I've recently become a huge fan of Marie Forleo and if you have not had the pleasure of watching her videos, you're robbing yourself of educational enjoyment! So I recently red her book How to Make Every Man Want You:How to Be So Irresistible You'll Barely Keep From Dating Yourself . Slow your role! I'm straight, that's the TRUTH. As a marketer you read people's stuff to figure out and learn from the people who are already successful... she is quite the teacher and I can relate w/her on a few levels. Plus I figure I needed to get inside the head of some successful women. So I gave her a shout out on twitter because I really did enjoy her book. It's AWESOME by the way pick that sh*t i up! Marie being the ever so approachable woman as she is, of course responded w/in 24 hrs. Do you think she know's how to connect with her audience? There's so many people missing the boat this. Don't be that guy! Or gal.
Now that you have made a few tweets and your posting away. Posting your thoughts, feelings, your projects, and what's going on in the world. Are you also building friendships? Are you asking questions? Are you giving shout outs?
In Dale Carnegie's, How to Win Friends & Influence People. There's no sweeter sound to someone than to hearing one's own name. Or at least in twitter's case, seeing one's own name. Remember, in the world of social media or word of mouth marketing, it's not what you're saying about yourself. It's what other's are saying about you. So if you have a cool website, logo, or product and someone else is commenting about it. That's a good thing. People like the LOVE but are so caught up in what they're doing most forget to even say thank you for following. Not a big deal though. If you really want to make friends and build up a following take the time to mention others especially if they're in your niche, city, organization, or even if you're just a fan of what they do.
@replies or mentions about others will get you noticed. I know you can't really keep track of what thousands of people are doing daily. But you can keep track of the ones who mention or engage with you. All you have to do is click on home from your twitter page and click on @ mentions. The way you're followers and following lists are listed is by the most recent. So as long as you're looking at your list periodically most of those people or at least the ones who are actively engaged should stay top of mind. Just take a few mins to go out of your way to acknowledge as many of the real tweeps as possible and give em a shout out or two. :)
Social media is the place where we can share and broadcast our message with people all over the world with people who have the same interests or should I say like-minded people who you follow and follow you. For some who do not fully understand twitter, is the reason why I decided to write twitter tip Tuesday in the 1st place. Besides, it just rolls off the tongue.
I have had this question twice this week about following others or who to follow and the etiquette of the "followback." Well, that all depends. I like to follow authors, marketers, internet marketers, bloggers, seo guys and gals, friends, and interesting people. For obvious reasons ;0) The TRUTH is that's a lot of different interests. There are some people who just follow their friends or their sports. They literally just treat twitter like a newsfeed. Which is fine too. People follow you or me because of something we said, something in our profile, something we like to do, or they just plain "like" us!! If someone follows me I like to read their profile and decide for myself if I want to follow them or not. If there's a local landscaper in my area and they decide to follow me because I tweeted that I'm cutting the lawn. I'm not going to followback the landscaper. I was cutting some one's grass once and don't have a lawn of my own. So what would be the benefit? The landscaper certainly doesn't know this but he's trying to establish new relationships. I can't blame him for trying.
On the other hand I like to keep up with what's going on with the New England Patriots. What benefit would they get out of following little ole me? *shrug* So I don't take it personal if I don't get followed back by one of the premier franchises in professional sports. Oftentimes I just may be following someone as an informational resource and to quickly stream through lots of information. If people like my tweets and we engage with one another, than that's fantastic too.
I know as I rule of thumb, it's been said that you don't want to be following more than 1.5 times the people who follow you. It's so you don't look like a twitter whore just following to be following and not contributing to the 'conversation.' I'm just as guilty of this sometimes. I come across so many people in marketing, internet marketing, blogging, and social media marketing that I tend to follow simply out of interest. Not to mention I LOVE to read a ton of books and follow what people are saying. It's the easiest way for me to connect with others on the things we're passionate about. There's so much stuff of interest out there or like my friend Patrick says, "stuffocation." I know I'm never going to get to it all, but there are always things that do catch my eye from time to time.
One way to gain more followers is to send a tweet to a person of influence. This is POWERful! From time to time if I send out a tweet to let's say someone like Darren Hardy. I do notice a spike in my followers that day especially if he sends a @reply back to me (a tweet to a particular person everyone can read). And by the way, Darren Hardy is pretty awesome about connecting with his fans!!!
Team followback is pretty interesting. If you like to get followers, just generally follow anyone w/that hashtag and they will follow you back. The problem I find is that I see lots of not just the mundane but also cursing, pornography, and all kinds of things I had ZERO interest in, for whatever reason. The good thing is if you have the time to play around and navigate through all the noise you can connect with some of the coolest people you will ever meet. Trust me on that one.
When I need specific information I can just search through their content on their blog. So there is a method to the madness for me that's for sure and I do try to monitor those numbers. But understand it's not on the list of my priorities when I'm on twitter. And as we stand right now, I'm above that 1.5 ratio so to speak! Time to go drop some people I'm following!
Danny is a outgoing guy who has a passion for social media and all things marketing. His goal is to make a living at it someday. If you like what you read... send some people with similar interests. I'm not hard to find ;)
