand and then enter the contest themselves.
            At one point, a company called “Frat Collection” that I follow posted a twitter contest asking us to retweet this tweet for a chance at a $100 gift card. My Twitter newsfeed was already littered with the retweets from this that I felt like I might as well try it. Sadly I did not win, but someone I follow actually did. This then fuels the desire to enter these contests because we see that they are winnable. It becomes socially okay to retweet and pester our friends when we believe we really could actually win something.

            As a business, I would say to try these Twitter campaigns out. They really will get you more followers. I may love your brand but not even think about following you on Twitter, but when my best friend retweets your contest, it’s so easy to just click on the tweet and follow the company. If the company’s Twitter does this every once and a while, your audience will continue to grow and you’ll have a few happy prizewinners to boast about your brand. So, if you haven’t already, go ahead and try a Twitter campaign to increase followers and improve company image. 

Kristen Williams

A Beginner's Mistakes

As I have stated before,  I am currently interning with a company where I am in charge of their social media. Since beginning this internship a month ago I have already learned a lot about what not do to in the social world. Using my vast amount of experience (jokes) I want to share my struggles with you in hopes of preventing some of the same mistakes I made early on

1. It’s great to connect your Facebook to twitter, but don’t forget that it will tweet you post every time.  I recently made a Facebook post for the company and then immediately made a tweet with a link to the Facebook page. The next day I realized I literally had two tweets that said the exact same things, making me look a little silly and for sure redundant.
2.  People will like your Facebook posts, but then not actually complete the action called for in that post. I made a post that asked our followers to submit pictures to our page to be critiqued by a professional photographer. I had six people like this post, but not a single person uploaded a picture. Thusly, the post didn’t do what was intended. I am now learning that people are lazy, even on social media. It’s so much easier to just ‘like’ something than to follow through with the action itself.
3.  Not everyone is nice on the internet. You probably already knew this, but it can interfere with social media marketing sometimes because people can literally say anything they want to. I post questions to LinkedIn on behalf of my employer. The first question I posted had a guy write a one word snarky answer. He basically tried to kill the question and make fun of it. However, other people luckily answered the question too and we ended up having a really great conversation on the thread. Just know there are mean people out there, can we just have to be better than them.

I’m sure I’ll make many more mistakes and blunders along the way during this internship, but I hope these three things at least made you think a little about some beginners problems with social media.

Kristen Williams