10 Insider Tips for Twitter Success
1. Avoid automation. People instantly unfollow people who write like bots. Show that you are human by writing each of your tweets. It’s one thing if you write them and schedule them to go out later, but don’t publish automatic pre-scripted tweets.
2. Be personal. Personal tweets let people see who you are. If your tweets are just about your niche, then followers may think you’re just a robot. Lesson: Post occasional tweets that aren’t strictly about your niche.
3. Adopt it. Tweeting is a new form of writing, so make your own conclusions as to the fastest way to improve. But one great way to develop your own writing style is by adopting great techniques you see in other posts.
4. Be familiar. After you have mastered how to get people to click on your links, standardize your writing style so that your followers become familiar with your voice. When followers know what to expect, reading your tweets can become part of their daily routine.
5. Big message in small ways. If there is a big event going on – a big launch maybe – the best way to promote it is to direct your followers to your blog. On your blog, you can update as much as you like. Twitter is not the place to publish updates every half hour.
6. Branch out. Use Twitter as a tool in your marketing toolbox, not as a complete business model.
7. Slide in. Twitter is great for opening up dialogue with big names in your niche, even JV (Joint Venture) partners. JV partners are effective marketers who can help launch your products. Ease your way into relationships with them by answering questions they ask in Twitter. In responding to them by tweet, you are helping them gain popularity.
8. Build better business partners. When you follow people, you become familiar with their views and interests. Reading people’s tweets will help prepare you for meeting people face-to-face. You will discover common ground for discussion and relationship building.
9. Appreciate Twitter culture. Follow Friday is an example of how to use Twitter quirks to strengthen your relationship with your followers. Follow Friday is when members recommend other Twitter users to follow. Try recommending four or five people who you feel others will get value from following. Participating in Follow Friday is a great way to fit into the Twitter community.
10. Email it, blog it. Include your Twitter URL in the signature of your emails and blog posts.
Tags: Success, tweet, twitter
2. October 2009 at 3:31 am :
I do all the above. Remember to RT people whom you want to look at you and your links.You didn’t stress enough how important it is to follow everyone back whom you wouldn’t want to lose as a reader.
This would be Logic 101 but a huge number of people don’t understand this either because they:
1) Heard somewhere that it is important to follow a limited number oneself so you can read their feeds
2) Want to appear popular by following 30 while being followed by 3000
3) Are just lazy and don’t realize that serious growing Twitterers will have no choice but to unfollow you if you don’t follow back in a month
To solve 1) above, follow everyone and read a limited feed via another private account that doesn’t post much nor represent your brand.
To solve 2) above, a person has to stop the prima donna act. Even if you do get thousands of followers, the very best of them (or at least those whose followings are growing) will still be unfollowing you because they will be boxed in under 2000 otherwise. You can say that spammers also fit this description but that is because it is the logical behavior of someone who wants to grow their account. They cannot follow more than 2000 without 1800+ following back. If you are not in their top 200 favorites, they will unfollow you. Odds are, unless you are a favorite “Breaking News” account, you WILL get unfollowed by up and comers if you don’t follow back.
Regarding 3), Twitter is powerful enough now that more people really should check in more often who haven’t been on since July or August.
2. October 2009 at 6:49 am :
Great points Allen!
Another solution to #1 is the upcoming Twitter Lists.
http://www.theincometeam.com/blog/2009/10/01/twitter-launching-user-created-follow-lists/
I think these lists will be a great upset to most twitter users.
It will basically say: Here are the people that I want to read, the rest of you are just here for a big follower count.
3. October 2009 at 8:39 am :
Follow Friday is a tip that not enough people listen too. I think that they immediately think that suggesting other reads will lose them readers - as bloggers have proven, this simply isn’t the case. My leadership blog actually increased its traffic after it started linking out to other leadership websites. I think in the same way, sharing twitter followers is good practise for Twitter Success.