Twitter caught my attention way back in December 2008, I suppose I could be considered an “early adopter” which is quite an achievement for a previously “anti” social media baby boomer.
In the 3 and a bit years since I started on twitter, I have accumulated 9000 or so followers and followed a similar number. According to tweet grader, I am ranked 61 823 out of the 10 million or so twitter accounts they track and have the dubious distinction of being rated 12 in Ontario. In the three years, I have published 18000 tweets.
I do not mention all those statistics to brag, but to illustrate two points.
- Slow and steady is better.
- Tools make life easier.
Slow and Steady
I have never bought, swapped or used any other “black hat” techniques to attract followers. I regularly prune my list of followers to get rid of the fictitious, lapsed and inactive ones. I use tweepi for this.
Most of my followers have come in a process of slow and steady increments, some because I have followed them, others find me from my blogs, other social media platforms or after noticing my tweets.
Tools to make life easier
I have mentioned tweet grader, which is useful when needing numbers to illustrate a point, as in this post, but to me seems like succumbing to a narcissistic urge if used too frequently!
tweepi is excellent for checking the status of large numbers of followers and then unfollowing or following those selected for pruning or addition.
commun.it is another useful tool for identifying the followers who you interact with the most. Followers can be added or deleted on the dashboard.
The tool I use the most frequently is Social Oomph. This saves me a huge amount of time. When I first started on twitter, the gurus at the time (most of whom seem to have disappeared) stressed the importance of tweeting at least a few tweets every day. It makes me smile now to think how I used to laboriously type out 5 or 6 tweets every day just to be consistent.
Social Oomph has many features. The ones I use the most are to vet new followers, send a thank you message (non-commercial) to new followers and to schedule tweets. I have a data base of quotations, messages, interesting links and a few sales pitches stored. It is a simple and quick operation of about 20 minutes a day to set up a schedule for the next 24 hours or so.
Using twitter as part of a marketing strategy is a subject in itself, tools should be used to become more effective, not become a prolific spammer.
All the tools I have mentioned are free although Social Oomph has a paid version with additional features.
There are many more tools that make life in this social media driven age easier, but these are enough to get on with.
Wishing you success in all your endeavours.
Peter is always coming up with great ideas on marketing, sites to go to, blogs, and everything else under the sun to keep all of us business people on our toes and up to date. The man is awesome. Kudos Peter.
Thank you Marie, glad you find them useful.