Talking Twitter with Jacob Acker

By Delaney MacKenzie

Last Tuesday Jacob Acker, who is an Alumni of Grand Valley and currently a Marketing Account Coordinator at RCP Marketing, spoke with our Advertising Club. RCP Marketing, as stated in the name, is a full-service marketing firm.

After a brief introduction, Jacob began to discuss specifics about Twitter strategies and personal branding.

Target audience

The targeted audience for Twitter includes a younger market, ranging from 16 to 28-year-old users that are hip, urban, sarcastic, satirical, young, and immature. This audience is one of the easiest to engage, making Twitter the now social media platform.  Jacob exclaimed that a couple years ago there were 550 million users on Twitter and roughly 340 million tweets being sent out per day.

Opportunities

Think of Twitter as an open cocktail party on the internet. This is where anyone can comment on tweets and allow businesses to initiate relationships with customers, which is the ultimate dream for marketers. Additionally, this open-door policy allows anyone to be involved. It helps enhance a company’s customer service and captures the attention of total strangers.  Customers especially love the idea of reaching out to companies using their handle (@) or a hashtag (#) to get a response. Twitter allows for real-time feedback from clients, which makes interacting with customer’s time-consuming but also informative.

How to build your brand

To ensure that your Twitter account is successful, there are two steps you must take:

• Be appropriate for your target audience. Make sure your page is set up appropriately in regards to your current logos, contact information, and pictures. Clarity and relevance are the keys to success. Treat this as your business card.
• Be conversational. Use Twitter searches and advanced searches that make sense to your business. Find a way to use the information you’ve gathered to start or jump into a conversation. When you want to jump into a conversation, make sure you are adding value. Ask yourself, what does your customer want? People can search for your company through your conversations. If you are providing value, you’ll establish your brand as an authority.

Jacob goes on to explain the importance of minimizing how often we retweet positive posts about our companies. He exclaims that we should let our customers have a conversation without our involvement. Let them talk, while we simply sit back and listen.

Jacob continued to emphasize the importance of listening. He said, “Listen as much as you can. The more information you can take in, the better.”

On behalf of Grand Valley’s Advertising Club, I’d like to thank Jacob for sharing such useful information with our members regarding twitter strategies and personal branding.