Understanding Twitter to get followers to get more sales!

[dccollectibles]

I've been using Twitter a while, and like many of you, probably been making tons of mistakes in the etiquette of the social media landscape. Right now, I'm trying to get a handle on the "proper" way to respond to tweets that @reply or @mention us. I've read enough now to know the difference in the two, but structuring that into a competent tweet is another thing. Anyone know how best to respond to tweets that include your @username? The object here is to get more followers and hopefully eyes on our store.

For example: Tweet for a chance to win a Funko POP! Vinyl Figure DC Set Follow & RT to enter goo.gl/fb/s7pmD @DCCollectibles

In the above example, what would be a "proper" layed out tweet reply to keep the conversation going? I want to thank them of course, but also recall our name and perhaps store link? And of course not look like a tool in doing so.

[thelivesandlovesofmaggiethecat]

Does anyone read any of that crap?

I haven't looked at what anyone I'm following tweets or tweeted anything other than the occasional new listing for years. If you are going to follow people who are likewise selling, the site becomes one long list of ads most of which are automatically generated 60 an hour.

I use FB for communicating with people I actually know.

[dccollectibles]

Whether they read it or no, the name of the endgame (at least ours) is to promote and get our name out in as many faces as possible. Through an interesting combo of luck and forward thinking, we've managed to find ourselves in a position to capitalize on certain things--if only I could figure out the best way to do so.

Facebook is slowly becoming like Myspace 3 years ago. Not quite out of the picture, but certainly not the "in" thing.

[MoonwishesStore]

I pop on over to FB once a week to catch up on posts of people I know but otherwise I ignore it. Ever since they changed to the timeline thing I hate it. Surprisingly, since I started to ignore FB, I have gotten more followers! I focus on Pinterest which seems to function better for the kind of promoting I want to do and I am gaining lots of followers there. I track them each month to see how many I get each month and so far this month almost 60 new ones. Getting near 500 followers. Fun to look through someone else's board and to discover that they have something of yours pinned! Twitter I have never understood. I post to there, but don't have a clue how to even see if someone posts back. I just run out of time for all those different social things. To keep up with all of them, I would need many more hours in my day!

[tigercreekgifts]

I got almost 30 new followers on Pinterest in the last 3-4 weeks so, I'm doing good there too. Checked my analytics and people are visiting my shop from Pinterest, and the number of visitors is growing. I get about 14-16 visitors from Pinterest each week. Could be better but, I'm not complaining!

As for Twitter, I made a post about it on here a month or so ago. I'm still trying to figure it all out. Started using hashtags (the number sign, then type in a run or a few words all ran together to create a tag). Hashtags will bring up links to websites and other profiles related to the term you used when clicked on. Like if you do a hashtag (I can't type it here, it will cut off my message) but then type in ActionFigures, when someone clicks on ActionFigures, it will bring up a list of other things pertaining to them.

I lost a few more followers on Twitter, down to 29 but, I can't remember to post several times a day because I'm always so busy with my store. I only post once every 2-3 days and I heard people like you to tweet constantly. I'm sure there are still some other things about Twitter that I'm doing wrong because I can't seem to get people to interact with me and retweet my posts or reply to the questions I ask.

[theartsandlettersofmaggiethecat]

[AudioGasoline]

I still say that the best use of Twitter is to mix it up: product ads, news from your niche, cross-posting items from other social media accounts, as well as general interest stuff like humor, rhetorical statements, musings, shout-outs and interesting pics. As long as it's related to what you do & sell, you're going to get the attention of potential buyers. And a more dynamic feed is more apt to gain followers IMHO.

I also believe that you have to interact with other users to get taken seriously; after all, interaction is the whole reason people are using Twitter in the first place. Static posts are for Facebook, Tweeters wanna tweet. Talk to them, reply, retweet, compliment, ask direct questions, and generally act like you give a damn about the service. Not to say you have to be on it all day, but try to use it as your followers do (when you can). Folks can see through an unattended or half-hearted account pretty easily, and I know that I don't follow people who just spit product ads in my face all day, even when I'm interested in the products. I saw a bit of social media marketing advice once that has stuck with me: "People don't like to shop where they socialize." By all means, tell them about your wares and remind them how to find your store, but unless you mix in some novel & interesting things along the way, it seems that many people lose interest pretty quickly. You gotta sneak up on 'em, so to speak.

I took over 350 new Twitter followers last month (cumulatively, after the unfollowers left), so I like to think these tactics are working. But we've all found our best success with different social media networks; Pinterest is big for many of you, Twitter has been most productive for me at getting people into my store (Pinterest a close 2nd). I'm not trying to tell anyone how to run their ad campaigns, just sharing how I've been able to unlock some of Twitter's usefulness. There's so much more to it that I simply don't have time to pursue.

