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.

I just finished reading a great article by Dan Zarella (click here). He talks about creating “Tweetable Moments” during a presentation. It provides some great strategies that a speaker can use to get his or her audience to tweet about something said in the presentation.

Who Is Your Audience?

Dan’s article focuses on presenters that are operating in front of a large group of people. I do this on occasion when I do my Internet seminars. Many people in business will have such opportunities, but not very often. But, remember, if you are in marketing to any extent, then you probably have daily audiences in various groups of one, two or three people. And there are opportunities in those situations to create “Tweetable moments.”

Keep It Short And Sweet

The tweet your audience is going to send out can only be 140 characters. Then you hope they mention your name to their followers. That way their followers many become your followers. Your audience  may also want to add their own short comment. So if I am going to get these benefits it will require a statement like “Here’s a neat item Huck Huckabee just told me about …” That takes up 51 characters. And remember they may want to leave a longer comment than that. So lets increase this number by 50% and say that we need our “Tweetable quote” to be under 60 characters. So that’s 75 characters for your senders adders and 60 characters for the quote. That is done in five characters under the limit.

Find Tweetable Content

Next, find a Tweetable statement related to you, your business or your industry. In this case I an looking up something on Twitter statistics. On Techcrunch.com there is a headline in a June 8th article that reads: “Costolo: Twitter Now Has 190 Million Users Tweeting 65 Million Times A Day.”

Create The Tweetable Quote

So, let’s create a ” Tweetable quote” from this information. This statement is made in 77 characters. Take “Costolo:” out and we’re down to 68. Edit the statement to “Twitter has 190 million users tweeting 65 million times a day” and you are under the 60 characters mentioned above. And now you have a Tweetable quote that you can share with your contacts during the day that some may repeat for you on Twitter.

Now, lets look at this situation again. The statement above has two very interesting items. This creates an opportunity for two Tweetable quotes and that will leave even more space for your audience to add their desired content.

So if your in the building supply business and you get that information about new housing starts jumping 40% next month, you’ll be able to create your Tweetable quote that your clients can share with their followers.

How do you create Tweetable moments?