What Twitter’s New Mute Feature Means For MarketersPosted on 05/19/2014We all have that one friend. They’re opinionated, often uninformed and have no filter whatsoever. And for some reason, we follow them on Twitter. If you’ve ever wished that you could find a switch to turn off their half-baked tweets for a few days (or months, or years…), now you can. Twitter recently unveiled a new “mute” feature that allows you to remove a user’s tweets and retweets from your timeline and block their push or SMS notifications. The silenced user will not be notified of their “muted” status, as they can still send you direct messages and favorite, reply to and retweet your tweets. This means that you’re only one click away from silencing someone you follow in a way that leaves them blissfully unaware. While this might be great news for personal users, this is somewhat terrifying for marketers. Though someone who is truly annoyed with a company’s Twitter activity is more likely to unfollow than mute, they still have the option to shut off your tweets during particularly tweet-heavy days, like when you’re conducting a Twitter-based live interview or real-time tweeting a major event. For the first time since Twitter’s launch, there’s no guarantee that all of your followers are seeing your tweets in their timeline. What you tweet has always been important, but now it could be what keeps you from (or causes you to be) muted. Here are some crucial things to keep in mind: Give the people what they want. Tread lightly. It’s a dialogue, not a monologue. |
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