So Long Friend… (part 2)
More Rambling On Twitter Followings
I wrote last week about my own personal philosophies with Twitter when it comes to following people, and being followed (or not followed) by those you follow. To keep that blog focused and on message, I only wrote about the concept of those who follow, those who don’t, and how that affects my decision to network with them. What I did not write about, is how I completely fail to understand what motivates certain Twitter users not to follow back when they are a brand where Social Media is such a perfect fit.
Case in point, I reached out a week or so ago to probably 50 or more wineries. The vast majority were in Southern California but I went up and down the coast because there are great wineries from San Diego to Washington. I love wine, I love to visit wineries, to go wine tasting, the whole experience. If there’s a product that has a huge emotional tie-in, huge brand loyalty, wine is it. If I was running the marketing for a winery, you better believe that Social Media would be a huge part of the strategy, and that a wine aficionado like myself would be someone to latch on to.
Now, as I mentioned last week, I do use my Twitter account for networking – but not selling. My company does a lot of business with wineries. And if I happen to tweet about a winery t-shirt we did, an apron, custom bottle openers or something else, and it catches the eye of another winery, that’s OK isn’t it? I am not soliciting business; just networking within one of my target markets. But none of that is really evident in my Twitter home page. So I don’t think that’s the reason why I just deleted about 90% of the wineries after they failed to follow back. (I did keep following the brands I really like, proof that my motives were more than just sales.)
But I have to wonder, is it because their Twitter account just sits idle and no-one has checked it in a week? Is it a less than half-hearted attempt to be in Social Media? Is it the ignorance of “build a Twitter site and they will follow”? How can one, as a marketing person, ignore people reaching out to you and your brand? The one thing I know is a marketer like that will do more damage for a brand by leaving potential customers hanging than if they were never in that space in the first place.
I’m not picking on wineries. I also follow a couple dozen restaurants in San Diego. Same scenario. Not only do they not follow back, but they hardly tweet. The silence is deafening. A few weeks prior, I set out to follow all the local San Diego bloggers who had the inside scoop on the San Diego scene. Local news, weather sports, entertainment. Nothing, zip, nada.
If they knew how sensitive I was to this issue of returning a follow maybe they’d try harder. I doubt it. But Social Media is a two-way street. Unless you are so influential that people will follow you purely for the insight of your content and/or your two-way street is so noisy with followers you cannot possibly keep up, then I suggest you listen to the quiet noise of a customer trying to reach you. So today I again said goodbye to dozens of “friends” I hardly knew.