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Losing Your Twitter Followers
| Guest post by: Mark Macias |
Article Overview: Twitter is a great way to promote yourself as a brand. The one mistake that people make is letting their employer take full control of their account. Here's how you can make sure you are in control of your twitter destiny.
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Free Download - Keeping Your Customers By Mark Macias |
Losing Your Twitter Followers
Imagine the shock of waking up in the morning and discovering your 3200 Twitter followers have dwindled down to one. That’s exactly what happened last month to a local TV personality in Phoenix.
Tara Hitchcock was the popular morning anchor of Good Morning Arizona, which airs on KTVK in Phoenix. Late in September, I read an article in the Arizona Republic that detailed how she was no longer with the TV station.
As a former investigative producer with KTVK, I couldn’t believe she was let go, but I was even more shocked when I read this in the article:“She has started up a new Twitter account -@taratv- in place of her old one, which is owned by Channel 3.”
Tara spent her entire time on TV promoting that Twitter handle only to lose it overnight because she didn’t own it. Unfortunately, she is not alone.
I spent 15 years in television news, so as you can imagine, I have lots of close friends who are still in the TV business. Many of these former colleagues are still associating their Twitter accounts with their current news networks. Of course, ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News and NBC love the exposure, but these reporters and anchors are harming their ability to brand themselves by giving away so much power to the networks. Likewise, if you are trying to promote yourself as a brand, regardless of your industry, you need to be aware of this power trap as well.
I recently had this conversation with several former close colleagues – producers at Fox, CBS and a reporter at WNBC. I asked them all why were they associating their brand with a TV network that could let them go without much notice. They risked losing entire control of their brand by taking that approach, which was a strategic marketing mistake.
They all said the same thing: “Management has asked us to promote our Twitter account with our TV network.”
It’s good they drank the kool-aid, but no personality should ever neglect their own personal brand at the expense of their employer. Unfortunately, two of those three journalists are no longer with their networks, so that branding opportunity is lost, but the lesson is still here for you.
I have done publicity for several personalities, including reality TV cast members and politicians. One of the first elements of advice I gave the reality cast members was to make sure their entire identity didn't revolve around their TV show otherwise, that perceived fame would fizzle out as soon as the show ended. But this advice applies to other industries as well – lawyers, doctors, dating coaches, writers. If you are a nutritionist with a hospital, I’m sure your employer lends credibility to your name, but don’t gamble your entire brand on one hospital because you never know what will happen.
It's also easier to promote a brand that is established than starting from scratch.
So if are about to promote your brand on the web, make sure you credit your employer (since they are paying your mortgage), but don’t forget to give yourself a little credit along the way. Use a Facebook and Twitter name that you can take with you. I’m glad I did that during my time with NBC and CBS, which is why you can follow me on Twitter@MarkMacias.
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Article Tags: 3m media group, 3mmediagroup, mark macias, public relations, social media, twitter
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About the Author: Mark Macias RSS for Mark's articles - Visit Mark's website Mark is also the author of Beat the Press: Your Guide to Managing the Media, which reveals overt and covert tactics to deal with any communications situation. You can read free chapter excerpts at: http://www.BeatthePressBook.com. Click here to visit Mark's website   How to Slow or Stop Negative News Showcasing Charisma Writing an Effective News Release Political Video Marketing Why You Should Never Lie to the Media |
Related Forum Posts
Re: Using Twitter To Double Your Traffic?
- I'm sure in many cases Twitter sends more traffic than Search Engines because most people don't have good enough SE rankings to get SE traffic. But anyone can get Twitter traffic. The problem is that Twitter traffic won't convert for the most part and SE traffic will. I'd venture to say that 98% of the time getting just 100 visitors from search is better than getting 2000+ from Twitter.
How to Use Twitter to Market Products?
- How do you use Twitter to market products? Has the Twitter route given you good results? Please share your experience and ideas on how to use Twitter to take a product to the customers. Thank you in advance.
Re: Social Media Works If You Do It Right...
- Hi Michelle,
Ah, but it seems hashtags are still being used by a lot of people - including Twitter! So I would still use them for your keywords. It's just that if you are searching for something on Twitter you can either go the #hashtag route, or do a direct search on the Twitter homepage. I guess you could use #hashtags when searching on the Twitter homepage as well!
DH
Re: Facebook or Twitter?
- Thanks for the feedback guys! I personally started with Twitter and am now moving over to Facebook. I polled people on both my accounts and (not surprisingly) the Twitter people said Twitter and the Facebook people said Facebook!
The actual order of my social media presence looks like this:
1) LinkedIn (with little success)
2) Twitter
3) YouTube
4) Facebook
Re: Twitter vs Facebook
- I use Facebook pages for Business and rarely ever use Twitter. I hace lost count of the no. of Hotels that I have visited, regarding their marketing campaigns, that may have 5k Facebook Fans and only 100 followers on Twitter. It is a lot more difficult to engage with people on Twitter and thus harder to gain traction. If you are a business like Nike, then Twitter is great, but if you are an SME, then focus on Facebook or LinkedIn (if you are providing a professional service.)
You can always have your Facebook feed directly in to Twitter, so you can have a presence on both, but do the work on one. Also check out ping.fm for managing campaigns - it is a free tool, and a great time saver.
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