So You’re On Twitter – Now What?
A friend recently commented, “I’m on Twitter. Now what? It seems kind of pointless.”
I confess I felt like this at first too. It seemed kind of pointless to be sending out Tweets that no on was reading. I decided to get a strategy.
First I started following Deborah Micek - you’ll remember her from my previous post on Twitter. Next I looked up a couple of top level internet marketers whose work I’ve been following in other ways - newsletters, teleseminars and Facebook.
So now I was following a handful of people. I decided to check out who these people were following. You can do this by clicking on their name in your feed which will take you to their home page. In the right sidebar, click on “following” to be taken to a page of who they follow.
I did this with the people I was following and looked first for names I recognized. I also checked out some of the bios of people I didn’t know and started to follow them as well. As I write this I’m following 40 people.
I kept writing Tweets and soon I noticed that some of the people I was following were following me. Now I’m in a two-way conversation. Even more exciting, a few people I don’t know at all began following me. In a couple of cases, my new followers (that sounds hilarious) found me on Facebook. We’re now Facebook friends and have exchanged some emails and wall posts. This is what they mean by social media.
Twitter also allows you to reply directly to other people’s Tweets. In Twitter, if you start your Tweet with @andreastenberg you send your Tweet directly to my feed, even if I’m not following you.
And not only can I see it, but all of my followers can too. This is how to build your Twitter tribe; by making yourself known and starting conversations. If you have intelligent or witty comments that add to the conversation, you build your presence on Twitter.
Deborah Micek suggests that only one out of six posts be about your business, the rest should be personal. This is the tricky part. How to be personal without being pointless. Do I really care that you’re going for a walk? Not really. Will I care if you saw something amazing on your walk? Maybe. The trick is to write things that allow your followers to get to know you as a person without being trivial. And do it in 140 characters.
Since I’ve only been on Twitter for nine days I’m hardly an expert. But I do confess that I find this particular mode of communication strangely compelling; almost addicting. It’s fun following what other people are doing, and trying to find interesting things of my own to add.
Andrea J. Stenberg
Just getting started on Twitter (or planning to)? You can find me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/andreastenberg.
Posted
on
Friday, July 4th, 2008 at 9:11 am under
Aloha @andreastenberg
If u think Twitter is addicting after 9 days - just wait until you’ve been chatting after 99 days. You’ll actually have withdrawal symptoms when you can’t get your tweet on.
Trust me.
I know.
My name is @CoachDeb
& I’m a @TwitAholic
re: How to be personal without being pointless?
Think about it this way…
Think about the last cocktail party or holiday BBQ you went to.
How many business conversations did you have where the person said to you, “I just uploaded a new blog post about x,y & z.”
Now let’s say that person repeats this with minor variations saying, “Check out my new blog post about ABC.” Then they hand you their iPhone so you can look at the link.
(stiffling yawn)
How quickly would you be bored and scanning the room for a familiar face you could escape to?
Now let’s compare that (pointless) conversation to one where you met up with a fellow Canadian who shared information with you about common interests. Let’s say they greeted you, saying,
“Bonne Fetes Quebec! Quebec city, the only walled city in North America, is 400 years old today.”
Would you be more or less intrigued with this information compared to the earlier person who cornered you talking only about business.
Perhaps they share information about their children, pets or hobby that you share common interests in.
Those are the people you want to talk with more - and do business with because you share a similar world view, and vice versa.
Twitter is simply bringing us back to conversational, relationship-building marketing and sales the way it used to be done.
It just happens to be a new channel / tool that we’re using, but it’s really just good old fashioned rapport building marketing and sales.
Think of it that way - and you’ll never tweet anything pointless again.
http://Twitter.com/CoachDeb
July 7th, 2008 at 4:07 am@CoachDeb
CoachDeb,
What a lot of useful information! Thanks for putting communicating with Twitter in perspective.
Andrea
July 7th, 2008 at 6:58 am