This is the first of a six part series on The Twitter Business Love Series in which we are exploring multiple ways to use Twitter for business.
It is often said… “Life is mainly about 10% of what happens to you, and 90% of what you personally make of it.” This is known as the 90/10 rule, mainly attributed to Stephen Covey. This week I want to give you the 90/10 Business Rules of Twitter. In managing over 100 different social media campaigns from bestselling authors to solopreneurs selling scented candles, we have noticed a pattern or balance if you will, on ratios of educating and overselling on Twitter.
I will not begin to claim that this is the only ratio you need to consider (as we’ll consider another one in Wednesday’s post) but we at FunCitySocialMedia, have found that if you educate about 90% of the time followers don’t seem to mind you promoting a “call to action” or selling about 10% of the time. Where I have found Twitter users getting in trouble is when they try to sell 100% of the time or do not take advantage of a “call to action” ANY of the time. Strangely business owners seem to fall in one of those two camps, with very few in the middle.
Like in personal business networking, your initial goal must not be to sell a consumer. We learn about potential clients, educate them on our products and services and THEN approach selling to them. The concept online is not much different, just because we begin to engage potential clients through Twitter doesn’t mean we would treat potential clients any different. We need to focus on providing quality education, solutions to our clients problems, and fostering a dialog that stays on topic 90% of the time as well. This means only one out of every ten tweets needs to be sales oriented. So in closing here is my recommended “90/10 Business Rules for Twitter.”
1. Education 90% of the time, sell or provide a “call to action” 10%.
2. Stay on topic 90% of the time, deviate off topic only 10%.
3. Create your own content 90% of the time, re-tweet good content 10%.
4. Follow 90% of potential clients that need your services, and then follow 10% of others.
What ratios do you use for Twitter? What parameters does your business focus on to use Twitter affectingly?
Fred Campos is Chief of Marketing at FunCitySocialMedia.com. Like this post? Make sure you subscribe to our blog!
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