Here’s how you can start seeing actual results from your social media presence and strengthen your belief in Twitter really being a genuine source of high quality, consistent traffic.
There is this fallacy that’s floated around for ages now that o build a large base of twitter followers, you need to follow as many people as possible. The premise here is that the more people you follow, the better your chances at having people reciprocate the gesture and “follow you back”.
Well, I hate to break it to you but that’s as false a social media strategy as they can come. If you build a social media presence by constantly following more and more people every day, you are doing nothing but creating a community of followers interested in that same logic, “large number of followers”, and nothing more.
Your followers accumulated in this manner will comprise mostly people who don’t use Twitter to follow you, but to collect Twitter leads and nothing more. You can’t achieve good results from a promotional Twitter campaign by accumulating a gazillion followers who follow you back out of reciprocity and nothing more. If people have thousands of people they follow on a daily basis, there is a split-second moment they have to view promotional messages “you” tweet, because as soon as you tweet them out, your tweets will be replaced by many other tweets promoting something else.
There goes your social media campaign..
What now, was the point of having thousands of followers who you accumulated by following to begin with?
THAT, is not a social media strategy my friends..
The probability of anyone’s successfully executing a successful Twitter campaign is much lower than of someone who has accumulated a following of people based on the “value” they provide through their tweets.
You can follow these few steps to recalibrating your social media presence right away, by making a few simple changes to both your Twitter account, as well as your “approach” to accumulating followers on Twitter:
1. Start Tweeting! I find thousands of people on Twitter who don’t tweet anything useful yet have tens of thousands of followers.. If you see such a user in the list of people you are “following” on Twitter, UNFOLLOW him/her immediately. They are of no use to you, because they will almost never make for a good prospect/buyer for you in future.
2. Make sure you are “following” as few people as possible. “Proper” twitter users, people who actually follow you because they’ve found your tweets useful, are far more likely to respond to your promotional social media campaigns than those who aren’t “proper”.
3. Search for Twitter users in “your niche” by going over to http://search.twitter.com/. It’s best to follow people in “your niche” than to follow “anyone”.
4. Use # tags in your tweets to narrow down the “scope” or “reach” of your tweet on Twitter. By using # tags, e.g. Simply inserting #marketing in your tweet before posting it, will ensure that your tweet is visible to a specific group of people on Twitter who are following the #marketing group, list or “#tag”. No need to blast your tweets across the entire Twitter network.
5. Search your “followers” list for people who post useful tweets regularly and who have few people they are following but a large number of people who are following them. Insert the “@” symbol followed by their twitter username and post a tweet with this in it. This sends a tweet directly to the user’s “Mentions” timeline as well as gets posted on your Profile Page, encouraging them to do the same for you. You expose them to your social media traffic in this way, and if they reciprocate, you get exposed to their social media traffic, which ensures that you are getting more “legit” people in “your niche” visiting your twitter page.
There are several more ways about calibrating your social media presence to produce actual results, but these are some of the “foundational” measures you need to take if you’d like to make the most of Twitter.
People who follow the “you follow me, I follow you” fallacy are almost never going to see measurable results from a campaign, it’s just a flawed model, and it’s your job to avoid it like the plague 😉
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About The Author (Facebook:Â http://facebook.com/as.khan.im | Twitter:http://twitter.com/asksatch):
Ali K. spearheads The SEPCON Project, a 100% Free Email Advisory with a mission to educate anyone and everyone interested in home based internet marketing in the art of Explosive Internet Marketing for Profit and Success. The SEPCON Project provides Cutting-Edge Software, Courses, Videos, Audios, PLR Re-Brandable Products, eBooks and tons more. Anyone can Subscribe to the Program for FREE (no gimmicks) at The SEPCON ProjectAli is also an Affiliate Marketer, Product Creation & Launch Consultant, Copywriter, and one of the most Highly Recognized Programmers in the Home Based Internet Marketing world, the Lead Technologist behind the Blockbuster Launch of The Internet Time Machine, and Search Engine NowRelevant.com, and mentioned in several International News Publications such as Forbes, The Chicago Tribune, NY Times, LA Times, and Reuters, to name a few, for his work.
I think it’s still quite impressive that conversational posts rank higher than do the promotional ones. I always seem to get more of the second one, but maybe that’s just because of the people i am following.
For number 5, are you recommending asking a question to this person? I find that the more you engage with your audience the more likely they will remember you and pay attention to your tweets.
However, if you have to send @ messages to people for the sole purpose of building more aware followers, then your tweets might not be attracting followers.
It seems to me that there are very few business Twitter accounts (run by an individual, not a corporation) that have a huge number of followers and are following very few people. Usually these business accounts follow everyone that follows them. Look at Mari Smith, Guy Kawasaki and Chris Brogan.
– Andrew
First off, you didn’t say what you would need a social media strategy for. Do you have your own online company? Do you blog? Are you trying to get into Internet marketing? Social media is a marketing way to increase the traffic to a website or blog.
Sound advice here. I really don’t understand the people who collect followers either, there’s no way they read 2% of tweets. I’m always reviewing the list of people I follow and pruning and adding here and there as I read every single tweet and don’t have time for people who either spam or don’t add any value.
I just started using twitter and have been resisting the urge to follow everyone that I can. It is really tough but I agree that building a large following is pointless if they are not interested in you. Good call with searching your niche. I’m gonna give that a shot.