"May We Follow You On Twitter" is So Much More Engaging

"Follow me on Twitter" is everywhere - websites, in-store signs, advertising, blog posts, television shows, movie trailers, posters, news broadcasts, you name it.  There is something inherently wrong about that sentence that sets the wrong tone from the start.  That sentence presumes that Twitter is all about the person or business making the request.  "Follow me so I can push information at you whenever I feel like it." 

A proverb I just found while looking for another one plays into my theme here:  "Those who want to hear from you will let you hear from them."  Hmmm. 

What would happen if businesses put up a poster asking, "May we follow you on Twitter?"  How much more engaging would that be?  More to the point, how many more customers would they engage on a daily basis?  Yes, you can look for tweets that have your business name mentioned, and you can engage with the folks that wrote those tweets.  What about the tweets that don't mention a business name at all?

If I were to tweet right now about how badly my back is hurting (and it is, for real), wouldn't it be cool if my chiropractor tweeted back "Hey @MarketingSings, I've got an opening today at 2 if you want to drop by."  He gets to fill in a last-minute cancellation, and add another eighty bucks to his day, and I get to sleep better tonight.  Perfect for both of us.

"Can't believe I have to drive downtown today" gets a response from my favorite downtown restaurant with "We've got some killer new pastries, and can box them up if you're headed to a business meeting."  OMG, I am so there!

My hairdresser sees me tweet "Another bad hair day in the wind and the rain," and she replies "Need a cut or just a new hairspray?  Give me a call."

I've been to two different autobody shops in the past three years.  I tweet "Got rear-ended today; car's a mess."  The auto body shop that is following me on Twitter and replies with "When are you coming by for an estimate?" is the one that will likely win my return visit, don't you think?

Granted, this approach is only workable if you are staying relatively on top of your Twitter stream, either real-time or through searches and lists.  But even if you don't reply to everything, you'll engage with more people - on their terms - than you ever did before.  Small businesses take heed.  If you are going to use Twitter to advance your business, think about whether you can leverage the platform as a true platform of engagement.  If you can ask your customers "May we follow you on Twitter," you could well end up making more money, building your business faster, and creating more brand advocates, who will ultimately become your unpaid outside sales force.

All of the best social media consultants will tell you that Twitter is a conversation; it's about engaging with people, listening, and helping them.  It is not a platform for pushing your message over and over again (even if you see many people using it that way).  Think of it as relationship marketing.

"May we follow you on Twitter" sets the right tone for the kind of engagement you want.

Don't you think?

(Now I'm off to see if I can configure a gadget for this blog that will do this for me.)