What Kind Of Followers Do You Want?

The Quantity Of Followers

Some people have made it their mission to gain as many followers as possible. One way to do this is to follow other people. Many people out there will follow you when you follow them. However, I wouldn’t advise doing this. When you are inundated with thousands of tweets then they are worthless to you. You don’t have time to read them or the time to filter to those of value.

The Quality Of Followers

From the point of view of a business you want people following you that see value in your posts. Choose to target only those people with an interest in a narrow topic. You want them active and engaged in the subject. And with that being the case you are going to have fewer followers than the person who is just shooting for numbers.

If your topic is very general then your followers may be of larger numbers. But keep in mind when your Tweets are in a broad category you have many more people tweeting on the same subject. In such a case you need to post content that stands above the competition in order to stand out. This requires more resources.

Specialize Your Tweets

The more productive thing for businesses to do is to Tweet about specialized topics. This is a way for businesses and individuals to display their expertise in focused areas. If you have more than one focus area then set up more than one Twitter account. And monitoring those various accounts may give you some ideas as to the needs of that market segment.

For example, Garry West is one of the typical rough necks at Four Seasons Realty in Albemarle, North Carolina. Garry, like everyone else in the business, wants to sell any and all the real estate that he can. One option for him to use on Twitter is to post a regular tweet every day on some real estate activity in his market area. It would cover a wide audience. The problem is that several other real estate agents are already doing this. Therefor, Garry’s posts are not very likely to sway someones opinion on who to use as an agent.

A possible option for Garry is to make regular posts of any news he hears about commercial property in the area. Odds are no one in the area is doing this. If he learns that a business is looking for property for manufacturing in central North Carolina, then post that fact and site the source. If he learns that one of his competitors has just listed the old Lowe’s building in Albemarle, then post that fact, note the price and give an opinion on the value. That might help his competitor but it only costs Garry a minute and a few clicks to get the message on Twitter. Over time Garry’s followers will develop an image of him as the commercial real estate expert (even if he isn’t). Once he has developed this reputation, his followers are more likely to list their commercial properties through him or bring up his name if they know someone about to list theirs.

If he wanted to broaden his market, then he could set up a separate Twitter account and focus the posts on homes on the lakes and rivers of the area. Over time Garry would grow two sets of followers, one interested in commercial property and one interested in waterfront property. And in the eyes of both groups Garry is “the expert”.

If this just generates one additional sale in a year, then it is well worth the effort of making 3-5 posts a week.