Tweet and Grow Rich – Identify And Amplify Your Ideal Followers

June 25th, 2009 by Search Influence Alumni

Twitter, a popular microblogging service and social media platform, can be an extremely valuable asset when conducting your internet marketing campaign.

Through Twitter, your company can find and build relationships with prospective clients, promote your products and services or quickly draw traffic back to your website by adding links in the twitter stream.

On the other hand, Twitter can be an absolute waste of time if you aren’t following the right people or engaging enough people.

So to assure you’re getting the most out of Twitter for your internet marketing campaign, we’ve identified the top ways to grow your network on Twitter.  They are as follows:

  1. Identify WHO is your prospective client or customer.  Do you sell a product nationally or are you a local practice?  Do you market to moms, the “green” community, the over-40 crowd, etc.?   Do most of your clients live within driving distance from the practice or can they order your products online?  The answer to these questions will determine how to proceed in step 2.
  2. Start looking for “ideal” followers on Twitter using the “find people “link at the top of the main web page or through Twitter directories.  If you are looking for local consumers or clients, try typing in your city or state (i.e. NJ, LA, NYC) and see who pops up.  However, if you are looking for something more specific (i.e. people that tweet about health), use directories such as Twellow (http://www.twellow.com) or WeFollow (http://wefollow.com/) for a better match.
  3. Once you’ve found people to follow- do so, but slloooowwwwllyy.  Especially when just starting out, you don’t want to follow more people than those that follow you.   Instead, find a handful of people, follow their accounts and wait a few days to see if they follow back.  Thank the ones that follow you publicly and quickly unfollow the ones that don’t respond to your request.
  4. Pay attention to the people your followers are talking to.  You’ll be amazed at the wonderful people and potential clients you can find by following “friends of friends” on twitter.
  5. Finally-be sure to TALK to the people you are following!  Comment on their status updates or just make small talk.  It goes along way when people feel like you really care about them and what they have to say.  That’s when your twitter following will start to grow naturally and beyond your wildest expectations!

On a final note-DO NOT SEND AUTO DM’s (Direct Messages) to people that follow you back.  Auto DM’s are private messages that basically spam your followers with company information or links to your products/services.  This does not make for good “social networking” and can actually cause you to lose followers very quickly.

Just remember-the point of social media is to be social. Use this service to create a “face” behind the brand and you’ll develop recognition and loyalty for life!

Editor’s note: “Tweet And Grow Rich” is an allusion to the famous “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill and not some evil online money-making scam.