Who do you Follow on Twitter?
Who do you Follow on Twitter?Someone asked me a question about using Twitter and following people, I thought others could learn from this example…
Kathy, I read your Twitter book and watched the video this week. I am trying to understand this better. I went and followed some new people yesterday and have had several follow me back, so that is good. A couple questions, though.
Should I follow everyone who follows me? Not that I am anywhere near a number of concern, but I worry about following too many and not having enough follow me.
And then someone favorited one of my tweets, below. Do I respond to that with a Thanks? I am still feeling a little stuck on how to converse.
My advice tends to be the same as it has been for years… it all depends on why you are using Twitter.
You want to always start planning the WHY – Why are you using Twitter – then the ‘who’ you follow will be determined by your WHY.
As a Small Business owner if you are using Twitter to reach out to potential clients then you have to look at who your target market is and make that part of your “rules” as to who you choose to follow.
For business I tend to recommend a mix of the following groups to have an overall and well rounded profile on Twitter:
- Potential Clients – people in your target market.
- Contacts – People you know whether local or from networking or other business events.
- Role Models and Mentors – the people you look up to.
If you have a mix like this of people you follow then it offers you an opportunity to network and talk online with many different people and the conversations will vary. As you have different conversations online this keeps your Twitter presence as a mix. This is the best way to avoid looking like the pushy, salesy type online. If your content and ‘talking’ is varied then people will see this – as you ‘talk to people they will see your profile more as an extension of you and that also helps keep you ‘Real’ online.
Now, what about the ‘Favorited’ tweet. When someone does this what should you do?
A simple thanks is great, or add a little to it to make it a little more valuable to you as a piece of online content add more to your thanks.
ie. Thanks @username for the thumbs up on the #twitter tip. I appreciate it.
It’s more than a thanks, but not too much and includes a keyword for me and shows you talk to people too.
You’ll notice the reasoning behind the strategy to mix up who you follow is to ‘talk’ to people. If you can have a mix of followers that you can talk to then you open the doors for having conversations more so than just pushing out content that ends up making you seem salesy. You want to avoid this – having contacts you can converse with will really help on this end.
Always look back to Why – Why are you using Twitter? Planning from this will help you better understand what to do.
Stop Struggling and Start Thriving! My passion is helping to guide people just like you, private practice and service-based business owners, who are often frustrated with all their wasted time spent on marketing that gets you nowhere. You can learn strategies to attract a steady flow of clients and build a thriving and profitable practice. Get started with some of the free resources on my Pepper It Marketing website, especially this Guide to Streamline your Marketing. I also offer several self-study training programs to help you attract more clients so you can Build a rewarding and profitable private practice and still have time to LIVE your LIFE!