Archive for the ‘Twitter’ Category

I have two Twitter accounts, both of which targets two very different audiences and I noticed a very big distinct difference in the two accounts. One Twitter account is very engaging with lots of opportunities and the conversation is very alive.  The other Twitter account has very little and no lively conversations going on and there is very little content I find interesting or which to engage in.  If there are  interesting and active conversations  it is from random UK or USA connections.

So why is it that one account so active and there other inactive?

Here are some of the reasons why the one account has little or no engaging conversations:

• Honestly, I did not spend much time nurturing the one account as much as I should have, this has changed now and I’m paying a lot more attention to this account.
• The audience I’m following is still very engaged in yesterday’s type of marketing where people self promote all the time, rather than building relationships.  Generally I would not follow people who only promote their own content or just have automated but you are a target audience and this is my reason for following you.
• No one is making the effort to start a conversation.
• Not many if any, spend time to retweet other people’s content.
• The people I have followed are not following others back and if they are its an auto follow.

So all I see is people posting their self promotion in the Twittersphere leading on a road to nowhere. How is this working for you?  Are you generating new leads and building a network?

Here are the reasons why the other account is so engaging and alive:

• I spend a lot of my time on this account building relationships.
• The audience is very active in posting useful and interesting content and not self promoting all the time.
• The audience actively finds conversations to engage in and spends time chatting to one another.
• Followers actively retweet other people’s content they think will be useful to their followers.
• They promote others and often recommend or introducd people to each other.
• Very few Twitterers in this account like to auto follow.  They prefer to find followers themselves.
• Twitterers in this account have a reason for using Twitter and are focussed and clear about their target audience.

Here are a few tips to try and swing your Twitter experience to being useful:

Firstly, you need to make sure your profile is completed. Add what you specialise in your 160 characters, also be sure to add keyword terms, so when people search for people they want to follow you will be included in those keyword search terms.  It is also important to upload a decent photo of yourself so people can connect with you the person.

How to find more followers and get the conversation started.

Start following specific people. This would be your target audience which includes your possible customers, your existing customers, people who share common interests, your competitors and people in your country or where you live.

Unless it is helping you to generate new business and build your network, stop the auto follow.  You can have 1,000’s of followers but if it is not helping you to build referral business or new customers then what is the point?

Sign up to Twellow, then select the country and industry or specific people you’d like to follow and start following, visit their profiles, follow and let them know you followed them, if they respond, yay, if not, then that’s just rude, which I’ve experienced and then at some point if they don’t answer me back after a few tries, I unfollow.

Visit various profiles of the people you are  following so that you can connect with the people they are following, this helps you to find interesting people to engage with.

A powerful way to find new followers is by retweeting other people’s content, share, share, share.  I spend time almost every day just retweeting content.  I look for interesting content and then I retweet it.  People really appreciate you retweeting their content and 99%  of the time people will  respond to either thank you or start up a conversation with you, again if they don’t, that is just rude.

The other way to find more followers is to scroll through various conversations and see what others are posting and find conversations to participate in.  I’ve had some really great conversations start up just doing this and added new connections.  These become valuable connections rather than just some automated system finding you useless followers who are not connecting, not engaging or not even in your target audience.  You can do this on any Twitter platform such as, Tweetdeck, Seesmic.

The next thing you want to do is post valuable content, things your audience will find useful.  Post questions, find things to talk about, for example:  I had @avbosman say to me that he is new to social media and so what I’m saying at times makes no sense to him because he does not know the lingo.  “Thanks Anton”, that put me in my place and made me realise I need to go back to basics where I can help people who feel the same way.  It inspired me to start posting explanations of social media terms, which has generated a few RT’s and also started new conversations and I have some new followers which I am now following back.

Think about your target audience and find things they will be interested in.  If you are in the hotel industry, you may want to start posting tips about running a successful hotel, post industry related events and workshops or maybe keep up to date with latest news updates and feed those to Twitter.

Introduce and connect others, this is another way to get conversations started or helping each other by connecting people who could be of benefit to one another.

