I got an email one morning from a networking contact I met on LinkedIn asking about getting followers on Twitter.
He asked:
I have a question. Currently I have about 15k twitter followers adding about 250 per day, how the heck did you get to 50k+? Have you been able to monetize your followers in anyway? Connect in multiple ways?
That’s actually 3 questions.. so I thought I should answer them all here to help others who ask.
My reply:
Funny you asked about Twitter in an email after I reached out to you on Twitter yesterday with didn’t get a response there. No worries. I’ve found it’s best to listen to my market wherever they want to talk and respond to help if I can. I’d say you are in Stage 2 the Three Stages or Twitter Acceptance Your question about monetizing was a dead giveaway. I took a quick look at your profile and it’s obvious that you are trying to broadcast on Twitter. Not a single conversation on the first page.
The secret to Get Followers on Twitter (or anywhere) is to LISTEN and LOVE.
LISTEN: Read others Tweets. Learn what your market wants and get it for them.
LOVE: Respond to questions, refer people to resources.. especially ones that aren’t your own sales process and say thank you whenever you can.
Stage 3 conversations are where the fun lies. Have fun helping people and you will be attractive or “Follow Worthy” as we talk about in Twitter Revolution You may be getting advice that some system will get you more followers and automate marketing on Twitter. Many of them don’t work, even the ones that do will make you look like a 20th century marketer and could get you labeled as a spammer. The “followers” number posted on a profile is not the best indicator of whether someone is helping other. It is one indicator of activity. Other indicators would be
The number of conversations you have
The time you have recommended a good link that doesn’t point to a self serving sales page
How often someone says “thanks for the help”
The use of the retweet functions (RT) to share others tweets.
A few “famous off Twitter” people build up a following regardless of whether they engage the public. Most of use won’t see any value from Twitter until we engage in listening and love (caring). “People don’t care how much you know until the know how much you care” — Stephen R Covey There are many examples of sales through Twitter. Dell attributes $6.5 million to posting deals. Dell can do that, they are a multi billion dollar company. Zappos is a better example of a company that gets “listen and love” The CEO tweets as @Zappos and most of the office staff does too. You may see a special offer, but mostly they are listening to their customers talk about shoes and joining conversations to add value, help and spread love and good energy.
The Secret of High Follower Counts
They don’t do much for click through results. More connection give you more opportunities to listen and love and more conversations result in real people, real relationships and real business. However, when I post a link with tracking data.. the results are about the same as when I had 1/10 the followers. Twitter is not a broadcast medium. The revolution in sales and marketing is just starting. With the technology we have now, there is no reason to ever try to pitch someone that is not anxious to hear from you. Rather, we teach our clients monitor the Tweet stream for conversations and questions of those that are looking for a solution (Listen), then where appropriate, join in the conversation answer a question give advice without any expectation of making a sales pitch (LOVE). You can focus on helping people in your target market, or just help in general. People will be attracted to you when you GIVE.. it’s the Law of Reciprocity (you can get anything you want if you help enough others get what they want).. we want to do business with givers.. people that we know, like and trust. Asking for a sale too soon kills that process. Fortunately, the technology today allows us to meet and network, get to know people and build a trust relationship fast. A good salesman knows that marketing is a process and hones his skill. Today, the skill that we all need to learn is “listen and love” .. it’s a lot more fun than cold calling, much more productive and will transform us into better people. Why waste time selling to someone that doesn’t want to buy.. there are millions looking for whatever you have.. just go help them!
Here a “how to tweet” question that comes up often, so I’m posting some of the research that we did when we wrote Twitter Revolution.. it still great advice today.
One common social media automation idea is that you can reach different people in different time zones by setting up a repeated tweet every few hours.
Fact is, you will reach more people with that specific tweet, and if you are tweeting just the one tweet it’s likely that almost no one will notice.
Unfortunately, most of the people using this technique fail to add any real value beyond the self promotional tweets. So while I would never say that you should not repeat a tweet (after all, our mantra is NO RULES) I do regularly caution against having a profile page that is full of “come and look at me” type tweets
You would think that the skies would open up, and I’d get struck by lightning by the Twitter gods. Think again. In the case of repeating a tweet four times in thirty-two hours, there was a big spike for the first tweet, but the next three still yielded very good results. In total, the four posts resulted in 5,059 clickthroughs in tranches of 1,481, 1,415, 1,208, and 955; note, however, I looked at the server log and approximately 20% of these clickthroughs are bots. 700 people signed up for this service, by the way, because of my four tweets.
As suspected, more people saw the tweet each time it went out and the total clicks went way up.
What Guy left out was that he has a reputation for saying very smart things and engaging in real conversations with many tweeps.
What I prefer to see is self promotion with variety. I often use the same URL in a dozen or more tweets in a single day, for instance, the link to my Twitter radio show However, I use the link in unique tweets, mostly in answer to people asking me a question.
