Lessons - Why Twitter (x) Could Make or Break Your Business | Sam Kelly - Founder of Inspire Network & Twitter Authority

In this episode, we explore how businesses can truly maximize their impact on Twitter. We discuss actionable strategies to build meaningful connections, engage with followers, and add real value to your audience. You'll hear about creative ways to drive sales through Twitter lists, how to handle customer complaints effectively, and why social media should be a top priority for every business. And let's talk about now, so that's how you've built out your business. Now, let's talk about some of the things that you try and do through your clients' accounts to help them build business sales through Twitter, because I feel like most people just miss the mark on Twitter. It should be almost like a thing that businesses feel they have to have, but goodness, if you see the average business Twitter account, it's like, what, I know why they're bothering, but also it's like, why are you talking because it's just horrible. It's just it's not doing anything in that positive. Hosting me, me, me, me, me, and it's not about that at all, and sometimes I see big accounts, like a big business, and they've got like hundreds of followers, and they're following 500. It's the worst, and it looks so snobby, and especially, if you follow back someone, if you follow someone back that's following you, it's kind of courtesy, but also it's, like if they're normal, I'm not talking about weirddozer, and you know I'll follow them, but if you're following someone that's a genuine person, you're going to make their day, and it's going to make them feel special. So I always follow back people who I think will add value to my feed, so don't forget, it's not about me at all, it's about my audience, and I go and I make Twitter lists, and so you can keep an eye on the people who might be potential clients or potential customers, I also help them and add value. So what I do is, for example, at Christmas time, I created an Irish gift ideas Twitter list. So to kind of help the businesses that it's suffered through the pandemic, I did an Irish gift ideas Twitter list, and people started buying from that list. So I asked anyone that had a business to let me know, and I would add them to the list. So it had, like, think 700 on the list, or no, I think I only had 250 on the list, but then 700 followed my list. So a lot of people actually messaged me, sent me letters, sent me flowers, and said they got loads of sale from the sales from the fact that I made that Twitter list. So what I was doing was I was helping the people who were selling. I was also helping solve a problem for people on what to buy, especially if their family were abroad, and they couldn't see them at Christmas, they wanted to send them something Irish. And then I also added value to my audience because they knew that that list was there. They could just click on the list and see, and it helped them do their shopping for Christmas. So just, it's about adding value and helping your audience. Like, I get many businesses saying, you know, oh, you know, we want to do a webinar and it's a panel discussion blah blah blah. And I'm like, oh God, would you not just do what do your customers need right now? Well, they need more sales. Okay, why could you do a webinar and how to get more sales? That would be more useful and more valuable. So it's about thinking about the customer all the time and what they need. I hope that answers your question. It does. No, I think it's very smart. And and I guess the the follow up or the the other point when when businesses put themselves out there and they start to build the profile, they're probably concerned with falling outside of the box or doing things that are a little bit differently. Like, when I look at the average business account, again, it's just it's very boring. But then I look at something like I'm just using one reference point, like a morning brew, which is all, you know, it's a news, it's a news outlet that's very off the off the wall when it comes to their Twitter account. And that's actually probably how they've built a lot of their following. But brands are always concerned about if I put myself out there, I'm going to get some negativity and I'm going to get something like you said, some, you know, some trolls or whatnot. So how do you deal with with that? Is that just in your own head? You have to get over it or are there actual strategies that you have to deal with when you start to get some, you know, colorful comments? Well, you won't really start getting those so you go over like 5,000 followers or so, right? And if you do, just block them. Okay, if you get a customer complaint, that's a different story. Okay, so let's say you get a complaint, I had a coffee shop. I was running their Twitter account. And this lady said, oh, I was in there yesterday and the waitress was wagon and, you know, why she didn't, and my coffee was cold or whatever she said, right? So I said, right, okay, hi. So the first thing you do is you engage. You engage us and have a really, we're really sorry to hear that you had this experience. Could we please DM you and get more details and investigate? So you take it offline. So even if she doesn't go to DM, you've shown the public that you're dealing with the issue. So you've shown the public that you've tried to deal with the issue, which, which looks good, right? And then if they do go