Brenda Burch Dumont's Blog

PART ONE – TWITTER

Many retailers are concerned about embracing social media for branding, recruiting, or customer service because of time.  The time it takes to build a following and the time it takes to stay in the game every day.

I thought it would be helpful to provide some information and expectations as to what sort of time commitment is required to use social media effectively.

Prior to my comments, please let me repeat my usual mantra…………

Social media needs to be planned before executing.  Opening a Twitter account or launching a Facebook Fan Page without deciding the objective, determining the program, defining whose responsible, discussing expectations etc. will result in failure and a lot of wasted time.

Considering the above and back to the time issue – Let’s use me as an example with the caveat that I am not a retailer, but I do expend considerable time resources to the maintenance of my social media presence for obvious reasons.  I have been on Twitter on a serious basis for 9 months….

On Twitter

Sometime this week I will have 700 followers.  This is a relatively low number compared against the 10,000 plus a national retailer can easily garner or the whillions Justin Bieber has BUT – planning comes into this number.  Twitter is known to be time consuming just by its very structure that requires a fair amount of time watching tweets go by on your feed and reading only the ones that REALLY interest you or only the ones by your favourite follower or only the ones on ‘recruiting’, etc. etc.

I try to stay somewhat abreast and in the game by devoting approximately 1 hour three times a week to closely following the feed (at different times of the day).  I use Hootsuite to show me immediately which tweets mention me – retailblog which tweets I have scheduled to be posted later, and many more features.

I tweet about 3 times a day and usually 2 of those 3 tweets are pre-programmed.  Out of 3 tweets, 1 or more could be re-tweets (someone else’s tweet which would interest my followers) and a new, original tweet by myself could be tweeted up to 3 times at various times of the day to ensure your whole tweeting audience is watching.  To compile and compose those daily tweets, schedule them, respond to questions on tweets, research new followers to see if you want to follow them, check on lists, etc.  For those activities, add another 2 plus hours per week to the total.  We are now up to 5 hours a week and counting. and I don’t focus a lot of effort on Twitter.  Most of my potential clients don’t use Twitter currently.  To reach my potential clients, and engage and retain my existing clients, good old email and telephone works best. But my business is all about B to B and not B to C like most retailers.

Why do I just have 700 followers (and I follow 772 )?  Many serious people/companies who are twittering primarily for business purposes, restrict who they follow to keep your newfeed full of learning and engaging tweets.  I don’t follow everyone who follow me, I often follow someone to test out the information they provide, and periodically I de-follow a number of accounts that may be providing excellent information but either they don’t interest or engage me.  (a BIG purge like that is coming for me before the summer is out).

I have to follow more accounts than some retailers might because I need to keep up on all things recruiting, all things retail in terms of news, expansions, people, plus particularly all things retail in Canada AND because of my social media consulting business, I follow the gurus who provide excellent up-to-the minute information on social media from best practises to new platforms.

In Twitter, as in LinkedIn or Facebook, at a certain point, the number of followers is irrelevant.  Maybe with a Facebook Fan Page, the more followers equals more engaged customers, more candidates, more people to spread the viral messages.  But in Twitter – perhaps one happy customer after a difficult customer service dispute is resolved is worth the time and effort, perhaps one excellent hire is worth the same?  How much is enough?  Absolutely no one can answer that question.   The key is to follow enough accounts to keep you engaged, informed, and aware.  And, to encourage enough followers intensify your brand, apply to your jobs, and WOW! buy your merchandise.  But, it takes time.  Here are some retailers who, in my opinion, do an excellent job on Twitter – most have been active about a year or so……….see how many followers they have………

London Drugs – 1,601

lululemon – 35,531

Shoppers Drug Mart – 1,257

Best Buy Canada – 1,226

Best Buy Canada Jobs – 158

The Body Shop Canada – 886

Ah, times waits for no man or woman……….gotta go and check my LinkedIn profile, respond to a few group discussions, ‘connect’ with a few more connections, but how much time that takes is for next week’s blog.

Filed under:
Retail, social media, social media recruiting by Brenda