By Lee Ussher –
It’s becoming more & more obvious that high counts of followers doesn’t mean valuable content. If you are a small business you should be focused on your local industry to increase interaction and gain natural referrals. Here’s how to get REAL Twitter Followers without paying in fees or time for them.
Buying Twitter followers or Facebook likes is 1 of the BIGGEST reasons why small business fail at making social media work. Some businesses think credibility is about the numbers… BUT it quickly does the opposite when you check their followers list – it’s full of ‘eggheads’ or foreign profiles that have a list of sales link tweets. This is not going to get you natural referrals, but it will mean you will have to waste time monitoring your Twitter account more.
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It doesn’t take much to build an active Twitter profile and for a small business, it’s better to have low numbers & high interaction to give you credibility and keep you busy. It will also mean it will get your tweets on lists and possibly in the search engines.
It is always best to consider who you need to follow and keep it relevant to who you need to network with. Most often an email notification lets a person know you are following them and if they are an active Twitter user and see the benefit in networking with you, they will jump into Twitter to follow you back. So this list of strategies are great to use at any time in seeking interactive followers, whether you have been using it for a while or just starting out:
{STRATEGY 1} Use #(then a keyword) at the end of tweets, especially your blog links, so you share with people who follow the keyword. It’s a big targeted audience and often people will follow your account to receive more of your tweet updates if they think they are worthy.
{STRATEGY 1} Use #(then a keyword) at the end of tweets, especially your blog links, so you share with people who follow the keyword. It’s a big targeted audience and often people will follow your account to receive more of your tweet updates if they think they are worthy.- {STRATEGY 2} Look up websites of businesses you already know locally (get those business cards out you’ve collected from network meetings!) Find their Twitter links on their websites, view the accounts tweets and follow them if they look active.
- {STRATEGY 3} Google search keywords to find other relevant and local business websites you may not know yet. Click on their Twitter links to view how active they are online & follow them.
- {STRATEGY 4} Scroll through these knew Twitter profile’s lists of followers – you’ll be surprised what turns up and who you might find!
Some people have set up an auto refollow with a direct message which means if you follower them then you will also collect them as a new follower. So to get noticed and increase the interaction from these businesses make use of this strategy too:
- {STRATEGY 5} Use an @symbol to mention them as a new follower or find something they recently tweeted to retweet. This activity will send an email notification and get their attention. Your interaction should be valued and only an idiot (or inactive profile) wouldn’t refollow such a person.
{STRATEGY 6} Finally, I recommend you do a ‘monthly clean’ to unfollow any ‘dead wood’, this will keep your general news clear of any tweets you have made no connection with and make it easier to see the tweets from those you need to stay in touch with or strengthen your networking with. Remember it is more credible to have a small and interactive profile than a large number of followers and no action.
If you are really savvy you can create your own lists to organize the people you follow, that way it will be easier to view their tweets.
To keep an eye on your social interaction score I like to use Social Mention – it is a great measure of your whole online influence and works better than using apps that track your social influence, such as Klout or Empire Avenue. These are subject to you connecting your social profiles to the app in order for it to track your social activity, not how other people are interacting with you or your social profiles. So I don’t see using these as a true way of reporting to clients their social influence. They are more a curiosity and just another social way to network and support other businesses you know.
To understand further how to use Twitter Marketing in more detail you may want to read these previous posts on the topic also: “Twitter – 5 Must Knows When Marketing” & “Twitter Marketing For Your Business“