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When using social media to market your brand, how many times have you been tempted to just scream out the message about your upcoming sale or promotion?

How many times have you held back that sales pitch while asking people you meet on line about their day/children/business, etc.?

We all expect a Return on Investment from our social media activities. Often we become impatient about spending time on our campaigns when they’re just not bringing in new clients, “enough” clicks to our website or online sales in what we believe to be a timely manner.

In the infographic in Chelsi Nakano’s post: Branding Statistics: Facebook vs. Twitter, Chelsi quotes these statistics:

• 29% of all people on Twitter follow a brand
• 39% of all people on Twitter have tweeted about a brand
• 29% have retweeted about a brand

Brands definitely see the value in using Twitter for business. However, engagement and sharing on Twitter takes time, especially when your business is a new or unknown brand.

During our Twitter campaign for Roaring Pajamas and while monitoring for our clients, we find many tweets that are just aggressive sales efforts that most likely are turning off followers.

We’d like to share some examples with you, along with our suggestions for marketing properly to your online Twitter community.

Below are four ways to meet and keep Twitter followers:

1. Avoid automated direct messages(“auto DMs”). Auto DMs are largely frowned upon by most social media experts. We strongly suggest that if a brand would like to connect via DM, that the message is personalized to each follower. For example: Thanks for following us, Janet! Your pet walking business sounds like a lot of fun. How dogs do you walk in a day? This non-confrontational contextual tweet is harmless, entices conversation and starts a relationship. Yes, this process takes time! But shortcuts, in the long run, fail.
2. If you must use an auto DM, use it to relay a positive message, thank the user for following and tell them why they’ll like reading your tweets. For example: Thanks for following! We hope you enjoy our tweets about improving your social media campaign. Tweet us your questions, we’d love to  help.
3. Avoid sending followers away! We find that a lot of companies will, immediately after being followed, invite us to like them on Facebook or another social media network. Really? We just followed them on Twitter and now they have an opportunity to build a relationship and to market their product or services to us. Why would they ask us to leave to go to another network?  Here’s an example of what not to do: Thanks for following! Please connect with us on Facebook too – http://t.co/facebook. or Please connect with me on Naymz! It’s a great tool for personal brand management.
4.  Lastly, avoid selling a brand new follower.This practice will most certainly alienate your potential customer. Here’s an example of a recent exchange with someone we just followed. The names have been eliminated for privacy:@XYZCOPY  We are a printing & scanning solutions consultation company. May we come visit you to discuss cost saving solutions in printers & scanners?@RoaringPajamas No thank you; we don’t do much printing and don’t have a copier. Thanks for asking.@XYZCOPY Anytime! We also specialize in scanning and document management. Let us know if we can answer any questions. Have a great day!!

   @RoaringPajamas Did you look at what we do? Seriously. We’re in a paperless business, after all.

   @XYZCOPY got busy and didn’t have time until late this evening obviously. Wow very nice website!! I can see you are well versed in Social Media!

   @XYZCOPY We offer Cloud Based storage & integration at the panel of the MFP. We allow our customers to directly connect to the Cloud FROM the copier.

   @RoaringPajamas Really? Are you still trying to sell me something I don’t need?

   @XYZCOPY Just thought I’d mention that in case there was an interest. Just let me know if you have questions. Have a great rest of your weekend!!

   @XYZCOPY We do specialize in reducing the amount of printers in a given fleet, thus eliminating them. 🙂 Could we assist you with that?

   @RoaringPajamas We’re unfollowing you now. Good-bye.

Build and nurture a relationships with people before you ask for appointments, offer discounts or any other type of sales activity.

We know that for some companies, social media is treated (and funded) as just another sales channel.

Experienced marketers know that each channel has its unique set of best practices in order to fully leverage the potential of the channel. By taking your time, reaching out to talk with people instead of just selling them, brands effectively build relationships (and eventually sales) with their community.