subject: Twitter for Business Building and Lead Generation (or as I prefer to call it, relationship building) - Part 1 of 2, Follow and Be Followed [print this page] Twitter for Business Building and Lead Generation (or as I prefer to call it, relationship building) - Part 1 of 2, Follow and Be Followed
If you're reading this, you are likely already using Twitter as a way to keep in touch with friends, colleagues, current events and interest groups. You might also be using it to drive traffic to your website, thus marketing your business offering, be it goods and/or services for your online or bricks & mortar type of businesses. I would argue that in addition to traffic building, you use the social aspect of Twitter to actually get in genuine conversation via the Direct Message section of the site with as many of your followers as possible. This allows you to build better relationships with your followers, whose business and social interests and goals you genuinely share.
Follow and Be Followed
From a marketing perspective, volume of followers is the ticket, but because Twitter is a social medium, you will want to consider the quality and interests of those followers.
There are many ways to build followers in any combination of manual or any number of automated means. If you are looking to build a high volume following quickly, automated is the way to go. Hummingbird2, Buzzom, and Twello are a few to consider. If automated tools are used to build a large list quickly, manage them well as you want to keep the number of those you are following to no more than 10% greater than those following you. This is especially important when you are in the neighborhood of following 2,000 people. If you stray too far beyond this percentage, there is a risk Twitter will shut down your account. Ideally, everyone you are following are returning the favor and following you as well. Automated tools can be very useful in synching this up for you and keeping your following/follower difference in the 10% range.
Using automated tools to build your group of followers does not preclude you from adding to your group manually. Depending up how hard you work at this, the manual approach allows you to increase the percentage of followers with whom you genuinely know you want to work and be in regular, two-way communication with. There are several ways to manually search for people to follow whose interests match yours. Two of my favorites are:
Follow the followers of the leaders in your field. As your professional interests already overlap and they are more likely to be at a comparable level of success as yourself, they are more likely to follow you in return. If you're into network marketing, the followers of Mike Dillard, Ann Seig, and Dani Johnson are already interested in your market. Also note that many of those following industry leaders are likely also very well placed in your industry, so follow their followers as well.
Follow those whose other interests you share. On the Find People page of your Twitter home page, plug in some of your other interests and see who comes up. If you're interested in personal development, gardening, or music, plug that into the search bar and see who comes up. As you want to follow and be followed by people that you can interact with, avoid following businesses, unless you're genuinely interested their offerings. You can also search on keywords for your particular market. Again, follow the followers of those who share your other interests.
As you will hopefully be spending quality time with those you connect with, connect with people who genuinely interest you. If you've set your automated tools well, this will happen, but following people manually helps you remember that business success at its best is really dependent upon high quality personal relationships.
Next Up
Now that your lists of those you are following and followers is growing nicely using automated and manual means, the next article in this series will be suggestions on how to interact with your lists of fascinating folks doing great work.
