Are you listening?

This is a short opinion piece but I’d like to hear your thoughts.

Twitter is rolling out (slowly) an update that will double the size of a tweet from 140 to 280 characters. I asked on Twitter and Facebook if that will make a difference in how they use the platform.

Twitter:

Nope. I don’t have it yet.
Do you think 280 character limit will change your use of twitter? pic.twitter.com/QCIdyLGVgx

— Mike Mueller (@MikeMueller) September 27, 2017

Facebook:

So far it’s ‘crickets’ on Twitter for responses and a few short responses on Facebook. I can’t speak for others but for me, I do check in with twitter daily. I have a few lists I follow including my Coolest 100.

I also post to twitter (both automatically and manually) multiple times a day. I’ve tried to start conversations with others but it generally fails as they aren’t listening – so my tweets go unseen / unanswered.

Here’s my thing – and I’ve been saying this since social media began…

It’s not up to you on how you want to engage your next client, it’s up to them.

It’s always been. If your next client happens to be an avid tweeter they may find you on Twitter and since you are not following them, they’ll tweet you publicly. If you are following them they’ll probably DM you.

The same goes for Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin, YouTube, NextDoor, SnapChat and on and on. If they can find you on their network of choice that’s where they’ll reach out to you from and guess what?

You better be listening!

Are you? And by that I don’t mean checking twitter on the weekends when you have nothing to do – I’m talking about actively listening. Getting notifications immediately so that you can respond in turn, immediately.

If you aren’t doing that, why have the channel in the first place?

True story: Everyday I used to make a fabulous 2 egg omelette. I had a close real estate friend of mine who had a twitter account that he used to broadcast all of his listings to. Marketing, right? Everyday for a few months I would tweet him a picture of the daily omelette. Somedays it would be a public tweet, others it was a DM. He never saw them.

I had lunch with him one day and showed him this. What if I were a house buyer or seller and an avid twitter fanatic? I would have seen his “listing” tweets and yet I would have completely ignored when I tried to contact him.

So maybe the question isn’t if you’ll start using twitter differently with 280 characters, maybe it’s are you listening at all?

Seriously, this went on every single day for months!

What do you think? I’m listening.

Photo by Vittorio Zamboni on Unsplash

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Mike Mueller

A former professional hand model, Mike now builds Custom WordPress Blogs that rock!

He's an avid hockey fan, rides a mountain bike, a few motorcycles (he had a really fast one,bought a cool orange one, and still rides a really slow one), he loves strong beer and good red wine.