Finally, Twitter is a relationship tool, NOT a place for you to only promote what you do.  Twitter is a place where you can build your network, help others and connect.  Social Media in essence is a networking tool.

What are your thoughts, do you have anything to add in how you increase your followers?

by Romany Thresher
If you’d like to discuss ways in which to increase your followers or help with content you can connect with me @directassist or @romanythresher or you can skype me on directassist.

• A part of my job is to  find ways to increase my clients online visibility and part of the service I provide is thinking outside the box.  One afternoon while I sat preparing content for one of my client’s Twitter accounts, it dawned on me.  Let’s use Twitter to not only promote the teleseminar but also to feed content about the teleseminar to the audience while the teleseminar event was taking place.  So this is what I did: I scheduled tweets to promote the teleseminar on Twitter.  Generally it would be tweets getting people to sign up to the teleseminar.
• On the day of the teleseminar, schedule more tweets promoting the teleseminar but don’t overdo it, you don’t want to spam your audience.
• Reminder tweets of the teleseminar taking place in 1 hr, 30 mins, 15 mins, then about to start.  Also do one after the teleseminar has started, saying listening to…., come and join.

This is all done on Hootsuite, so we don’t have to worry about it.  Lovely tool Hootsuite.

When the teleseminar starts, have your team, in my case, my clients would use my team who would sit in and listen to the teleseminar and tweet updates on what is being talked about in the teleseminar with a direct link for people to join in on the teleseminar.

Tips:

Use a hashtag to define your teleseminar and track it.  E.g. #teleseminar.

When it comes to the questions and answers, announce via twitter, “it’s questions and answer time” and again make use of hashtags.

#Qtopic: What is the best way to use this product?
#Atopic: The best way to use this product is….

This way you are adding more useful content to your Twitter account, and you are generating activity and conversation on your site.  After the teleseminar, if the tweets are related to what you do, take those feeds and feed them into your twitter sheet for future use.

If you want to find out more about getting your teleseminars updated via Twitter, tweet @romanythresher

There are still a number of people who are not convinced that social media works and I often get asked “how does it work,?” “How do you use social media and how do you use Twitter”.

A key aspect of what I do for my business and for some of my clients is to monitor conversations on a daily basis.  I would surf the net every day and also spend some time on Twitter just listening and reading what people have to say, but not all day.

Now Twitter is just one aspect of social media but this shows you just how powerful Twitter can be.

For the sceptics who are not convinced about the benefit of using social media and for those who think that Twitter is a waste of time.  Here is an example of how two businesses and one freelancer benefitted from a microblogging tool like Twitter.

A while back while monitoring conversations on Twitter, I spotted a tweet which read:

“Anyone know someone they can recommend who creates professional-looking copy

in pdf format (like e-books, e-brochures, etc.)?”

“Hell yeh, of course I do”, and so what did I do, I responded saying:  “What do you need help with? I’m sure there is something I can do for you” and I immediately sent Bev Toogood a DM with my email address.

A few minutes later I received an email from Bev with her requirements.  I sent her a quote, she agreed and I got the ball rolling immediately.  I got in touch with my graphics person in Cape Town who got started with some ideas.

The result being that to date we have completed 5 jobs for Little Sunflowers and yes social media does work for business.

So what do you have to do?

• Monitor and participate in conversations but don’t do it all day you won’t get any work done.
• See the right tweet at the right time.
• Respond immediately

This is what Beverley Toogood of Littlesunflowers said when I spoke to her about the Tweet on Twitter when I asked her permission to share this with you:

I put a note out on Twitter which you responded to, as did someone else.  They recommended a third party, I tweeted that third party & got no reply.  I found the third party’s website, filled in an online enquiry form, then got a weird automated response which accused me of spamming. I then tweeted them again and explained that this had happened.  Over a day later they replied, by which time you were getting the first draft of the magnet together.

A real lesson for us all in how fast things move these days, and how important it is to respond to potential and existing customers quickly because, if you don’t, someone else will!