Why I @ so much

Yesterday I got into a slightly heated discussion with one of my Twitter followers. I was asked to not @ people so much as they were finding that nearly half of my tweets, sometimes mere, were @’s.

Obviously I ignored this piece of advice but it made me think, Why do I @ so much in the first place? First I needed to consider, What is Social Media to me and why do I bother using it?

To me, any social media site is based on transparency and open discussion. Sharing information and dealing with people as individuals is of the greatest importance.  Its why I think many business’s and individuals fail. To give you an example, my local newspaper are on Twitter and all they put in their twitterfeed is automated links to published articles. What good is that? I’ve also found countless retailers who only tweet their specials. Now what good is that?

Social media is about having an identity and as I said, treating people as individuals. There is no value for me to follow the newspaper or these individuals if the same information is sent to me by their newsletters and is promoted on the front page of their website. Social media is about providing unique content, and as far as I am concerned, is a great and cost effective way to open a dialogue with current and future customers. I’d be much more likely to follow the newspaper if they asked for a discussion of the article and opened up a ‘Twitter forum’. Then I am engaged with their brand; any marketer can tell you how important that is.

Some brands get this and try to open up a discussion. Those brands get the first step correct but mess up the second; responding. Surely you can’t begin to engage customers in a discussion and then leave it. This is why I personally respond to as many people as possible with @’s (though I often get 15-20 a day, so there is a backlog and sadly I miss some). It continues the discussion, further engages people with my personal brand, brings the relationship to a deeper, more personal level, encourages the user to engage themselves next time and gives a personal level of gratitude. To me this is just as important, if not more important, than opening the dialogue in the first place. When brands respond to me personally online I’m far more happy.

Brands that don’t even try to engage me in the first place fail. Social media is built to foster this engagement and most of the users join seeking it, so any brand who tackles social media with a standardized message is going nowhere fast. Engaging users on social media can direct some serious traffic; when I am happy I link it and looking at my bit.ly tracker each of my links generate an average of 300 clicks – this is also increasing fast as my follower count increases. Each @ is also another chance to re-promote the same link.

The big dilemma is that I need to remain conscious that my @’s may not be interesting to others so I am (loosely, I often forget) trying to stick to the following @ rules:

• Try to paraphrase the @, so users not involved in the first leg of the dialogue can understand what is going on.
• For generic @’s (ie thanks for the RT), I try and cram as many users in the tweet as possible and re post the bit.ly link.
• Keep the discussion going. Tweeting ‘thanks’ is no good but ‘Thanks for telling me about x, what does everybody else think’ is good.

And there you have it, my justification for so many @’s and what I (try) to do to make it less of a burden on my followers.

Tagged as: engagement, mobile, social media, twitter, user involvement