By Jan Carroza
Dave Fleet addressed his concerns over large groups of Twitter followers decreasing the quality of the experience.
Yes, your Twitter stream may seem like it’s at flood stage. That’s where Twitter Lists become very helpful to focus the discussion.
1) Build up to 20 categories you’d like to channel or to see at a party. I love participating with my food/wine/lifestyle/travel list for entertainment. I can switch to my Social Media, Affiliate Marketers lists for business.
2) To go beyond 20 lists, I can follow other lists like @Scobleizer/my-favstar-fm-list, @radioactivemed/media-trades-and-research or @Dawnpilot/edtwtup.
3) I can build more lists with other Twitter accounts I start, or go to Twibes.com to build more groups to share with others.
4) Web clients like Hootsuite let me build lists and choose folks to put into different groups that can stream side by side. I can see 4 columns of feeds at a time and scroll to see more.
More from Dave: “Following lots of people doesn’t guarantee meaningful conversations.” When I go to a convention, I don’t expect to have meaningful conversations with everyone. I can see what someone is about by:
1) looking at their profile name, description and whether they added an image
2) going to the URL they provide
3) reading their tweets.
In short order I can decide if there is something we share of interest and start a conversation. Dave suggests that if you want to reach out to him, learn about him. That’s good advice. He makes great suggestions about carefully choosing people to follow.
“Following loads of people may discourage people from following you…” I don’t judge people by how many they follow. I look for a ratio that shows their content is interesting enough. If they follow 1000 and only 10 follow them, content is probably lacking. Then I look at who they follow. Are they following others who also provide interesting content or likely fraudsters?
What’s your Twitter following policy? A discussion in the Social Media Club/Seattle LinkedIn group about choosing who to follow is worth expanding.
To follow everyone: Yes, some will follow Twitter’s suggestion to be open to everyone and follow everyone back, like @MarketingProfs.
To selectively follow those who follow you. Here are some criteria to consider:
1) Have they ever tweeted at all? I’ll wait to follow back until I see some discussion.
2) Is their content undesirable for your Twitter stream? Let me lump these into a “naughty” category for profile pictures, bad or inappropriate language for my business or purposes.
3) Do they add value? Are they likely to interact with or be of interest to you? Remember, your prospects, colleagues and visitors will see the conversations of these various followers you select. What impression will they make on your valued customers?
- Someone tweeting in Russian or Spanish or German may not be appropriate for your stream.
- Constant pitches for some MLM scheme, penny stocks, weight-loss without any effort to connect with anyone.
- Retweets of others without any new content.
- All their tweets are just names of others.
4) Determine what topics are appropriate for your company. Are current events totally out of place? Are politics to be avoided? Instruct your Twitter managers on how you want controversial tweets handled.
To only follow those of your choice: friends, colleagues, vendors, industry, government or media resources…
Personally I think this is too limiting. It’s certainly a great start for the beginner. Everyone should have one or more core groups they can interact with. As you go about your work, ask your contacts if they use Twitter. Use this opportunity to expand your network. See who follows your network. Who do they follow?
From this base, I’d recommend exploring those folks your contacts like to follow, always looking for interesting conversations.
Use www.search.twitter.com to search on a topic in your industry. See who is participating. Look at more of their tweets.
The next step and most important one: Engagement
Interesting people will find you based on the conversations you are having with others. Who you retweet says a great deal about your interests. After you look at their Twitter page, make comments about topics you share. Followed by a LI friend, I noticed @adbroad’s comments about things she remembers like carbon paper. Her other writings on her blog seemed interesting, so I wrote her about things I remember from the same era. Check back here and I’ll tell you how the engagement goes.
These are the same steps that have helped me
1) make clients of prospects,
2) find great vendors,
3) expand my network of
- go-to people who are experts in areas that interest me
- contacts who can introduce me to prospects I want to meet, and
- contacts who share a mutual desire to help each other promote our blogs, products/services.
I don’t know all 2000 of our followers. I may know a third of them at some level from acquaintance at Twitter to in-person meetings. As time goes on, I continue to monitor my followers’ conversations and drop in to share news, ask or answer a question, go to a link and comment, gradually meeting and developing relationships.
We know how difficult and overwhelming entering into social media can be for companies. We don’t mind sharing tips and tricks. It’s our way of sharing and demonstrating that we have the know-how to manage social media campaigns. It’s our job to stay up with the latest ways to engage on our clients’ behalf. We provide the presence and manage the messaging. Our clients can get back to work knowing we’re exploring opportunities. To know more, call me at 360-437-5092.
Tags: MarketingProfs, social media campaigns, Twitter following policy
