If you want to be effective with using Twitter for business, you need to build a strong following. Even though it may sound like you’re in Bible school learning to run a church, it isn’t quite the same (unless there’s a Church of Twitter we don’t know about!) . To build a strong Twitter following, or Tweetdom as I like to call it, you have to follow the Cardinal Rules of the Tweetdom:
1. Follow others to be followed. If no-one knows who you are, why would they follow you? Some people recommend following anyone you come across. This may be an option for you if you really don’t plan on keeping up with your feed. I recommend finding people in the same industry as you, or Tweeps that often talk about things you are interested in. This will make your endeavours Much more interesting. Now, you have to show a bit of restraint. More often than not, if Tweeps are looking at your profile prior to deciding to follow you back or not, you want to make sure to watch your Ratio. I will go into that in another lesson, but basically, don’t let the number of people you are following exceed 2x your amount of followers. This makes you look more like a spam account, and will cause any discerning eye to wonder. Keep it slow at first, but slow and steady win the race! **Disclaimer ** There are many Twexperts that will tell you to follow anything and everything that Tweets. Doing this is like throwing a stick of dynamite in the water- you’ll get more fish, but who knows what kind of trouble may come along!
2. If you Bore them, they will run. If you had your choice of listening to someone interesting on one side of the table, or a monotonous boring accountant discuss taxes on the other (sorry to the accountants out there!), which would you pay more attention to? The same rule applies to Twitter. Sure, some of the more boring types may give you some interesting information, but that’s probably because they are at the top of their field. Your goal is to NOT become one of these types, as you are not yet qualified to call yourselves Twexperts. Your followers that actually read their feeds want to be entertained. They want to know more about you, but not enough to make your family doctor blush. They want to feel your day passing by, they want to smell the meal your spouse is preparing (you lazy Tweeps, you should be helping!). To build a strong following, and not one made of cards, treat your Tweeps as an audiene that can leave (unfollow) at any moment. The person that keeps everyone entertained at the party is the one that everyone talks about later. Become that person on Twitter, and watch the ReTweets and @Replies float in!
3. If they come a’knockin, say hello! You will have much better luck getting new followers to remain followers if you engage them as soon as you get that email in your inbox. Say hello, thank them for showing interest in your “Exciting and Tantalizing” life, and let them know you’re available to chat. Hook them from the get-go, and you won’t have a problem keeping them as your trusty followers for a good, long time (or until you Tweet something they don’t like).
4. There should be a limit on Tweets , but there isn’t. I have unfollowed many Tweeps for the simple reason that they polluted my feed. I try to stay within around 3-7 Tweets during any given 1/2 hour period. This includes 1 ReTweet, and 2 @Replies. Sometimes you may get into a convo with an interesting Tweep, but remember – ALL of your followers see that converstation, and not all of them will appreciate it as much as you do. A quick rule of them, the third @Reply in a row to the same Tweep should never happen. Take it to the DM (Direct Message, not DungeonMaster). Don’t overTweet yourself. Take a breather. If something REALLY exciting is happening and you have to tell everyone but there isn’t enough room in just one Tweet and you have to use seven to tell the whole story because it is so awesome but there is just no way to tell everyone without using seven Tweets because for some reason Twitter decided to only give you 140 characters to type a message and you can’t figure out who can say something in 140 characters or less because everytime you send a text your friends end up getting three and they are always all jumbled like and no one really gets what you’re saying… You get the picture. If you have to tell a story, take it old-school, one step up — to the Blogs! Write a blog post that details EVERYTHING that you want to say, and then Tweet a quick summary with a shortened link to your post. In the case above, you could title it “Out of Breath, but BIG NEWS! http://notsure.whatlink.to.put”
5. More to Come… Not only is this a notice that I’ll have many more tips coming up, but it is a tip in an of itself! Always leave a little bit wanting. Let your followers know that you are full of little 140 character or less tidbits of information, insight, advice, humor, what have you. If they are always expecting something interesting, they won’t leave you, and they’re more likely to key into your Tweets when scanning their feed after an hour or a day (say it isn’t so!) of inactivity.
If you are looking for a cheat-sheet on who to follow, take a look at virl.com’s list of the Top 250 People that are the Coolest, Most Influential or Neatest on Twitter. The great thing for you to know is, all of these people have a HUGE following, and most of them will graciously follow you back. Now, if you’re expecting to get some great conversation out of them, I would look elsewhere. Tweeps with 1000+ followers that follow at least as many tend to stay mum, and most never look at their @replies, due to the staggering amount of them. If you had the patience to follow 100,000 people, and only 1% of them wrote you once a day, you would have 1000 messages to keep up with!
If you need to draw numbers, then feel free to follow them. Any of them will be an asset to your Tweetdom. I’ll admit- I follow of few of the Tweeps on that list – but primarily because I’ve looked over their latest updates and enjoyed what I saw. You never know- someone combing through the list of their Followers looking for fellow Tweeps interested in the same topics may just decide to follow you, as well. Plus, the automatic Black/Grey-hat FollowBots out there have a higher likelihood of finding you.
In my opinion, the best way to build a Strong following is to have an opinion. I emphasize Strong following, because it’s difficult getting people to look at you product or hear about your service if don’t even look at their feed. Let you followers know what you think (the ones that really do care), and find people that talk about topics you’re interested in. If they’re talking about it, and they see that you are too, then you are usually going to have another follower. Their friends will notice them talking to you, and will get curious, and will also follow you. If you keep this up with various active people on Twitter, you’ll be the King of your very own Tweetdom before you know it!
