Social Media Worst Practice: How To Drive Loyal Customers Away

Fellow Allbusiness.com blogger Denise(Just For Small Business) O’Berry (follow her here) twittered a link to a post by Digital Tip about Habitat, “a trendy furniture store” in the United Kingdom. Seems they decided to start using Twitter to promote themselves, but then completely went about it the wrong way. So wrong, in fact, that their efforts are considered Spam by knowledgeable Twitterati.

 

In a blog post over at Surviving The Recession, I gave examples of content a business might publish on Twitter. None of them involved abusing hashtags the way Habitat did. (A hashtag is a keyword proceeded by “#.” When you see a hashtag, you can do a Twitter search and find all other related tweets containing the same hashtag.)

 

What we have is a 20th-century mentality trying to use a 21^st century media channel. It is not going to work. Or, as we say on Twitter, “#fail.”

 

Twitter is about the conversation. Before you wade in and risk embarrassing your organization, take a lesson from any competent military organization and send out some scouts to reconnoiter the terrain. You must be able to adapt to the environment and ease in without creating turmoil.

 

Failure to do so can damage customer loyalty which means you’re going to lose valuable customers in a recession. Not exactly the outcome you want, is it?

 

What caused the problem here was that Habitat was adding hashtags to their tweets which had nothing to do with the content. Folks, that’s called Spam. You hate Spam, right? Don’t do it.

 

There are some people who just send out tweets with links to their products. But I doubt very many people open those links. If you’re going to invest time in Twitter, add to the conversation. See the tips I mentioned in the blog post above. That’ll get you started.

 

Misusing hashtags equals Spam. Just sending out tweets with nothing but links will probably not generate much business. Yes, you’ll attract followers, but those are usually people who hope that you will follow them in return. They’re probably not your customers.

 

The best way to use Twitter is to start or contribute to existing conversations. Make people want to read your tweets. Each tweet should contain value, not just a link to your product.

 

Regards,

 

Glenn

Follow me on Twitter. I’m txglennross