Late last year, I experienced a pretty long and frustrating ordeal involving my bank, my money, and my identity. My debit-card was virtually compromised almost every-other week, and now (somewhere near 15 replacement cards later) I have finally had several months of peace. I’m not sure what was going on or even if they ever caught the bad guys. But I do know that despite the inconvenience of the situation, my bank, PNC, handled each situation generously, quickly and kindly. Sometimes I still look back on the messages that I had with their Social Media Managers on Twitter and chuckle to myself. Good times.
PNC, along with hundreds of other companies, has done an excellent job at cloning their customer support to where a bulk of their investors are— the web. This makes their service more modern, simple and natural to the target user (such as myself). Waiting on hold disables my phone and my productivity. Explaining my situation to a dozen people before getting transferred to someone who can help me, is annoying. Heck, just talking on the phone in itself is stressful for an incredibly large amount of people. Emailing takes forever, plus it’s virtually impossible especially with the overwhelming sense that they have to be professional and well written.
Note that while Twitter is my social platform of choice, all my recommendations in this blog-post apply for the other popular web-worlds, such as Facebook and Linkedin, which each have their own kind of membership and mindset.
Ads, links, and automated posts have taken a hard jab at the internet in the least classy way. The people who use each platform to connect with others they care about are constantly running away from the businesses, fodder-bloggers and self-help obsessed wantrepreneurs that are only there to get in the face of “potential prospects,” get clicks, keep “in-tune with the times,” and build “brand-awareness.”
If you feel even slightly like I just described you, chances are that you are guilty. I know I am. Don’t be discouraged though, because there is a place for everyone on the great WWW. We just have to stop viewing businesses as different from any regular user. On the internet, everyone is on equal grounds. That’s why me and the Biebs have the exact same Twitter features and options. That's why texting my mother is no easier then shooting a message to my bank, or Jim O'Heir from Parks and Recreation for that matter. (Excuse my name dropping...)
@JoshuaAhlers @EW But me more beautiful than the rest...RIGHT? lol Thanks, Joshua. 🙂
— Jim O'Heir (@JimOHeir) January 24, 2015
If you want to see some companies that do social media right, take a look at Taco-Bell’s Instagram account, Starbuck’s Facebook page, or Krispy-Kreme’s Tweets, they are fun, and in-tune with the culture. They know their audience and maintain a reliable stream of non-intruding content with simple, readable, and helpful information.
TL;DR: Relevance + Engagement = Swagger Company ??
Hopefully this one is only a reminder, because we all know what it feels like to scroll a really boring feed of links and crap only to find the light at the end of the tunnel *gasp* an image! Twitter may only allow 140 characters, but a beautiful banner with some styled font can fit a lot more than that. Images can say express ideas and messages beautifully, simply and sweetly. Please understand that I am encouraging letting images speak through their essence. I'm not condoning typing and pasting an essay into Paint.net and scheduling it out on Buffer. Please don't do that. Once again, I key-in business such as Coca-Cola, Pepsi and McDonald's; none of which I’m a customer of, but all of which I follow because they are SO GOOD at inbound marketing! They love images. Not just images though: They love beautiful images.
TL;DR: A magical image is a sight for sore eyes, and eye-candy for the scroller. Also, links are ugly and nobody wants to click on them unless they’re backed by a beautiful image.
I want to break this cookie with a story: A few weeks ago I was browsing a local event website, interested in hitting up a concert. It was featuring a couple of my favorite artists, but I noticed that the profile page for the opening band had an intro video for a very different artist with a similar stage-name. At first I was rather disappointed and I figured I was mistaken about the lineup and thus I wasn’t as enthused to go. After a few minutes of sobbing though, I finally reversed my emotions into the first stage of the grieving process. I shot a tweet to the site, letting them know that there had to be an error on the profile.
Within seconds, DO{502} (the site) liked my Tweet. It was so fast I assumed it was automated, but it was comforting all the same, and my lip stopped trembling just as they almost as quickly responded, confirming my denial-driven observation. There was in fact a mistake. It was wonderful. We exchanged a couple more tweets and I felt like I had not only made an emotional connection with a company, but a friend as well.
@joshuaahlers pic.twitter.com/tflrRHZZyl
— Louisville Public Media (@LPMupdates) May 24, 2016
If you treat your social media interactions like you’re celebrity, or like you’re playing an insecure dating game, I’m going to have to ask you to stop. This is the age where we double or triple text to keep the receiver engaged while we finish typing our thoughts. This is the age where opening a Snap without being prepared to respond to it is a social crime. This is the age where someone liking a tweet from yesterday, is a sure sign of a stalker. Don’t be a stalker. Don't commit a social crime. Don't play celebrity with your clients, fans, or customers.
TL;DR: You worked your butt off to get engagements, but people have a very, very, very short attention span. Catch us before you lose us. Don’t just watch your pot. No! Salt that thing! Engage! (okay, I knew one of these analogies would break down at some point…)
Even on the internet of things, the ancient proverbs hold true— The Speedy Tweeter Gets the Worm, When in Twitter Do as the Tweeters Do, and A Picture is Worth a Thousand Characters.
A Watched Tweet Never Boils, and above all, Tweet Others the Way You Want to be Tweeted. Now don’t just believe in it— live it! Find me on Twitter and let me know how you liked this post! I can’t wait to hear from you!
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