Twitter, The Good The Bad, The Long The Short

So today marks about a month since I seriously started using Twitter.

While I’m no guru, I’ve seen a lot this past month, learned alot. I’ve been lucky to be in touch with some people who are doing well with it, and seen a lot of people who suck at it.

This post is everything you need to know about Twitter, the good and the bad. It will help you avoid buying Twitter “how to” products that suck, and help you navigate the stream of BS to focus on the best strategies for maximizing your use of Twitter – oh, and help you with the question of whether you should use it at all.

First, about my results…

It’s been an interesting month.

First, the link to this blog on my Twitter profile just became the single external link that brought the most traffic to my site. So that’s positive

I’ve grown my followers by 650 in the last 4 weeks. Nothing to brag about, but it’s helpful.

The best result in my opinion is the contacts I’ve made. I was looking for a WP theme designer the other day, found one quickly. I needed a recommendation for a certain kind of product a few days earlier, got one quickly. I’ve also “connected” with a lot of new people who wouldn’t have known me if not for Twitter, so for me in the kind of business I’m in, that’s positive.

So from that perspective, here are my observations, listed here in random order.

1. Getting X000 followers in X days.

This is one I wanted to debunk quickly. If you see a report like that, you can bet with 90% certainty that if they have actually achieved it, it’s been one of three ways:

a) They’re using Autobots. There’s a tonne of Twitter bots that will let you import someone elses whole contact list, import 1000 followers a day, and whatever else you want to do. This can get you banned by Twitter.

b) They’re using outsource teams. Other people are hiring outsource staff to go and follow people that are relevant to their business. These people usually but not always, will follow you back, so the outsource person then has the job of UNfollowing everyone who doesn’t follow you back. In this way, the person gets a lot of followers quickly and they also follow alot of people quickly (and then unfollow). This is also something that can get you banned by Twitter.

c) They’ve got an existing following who they emailed and said “follow me on twitter”. Common also.

If your devious enough, you might be wondering – right, so Twitter doesn’t like it, but does it work? Does it bring you traffic? Can it make you money? (not including money you got from selling your report on how I got 20 000 followers in a day.)

As far as I know, it CAN. If you feel ok about doing it (not something I’d recommend) that is. Thing is, like any game of spamming (and I know from experience) when you’re going against the rules of a service that you’re relying on for traffic and income, you’re fighting an uphill battle.

But it’s at this juncture that another point becomes particularly relevant.

2. “Followers” Are Not Fans

I hate the word followers. The people who “follow” you, don’t really “follow” you at all unless… wait, we’ll get to that in a minute.

When people say “Get 10 000 FOLLOWERS In A Week” it sounds like “10 000 subscribers” in a week, but really, a “follower” has no such value, nothing like a “subscriber” who’s opted in to receive information from you, at ALL.

There’s this idea that 10 000 followers have some kind of inherent value but they don’t. Unless you’re providing value to that 10 000 people, or being interesting, funny, helpful, kind, whatever, they’re not going to care about you at all.

And if they don’t care about you, they’re not going to click on your site, opt in to your stuff, or ever buy from you. Remember they’re also following another 1000 people, why would they care about YOU just because you’re one of that thousand!

I “follow” about 800 people but I REALLY follow about 15 of  them, through another program TweetDeck that I use to make sure I don’t miss the things that those people tweet. I still make contact with the people not in that 15, I reply to them when I have something relevant or interesting to say and they reply to me similarly and sometimes by doing so get ONTO that smaller list but otherwise, I don’t know em, and I don’t care.

The bottom line is, I’d much rather have 500 people who are really interested in what I say, really care about me, really like me and my work, than 50 000 autobot, spam followers. 500 TRUE fans will spread the word about me, buy my stuff, and help grow my business, 50 000 randoms will not.

3. Getting Real Followers (read Fans)

Unfortunately, a fan is a lot harder to get than a follower but not as hard to get as you might think. You can’t get a fan with one click. You have to earn a fan. But you can earn a fan with one nice act, one unexpected bonus, one joke, one compliment.

The first thing you need to do is get involved in the community. As Twitter Guru Scott Stratten would say, you have to spend time each day interacting in a way that doesn’t involve your business or your self at all. Listening to other people’s tweets, replying to their tweets, helping out, giving.

Next, you have to provide value with your own tweets. Write things that are interesting, funny, or helpful, maybe even a link to your blog every now and then when it gives something of value without selling the crap out of somebody.

When you provide value or be funny or interesting, you can get REtweeted, meaning someone will share your tweet with their followers which encourages their followers to also follow you. That’s authentic follower growth, the kind that can win you real fans.

4. Twitter Takes Time

It does. Whether it’s time spent by an outsourced worker or yourself, it takes time.

Since starting, I guess I’ve probably spent an hour a day on Twitter when you average it out. But if your business involves relationships, and those relationships can be enhanced or grown with Twitter (not everyone’s business is like that) then it’s time well spent.

Even if you Auto-add followers, you’re not going to make any money until you get them to care about you by posting good tweets, and that takes time. (well actually some people even have scripts that can auto add interesting tweets from random places)

Which brings me to the next point:

5. The Distractor Factor

If I’ve spent an extra hour a day on Twitter this past month, I’ve probably spent an additional hour per day browsing randomly at the always distracting but strangely interesting tweets of others.

If you’re getting involved in the community as is required for successful Twittering, you’re going to have to prepare to be distracted by meaningless crap.

You’ve got to either factor it in, or straight up discipline yourself to only spend X amount of time. Even the best Twitter guru’s will tell you how distracting Twitter can be.

6. How To “USE” Twitter For Your Business

As Mark D pointed out to me in his comments on this post, there are many ways that successful Twitterers are using the tool to grow their business.

And the way YOU should use it, depends on a lot of things. The nature of your business, the nature of your customers, your existing positioning in your market, and more.

If you’re just getting started and your customer base is small, you need to build relationships and win fans that will help you spread the word about you. If you’re established and have a big customer base you can use the tool for solidiying your brand image, selling more with coupons, and more.

Again, the best way to leverage your followers and use your tweets depends on your individual business model.

7. Twitter Search Is Cool

However you’re using Twitter, the search feature is cool, not only for finding new followers but for market research, getting into the “minds” of your market, and spotting where the action is taking place in your niche.

As Josh Spaulding wisely pointed out in a recent post, it’s a great tool for an affiliate marketer, to find people who are looking at making buying decisions and providing them reviews or information at the key moment – very smart indeed.

Other intelligent companies are using the search to find people talking about their brand or product and thanking them and encouraging them, also a great idea.

8. My Original Sentiments Still Apply

Despite my big change of heart related to Twitter, I still say this:

I have a blog that’s for people looking to make more money and market their businesses online, and I know there are a lot of similar people on Twitter, so I got into it.

I have another blog that promotes a reverse phone lookup service (I don’t actually but it’s a good example) where it’s far easier for me to pay to have an article written to pull 100 visitors than it is to spend time trying to find and build relationships with people that might have interest in that product on Twitter.

If my blog’s following wasn’t on Twitter, or was too obscurely scattered on Twitter, I wouldn’t bother using it for business purposes ( remember you CAN still use it without any business motive… I think that’s what it was made for?), and I don’t think you should either.

I hope you’ve found this post helpful.