Evan Carmichael walks through how to use Twitter for business: claim your handle, search for mentions of your company, thank people who talk about you, and share expertise. He tweeted Carnival Cruise Line before a trip and got no response, a missed chance to turn a customer into an advocate.
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Use Twitter strategically. If you just go on and post a whole bunch of promotional ads or aren't really paying attention to what people are saying about you, you're not going to get any value out of Twitter. You might as well just leave it. If you're going to spend your time on something, you want to make sure you're getting incredible value out of it. Otherwise, dump it and move on to something that you're good at. I recently came off a Carnival cruise, and before I left, I tweeted them to say, "Hey Carnival, I'm coming on board. Here's the ship. Looking forward to a great vacation." You know what they responded with? Nothing. At the very least, if you have a Twitter account, you want to respond to the people who are talking to you. At the very least. What got me interested in Twitter, at first I thought, "This is stupid. People talking about their cats." what they ate for lunch, what movie they're watching. I don't care. Like, I got business to do. But I went to Twitter, I did a search for my company name, my website, and found out that people were talking about me and I wasn't a part of the conversation. You want to hang out where your customers are. So that's the, that's the first thing. Before you dump any promotional material out on Twitter, just listen and recognize the people who are talking about you. You may have a really small business, and that's fine, and you may not have a huge amount of chatter, but just by having a Twitter account listed on your website, some people will seek you out and ask you questions or talk to you, mention you somehow through Twitter. So you need to monitor the account. At the very least, monitor your account. The very least that Carnival should have done was write back to me to say, "Have a great trip." The very least, that's what I was actually expecting. I'm not expecting great service. I'm used to mediocre service now from the cruise line industry. But at the very least, I was expecting some kind of response. To get nothing is ridiculous. What I would have done is not just thank the person, If I was running that Carnival Cruise Line Twitter account, I would find a way to go above and beyond to recognize the Twitter person. If you found my account, you'd see I've got hundreds of thousands of followers, very active, and I would give that person some kind of free bonus. Give them a free internet package, give them a free dinner upgrade, give them a free tour. These things cost nothing. They cost nothing for the cruise ship. And instead of me coming on slamming Carnival and saying how crappy they are on their Twitter account, I'd be coming on saying, here's a company that gets it. Here's a company who knows what they're doing and would have cost them nothing. They just have the wrong strategy and the wrong implementation. And I know it's hard. You know, it's hard. You have a million things to do. Why should you worry about Twitter as well? It's not like you have extra 2 hours every day to sit there and be on Twitter. I get that. And Carnival has a team of people who manage their social media. They have 90-something thousand followers. Listen, I have twice as many followers as Carnival, and I respond to everybody who writes to me, and I do it personally. It's not somebody on my team writing for me. It's me. You write to me on Twitter, you get me responding to you. Because I think it's important to interact with the people who are talking to me and talking about my business. So if I can do it, the whole team at Carnival can do it, and you can do it. If you're a small company, you may not have a lot of chatter going on. Hey, that's okay. I'm not saying build up a huge Twitter strategy. It could work, but at the very least Listen to what's going on and recognize the champions who are talking about your business because they're going to keep doing it over and over and over again. So here are some quick steps for you. Number 1: if you're not on Twitter, get on Twitter because people are searching for you. If they see your website, they'll often look for a Twitter account now as a way to connect or as a way to tell other people about you. So at the very least, just set up the Twitter account and you'll have it saved. You know, nobody else can take your name anymore. Don't start writing crap, okay? Everything you do should be great, should have meaning and purpose. So don't just start pumping out deals hoping that you're gonna get results. It's not gonna happen. Step number 2 is just listen. See what people are saying about you, see if people are writing to you, and just thank them. Just listen. If that's all you do, that's okay to start. You've opened up a new channel for people to talk to you. That's what you want. The next step, if you're willing to do this, is start sharing some thought leadership. Start talking about the things you believe in. Start talking about the things that are having an impact on your business. Start talking about the customers that are using your, your product or service. Provide value. Just like anything else in business, provide value. Don't slam offers and crap down people's throats. They will not subscribe to your channel. You want people to listen? Give them something to listen to. What do you know from your expertise? You are— you should be an expert in what you do. What can you share in a limited number of characters that will impact people's lives, that'll make their day better. You should be an expert, and you need to share your knowledge with people. That's the next step on Twitter, and it doesn't have to be crazy. You don't have to post 10 times a day. Start with once a week and build up from there. But at the very least, Carnival, you guys got it wrong. Thank the people, recognize the people who are talking about you. It takes 2 seconds and it's expected these days. It's like not answering the phone. If I can do it, I spend my personal time on top of running my business and running my investments, and I have almost 200,000 followers, you can do it on your account and it's totally worth the effort to do it. Believe. If you guys like this video, please give it a thumbs up below. It always makes you want to do more. And I want to hear what you have to think. Please leave a comment below. If you have a question about your Twitter strategy, let me know and I'll answer it for you. If you want to share what you're doing that's working, let me know too. I love seeing those come in. I really do love seeing the comments. They make my morning. Every day I'm eating my lentils and I watch the comments come in and I respond to you guys. So you make me want to keep doing these videos. So thank you and I'll see you soon.