Sometimes, I’ll promote an upcoming event or show with several hints about the show. One tweet will have the show announcement, another will thank the guest I’ve booked, yet another will mention what we will cover on the show.
What about RT (ReTweets)?
Use the same ideas for tweets I see from those I follow, I often send out their message to my tweet stream. I’ll use the lazy RT button if that is available in the software client I’m using that day, sometimes I think what was written was perfect. But usually, I try to add value with a comment, or by writing my own tweet. Other times, I’ll see a link, read a post and end up with a blog post of my own (as happened today with this post.. thanks to @24k for the link)
It’s only 140 characters.. be creative and write more about your subject. Anyone seeing more than one will appreciate the details and you get a new batch of readers each time. When you get to have hundreds of thousands of followers, you can repeat without worry. Until then, give us unique valuable content whenever you can.
How to Tweet?
There are NO RULES on what you post of Twitter. It’s a communication channel and whatever works for the parties in a conversion is perfect.
For me, great content is always great content, and nothing is a important as talking to real people, answering real question and having conversations.
@joycemckee was looking for success stories for a report on Trade Show Use of Twitter.
Here’s my submission…
By searching for the hashtags (unique ID words related to the event, usually starting with # sign) on the event the week before it starts, I am able to see who the real leaders are.
I follow many of the attendees and all of the speakers (Twitter links are on speaker bio pages and/or their blogs). Often I meet several of the speakers before the event starts, and make appointment to meet up with attendees that are active in the community. I also check to see if the is a “Tweet Up” (meeting of those who have connected on Twitter) and add that to my schedule.
I’ve found that the best opportunities at most shows happen in this network. Once these tweeps (Twitter users) decide to RT (”ReTweet: A Twitter post that gets repeated) I know that a large active group will be aware of whatever I’m promoting.
Two more tips to get traffic to your booth:
1) Give-aways for Twitter users. I often tweet “I’ve got a copy of Twitter Revolution for the next person who finds me.” It works for @The RealShaq with NBA tickets and it will work for you.
2) Get your staff tweeting. This is not a media to advertise on.. this is a way to network. Get everyone involved. Your customers expect INDIVIDUALS to be available
2009 is only hours away. Time to tweet so love to my followers.
I’m giving away some gifts tomorrow, January 1st 2009 via Twitter.
Like most of our Twitter projects, there are no rules when we started this. About a week ago, someone offered me a piece of artwork to give to my 5000th follower.
I had done the milestone follower bit a few times before. Usually without any warning.. I’d grab number 600 or number 2000 from the email notices Twitter sends, and send out some love via Twitter.
Most of the time, there no “gift”.. just tweet from me, comments on blogs, and a bit of promotion to help them gain some new followers.
It was so much fun, I started doing it all the time.. like “who needs a reason?” <grin>
So when the idea came up for the 5000th follower, my first reaction was that I did not want to create a rush of new followers just for the number. Instead, I decided that I’d use the occasion to give away MORE GIFTS.
This morning I tweeted that I needed some gifts. Response has been huge. There are some fabulous books and “real world” items and lots of digital products and even some services.
I’ve been doing give away cross promotions for new best seller books over at ZeroCostPromotions.com for years. I know this works. We’ve seen business deals for tens of thousands of dollars come from the connections made by partners and had dozens of best seller books in the process. Giving stuff away build reciprocity and great relationships.
Next step will be to sort through them and figure out how to give them away. Most likely, you’ll be seeing tweets on January 1st announcing it. Maybe “9 prizes for 2009″ as the theme.
What can we learn from this experience?
People are willing to give. I didn’t promise to pay, or to make them money. People just like to jump on board then there is a fun promotion
You can’t plan social media from the top down.. It’s not going the way I envisioned. It’s better and the only limit is how much time I can spend arranging the gifts
You can connect and build a relationship quick. Tweeps contributed within seconds and you can be sure that I’m not going to forget them soon (nor will the winners)
Subscribe to this blog, follow me on Twitter and watch my twitter stream and the hash tag#Happy09 for more on the Happy New Year Gift giveaway
Tim Ferriss, best selling author of The Four Hour Work Week has his own system for using Twitter.
Some people think he isn’t really using Twitter, Tim explains how valuable Twitter is to him, and the limits he sets for himself to get the results he’s looking for.
Interview from Las Vegas Social Media Marketing Conference 2008
![6450147095_8d2354099e_b[1]](http://profitablesocialmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/6450147095_8d2354099e_b1.jpg?b9a2cc "6450147095_8d2354099e_b[1]")
![tony_CEO[1]](http://profitablesocialmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/tony_CEO1.gif?b9a2cc "tony_CEO[1]")
Zappos is a better example of a company that gets “listen and love” The CEO tweets as @Zappos and most of the office staff does too. You may see a special offer, but mostly they are listening to their customers talk about shoes and joining conversations to add value, help and spread love and good energy.
@WarrenWhitlock