offline, what you do is you follow up. So you say, right, give us your number, give us your email or whatever. And then you get the person in charge, the decision maker to contact that person and find out what happened. What we did was we found out what happened. We sent the lady a gift voucher to come back in and have lunch. She came in and had lunch and guess what? She did a lovely tweet saying, thank you so much for the gorgeous lunch. She became a brand advocate because we helped her and we dealt with the issue. So that's the only thing about like people here about these big stories, big mistakes, hit the right person running your Twitter account or get them trained properly and that will never ever happen. So it's having social media strategy, having a policy as well, like so that if such and such happens, this is what we do. You don't have it all in place so that they know what to do. But the worst Twitter accounts I've seen have been bigger companies that think they know their audience, but they actually don't and they just don't engage. They don't say thank you. Just simple things like if someone like I mentioned a brand a few times because I liked that brand and I used to mention the brand because I'd be sitting there at my cup of tea and I'd mention the brand and they never even thanked me for mentioning them, which was a huge missed opportunity because if they had retweeted me or if they had engaged with me, I would have actually retweeted that to make them look good, you know, because I'd be impressed by that. So I also always give kudos when I get great customer service and I never complain. I never get involved in controversy. I stay away from all of that and I just keep it positive, add value, share my knowledge and help others and I help others by retweeting them. It's not about me. My audience would like to see other people as well, you know, and usually my audience want to support businesses. So I did actually have a great story from last week and this lady rang me. She's a member of my Women's Inspire Network and she had ordered 500 lots and lots and lots of this vegan chocolate covered peanuts, right? Because she does vegan chocolates and she rang me. She was quite obsessed. She said, I don't know what to do. That customer has cancelled the order and I've got it already ordered. I don't know what to do. How do I get rid of this much chocolate? And I said, wait, don't panic. I said, let's do a tweet. So we did a tweet and the tweet said, and I'll find it now for you. By the way, I'm talking to you. The tweet said, I have this amount of chocolate. Can you, if anyone is interested or whatever it was, we told the story basically in the tweet and I helped her compose the tweet and oh my gosh, it went viral because people said, oh my god, let's help this small business. The all bought chocolates. Everybody, she got 100 orders, she got three new stockists. You know, she just was inundated with help from Twitter and one guy just bought a box of them and she got, she got the chocolate all, she didn't lose that any money. Isn't that just a lovely, lovely story? And that's the kind of thing I do. So we just did, we just did a tweet and I supported her. I said, come on guys, let's support this small business. So we got behind her and everybody went and bought chocolate covered, vegan chocolate covered peanuts. So it's just a nice little story. But for everybody, pair of bucks and only costs like 10 euros, you know, so, you know, just every little bit. It's easy when you get, when you get a crowd involved to, like, the crowdsource, you know, to crowdsource a brand, especially this small business will make a huge difference. But you know, one thing that I think always happens and I don't really know why still in 2021 is that brands don't place the value on the person or the person who runs their social media. They feel like it's, I don't know why that is. It's like an extra priority. Yeah, it's it's like, oh, you know, you're, you're marketing and then tweet once in a while. Yeah, no, no, there should be someone post on Instagram or yeah, there should be someone who is assigned this role and a plan and a strategy. Or if you don't want to then outsource it to someone like me or someone else who does that. Like, you know, I don't understand that they don't make it a priority. And it's so important because I remember seeing, I remember I put a tweet up saying, okay, ladies, best tangent moisturizer. Like it was just like for fun. And I put it up and I got all these responses about the best tangent moisturizer, which by the way for the guys listening, it's like makeup, light makeup, bright for the summer. And so I got so many responses and I was like, where are all the brands? Not one brand topped into that conversation and said, hey, Samantha, we have a tangent moisturizer. It's really good. Here, there's buy now clicked to buy not one brand did that. And that was such a missed opportunity because the the tweet went crazy. We had about 200 responses. So that was 200 potential sales. You know, and 200 responses on Twitter is like thousands of impressions. Yeah, like thousands of people saw that. Yeah, for sure, for sure, for sure. Whereas I've been branded and said, you know, oh, hi, Sam, I'm actually we have a, but look, we'd love to send you one to try. And if anyone else wants to try, here's a discount code, you know, yeah, that's what I would. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.