[AudioGasoline]

@DCCollectibles
I know your promo is almost over, but getting people to continue following me after the giveaway has ended was the hardest part for me when I've done them (twice). In hindsight, I seemed to mostly attract freebie-hunters more than potential customers, and once the promo was over they just unfollowed and moved on. For all I know, the winners were other sellers who just won a free $40 product to list.

Not to derail your thread, but in the vein of your question "how to keep the conversation going", I've thought about a doing a twist on the standard giveaway paradigm. I've thought on this quite a bit, so bear with me: Usually it's "Follow us" or "Retweet this" or something similar, but we're really only hoping that they choose to dig deeper and actually visit our store. Best case would be to get them to visit the store first in order to enter the giveaway. What about something like "To enter, follow us and tweet your favorite item from our store with the hashtag #AudioGasolineRocks" or some novel hashtag that's specific to you. You can follow the hashtag and add entrants that way, and you know that they've actually been inside your store already (even if just to look at one item). Bonus effect: by visiting our store, they've also primed their browser cookies and Google bots to favor our store in search engine queries.

And we could take it a step further by retweeting their messages and running product ads for the popular items. If you follow them back, then you can also use the Direct Messages system (you have to follow each other to use it). Send them a coupon code or free shipping offer or some bonus gift if they decide to buy their tweeted item. Maybe give them another chance to win if they share it on another social network (although I'm not sure how the logistics of that might work). I haven't actually done any of this yet, just something I've been thinking about. I might use it for the holiday shopping season, just to get some products and activity floating around hyperspace a little bit.

Another giveaway twist I've pondered that sorta continues the conversation is to giveaway promotional items instead of product, like t-shirts, sticker packs, badges, patches or other things with our logo and web addy. Sometimes these items are cheaper than inventory products, and a person could afford to have more than one winner. Plus, when they use these items they'll be advertising for you. Win-win, just make sure you've got some bitchin' designs that people will actually want to flaunt. Even the old standard promos like keychains, pens and calendars get used, and are relatively cheap to have made. Another giveaway twist: all orders this month receive our new 2014 calendar or new sticker design. The options are endless, depending on how much time and money you want to invest.

[FoxAndFish]

[MoonwishesStore]

[AudioGasoline]

Wanelo has cracked the code of social commerce too, at least for certain niches. One of the drawbacks of Pinterest, as my followers are using it, is that they can choose to only follow certain boards, many of which don't include my product pins. If they only follow my turntable gallery or gig poster boards, they'll never see my products when I post them. Other networks will give followers every post you make, but if they pick and choose boards they can bypass your ads altogether.

I tend to get more product repins from people who are finding me through Pinterest searches, while they're building boards on their favorite bands or record labels or cover art. I've had a couple of record labels find me recently and repin my records to their discography boards, which is freakin' awesome. But I think that different product types react differently to different kinds of social media. Maybe there's just more crafty people on Pinterest and more punk rockers on Twitter.

[dccollectibles]

Getting back to my original request, one of the reasons I want to find a way to harness this power is that a very prominent player in the industry decided a while back to have the exact same name as our store. And being as there is a very well known convention going on right now, there are tons of tweets out there with the potential to promote our brand, even if only indirectly. Just today we got a couple dozen mentions! Unfortunately, I'm not twitter-tech savvy enough to know how to reply to such tweets. No one has directly messaged the @DCCollectibles account yet, so it's somehow being looked over. Perhaps we should just tweet something mentioning @DCCollectibles? Just don't know.

[AudioGasoline]

One thing about the DMs: both sender and receiver have to be following each other. If they follow you but you don't follow them, they can't DM you (and vice-versa).

What kinds of messages have you been using? If they're talking you up, a simple retweet would be a polite and appropriate response. You could tweet them directly at their @username with a thank you, or "if you like that, check out our Pinterest gallery" sort of thing. Definitely acknowledge those mentions, though. And probably people who've entered your drawing, but I would do those in bulk, like "Thanks to our new contest entries: @person1, @person2..."

[dccollectibles]

Ever since Twitter made some 2.0 changes to their setup, I've had trouble finding certain things--retweet being one of them. I get the email mentions, etc but there's no place to retweet directly. In twitter I don't even get the messages because as you said I'm not following them. Would the first step be to follow the one who mentioned us before even posting? It used to be so simple--retweet a message and you're done. Sigh.

In twitter speak, would an appropriate thanks message be something like: Thanks @thepersonsname for the mention @DCCollectibles! Try our #SDCC pinterest gallery. http://tinyurl.com/kvmuwjm Like us for an invite to post.

Having the @username at the beginning of the tweet is the direct private message right?

[Misty4m]

twitter alone is not going to bring you more sales or traffic unless it's connect to another social media and I find using the key -->> # can work also.