Social networking is the center of a number of communication and marketing strategies for all organizations – big and small, and even me. Recently, I developed a social networking strategy that includes a Twitter account – http://twitter.com/jeschainks . Twitter, according to my local teen sources, “is a waste of time because there is too much stupid stuff on it.” This is a problem, as in two weeks of carefully reviewing options for networking with other marketers I discovered a number of problems with developing a Twitter account – too much spam, too many duplicates, and too many marketers.
Spam is a huge problem on Twitter; however, we should always return follows – right? Well, you do not really have to return follows, you can deny people. I denied multiple followers that had adult focused profiles – extreme adult profiles. Find someone spamming your account with information that is useless – dump him or her. On the other hand, remember that you do not have to get your tweets in your phone (I canceled that in less than 3 hours of setting it up), and you do not have to read what anyone else writes; only what you want.
Currently, I have approximately 366 followers, of which, more than half are organizations that are only marketing through Twitter, maybe 10% are duplicate advertisers, and not all are actually “people” even where they appear to be. I have checked with a number of other organizations currently social networking, and they have found this to be the case as well. However, it is important to note that other people marketing on Twitter are potential customers as well. This is because they are still people, and they still follow you.
It is good to return follows and develop a strategy for increasing your followers. Check who your favorite people are following and you can follow them as well. Another solid way to find new followers is to use the search to find like-minded individuals. I used the search to find “green technologies” and “marketing.” These got me started in discovering the first set of people I would follow. After a few follows, more came in from those sources.
Finally, more people follow based on amount of updates. I found that if I updated a few times a day, I received more people following than if I only updated a lot once a day. Additionally, setting up AC content on the Twitter account did seem to increase the number of readers to my articles.
A few interesting people to follow include:
Lori Guadette – http://twitter.com/LoriGaudette she has some very inspiring posts that can cheer you up quickly.
AutopilotMLM – http://twitter.com/AutopilotMLM is a marketer; however, much less aggressive and shares a lot of great information about using Twitter.
SimpleSaver – http://twitter.com/simplesaver – is an interesting tweeter that seems very personable, and shares some interesting tidbits that can assist in money saving.
There are many other people that must be found who post interesting notes; however, keep in mind; they have exactly 140 characters to get your attention – per post.
