Only when you get suspended or banned from a social network will it finally dawn on you how much of your own life you put into these networks.
As of 48 hours ago one of our business Twitter profiles with over 5,000 followers was suspended.
Why?
Well, we have no idea and a support ticket submitted to Twitter 48 hours ago still has no update. The automatic reply stated that Twitter does accidently suspend profiles so lets hope this is an accident.
The Twitter profile took our staff over 6 months to build up to a 5,000 follower count by updating the profile with content at least 3 times per day. There was no selling, no spam and no abuse. We chatted to our followers and answered their questions and received praise.
Model social networking citizens some would say.
Will our profile be re-activated? Only Twitter knows right now.
I have heard that other businesses, when finding out that they have been banned from Facebook or Twitter seek legal consul to see if they can sue the social network!
Wait a minute – all the social networks are free and its your risk for using the service.
However, I do understand why people, who are wrongly accused of breaching the rules, get really upset. Just because the service is free does not mean you have no emotional link to your social profiles and you would if you put in some hard effort into building your “home”.
The good news for us is that we know this can happen so we planned for this event.
Let me explain…
One of the most important tasks you should do when setting up your business social networking profiles is find a way to get your followers and fans into a database that you own such as your email-marketing database. So if, like us, you get suspended or banned you can always seek comfort in knowing that a good percentage of your fans are also your email subscribers.
And to be honest the conversion rate for email is far higher than any social network.
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How we get our fans and followers into our email-marketing database is to direct them back to our websites as often as we can. This is achieved by posting a link to our latest blog post or article to our social profiles.
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This does become time-consuming if done manually so we use CampaignHub to automate process.
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Once the person arrives at our website we display prominent banners and text alerting the visitor to our monthly newsletter.
We also run prize-draws and giveaways in Facebook and Twitter using CampaignHub software. This is by far the most effective way to get fans into your email-marketing database and with the software the entrants can invite their friends and workmates thus increasing our subscribers further.
Summary
Do not, for one moment, think that you will never be banned or suspended from a social network. Even a massive site like SocialMediaToday.com was blocked by Facebook!
If you have invested time and resources to establish your business in social networks spend a little bit more time implementing a strategy to get as many fans as possible within a database you own.
Case Studies
CampaignHub for social media marketing solutions is http://www.campaignhub.co.nz – four pages of particular interest would be:
Starting point for a professional presence in social media
Running an Event in social media
Social Media ROI
Starting point for a professional presence on Social Media – case study
Send a tweet to @Delbius, include your ticket number, & ask for cause of suspension.
For more info: http://blog.tweetsmarter.com/twitter-tips/in-the-…
Wow – thanks for the tip and thats a really good blog post you have – I have printed it out for reference.
excellent post and so sorry to hear you got suspended, you are a model of well behaved professionalism. bizarre. hope you have that profile up and running again in no time!
thanks for your tips.
I'm sure it was an accident or at the least a minor hiccup. Still and all, it's quite upsetting when it happens. Thanks for all your tips
This is really good that you've written it. I've been suggesting for a long time that depending on companies where you have zero contractual mutual obligations is like giving up a piece of your business. Whether it's for blogging, or large social media platforms, or whatever, the price of free services is way too high to tolerate. There's good risk and bad. Depending on someone else who can pull the plug or start charging you silly fees to ransom the function is just bad thinking. Anyway good for you for sharing the "backup" concept, and hope you will keep preaching it. It's huge.
Very good heads-up for businesses. Thanks for a well delivered piece.
I've been mulling over just how much time to spend with facebook versus my own blog – this post has helped me clarify in my own mind that your own blog/site is the core and everything else just a spoke. Good luck with twitter