My old Pal Chrysula ask me how to get ahead in Twitter.
A while back she asked me about twitter, I sent off a long reply which never got to her. I of course forgot to send another. I just noticed she is on Twitter with only 34 followers, at least that was what she had before I shouted her out to my feed.
Instead of sending her another email, I'm going to blog the advice. I don't have a twitter ebook or product to sell, although I do offer a consultation and training service.
- The trick is to squeeze your personality into 140 characters
- People follow other people for themselves, not for you, give them something to follow
- Be opinionated, but be real.
- Don't hold back on alienating 20% of people when the 80% will love you for it.
- Don't get baited into arguments by numpties (I constantly fail at this one)
- Make your avatar high contrasting, use hard tones rather than soft ones
- Get people to drop your twitter link into blog articles, there is a way of doing that but that's for later.
- Touch on controversial, strong emotional issues, you don't have to take a stand just ask a question. Only works when you have a lot of followers, as I have done here. It's not an empty question as I was very interested in the response and if anyone was sympathetic to them I would defollow and block them.
- Provide useful information to your niche
- Define what your niche is and isn't, the narrower you go the more power you will have.
- Ignore anyone who calls themselves an expert. Don't buy or sign up to any twitter scheme.
- The number of twitter followers is not really important, it's the type of people who are following you and if they actually read your tweets that are important.
- Consider that your tweets may not be for your followers but for future clients.
- Whatever you tweet stays tweeted forever. Some people tweet about the boy who just dumped then or how they managed to convince their Granny to move into a nursing home so they can get the house. Not a good idea. The whole world can access your tweets forever.
- You can follow thousands, you can follow one. Doesn't really matter, it depends on how you want to use the tool and your objective.
- Use tweetdeck if you are hardcore.
- Get addicted to tweeting only if there is an ROI, remember, define your objective.
Obviously there is more stuff to suggest and a lot of it is connected with the wider subject of online networking. I find the concept of creating social networks online fascinating and love to consult on the issue. I also train companies and individuals in this area.
If you need further help and can afford my enormous fee of £150 per hour for a phone consult. But only if you are not a Numpty.