Introduction
While most people love and use Facebook as their preferred social media outlet, Twitter has increasingly become a favorite among many professionals. The number of followers has almost become something of a popularity contest in social media circles, marketing groups, among businessmen, media professionals, and celebrities. Ashton Kutcher and Britney Spears have more followers on Twitter than the entire population of Sweden, Israel, Switzerland, Ireland, Norway and Panama! I often ask people what they think of Twitter and if they use it, since I am very active on social networks and I see it as a very important communication tool to promote you, your brand, your products, etc. Some people just don’t have a lot of knowledge about this increasingly popular tool and how to start getting more visibility and taking advantage of its use, without taking too much time. I use social media platforms to connect with other professionals and aspiring entrepreneurs in my particular fields of interest, and you will find that some people simply prefer to use Twitter and not Facebook. It is best to distribute it on all platforms so that they can find you more easily. If you start using sites like Twitter and Facebook as ways to easily engage with those looking for your products and services, hopefully you’ll start to attract more readers, more followers, and a profitable bottom line in your home. business.
Nothing but the facts
The Huffington Post recently published an article revealing some interesting facts about the number of Twitter users, what people are searching for, the demographics of those who use the platform, and how people rank, search for, and follow valuable content. According to the article, Twitter now claims that 8% of Americans now use Twitter and that they have over 190 million users who tweet 65 million times a day. This is a HUGE audience for the home business entrepreneur or any other specialized professional for that matter! Hubspot, an internet inbound marketing blog, compiled a post from various sources that uses different graphs to outline more than 100 Twitter statistics.
As you can probably see, it’s not that hard to really position yourself as a leader on Twitter given these statistics. As long as you’re focused on building your brand and bringing value to others, there’s no reason why the number of followers you have gradually increases over time. You can sign up at TwitterCounter.com to check your stats, and due to the following 7 strategies, I’ve been getting around 10-15 new followers every day for the past 3 months, with the most being 35 in one day during that span. .
I ask a lot of random people what they think of Twitter and the reactions are amazing. I think many people just don’t know how to use it and usually just forget about their profile. Maybe they think it can take too long to stay consistent with their tweets. Sometimes people react to me by saying, ‘Paul, I don’t want a bunch of random crazy people to start following me.’ Like a new follower leaves them exposed to all their dirty little secrets. My response is, ‘Just don’t follow them!’ Also, don’t get sidetracked by just focusing on gaining followers, this isn’t necessarily the goal of your marketing. You could end up having a lot of ‘spam’ followers and no closer to building relationships around the world in your given field by using Twitter to connect with successful leaders and innovators. You basically want quality followers. How do you get them? Consistency, value, personality and by using the following 7 free tools. Let’s get into them now.
the seven strategies
#1 Social Drive
Social Oomph is an amazing little tool that has a free version of the app and a ‘pro’ version for $29.97/month and a 7 day free trial. I have only used the free version of the app and find it invaluable. Some of the benefits include:
Schedule, archive, and save your tweets for you to use later if you want to toggle that particular tweet back.
‘Scanning’ new followers which will allow your account to scan whether or not your new follower is a ‘spammer’.
Create and automate a direct welcome message for your new followers.
You can link your other social accounts like Ping.Fm, your Blog and Facebook to syndicate your Tweets.
I basically use SocialOomph to schedule my tweets to go live without having to be home to do it. Take 10 minutes in the morning to schedule 3 updates and you’ll have syndication all day! Do 3 more while you sleep so Europe and Asia can keep track of you too.
#two
Another free service to register. Twellow is exactly what it sounds like: a yellow page for Twitter users. It’s a directory of public Twitter accounts with hundreds of categories and search features to help you find people in your niche. The site has more than 30 million registered profiles. Some benefits include:
Set up a full bio and profile for users to see.
Easily follow other users directly from the site.
Add links to your other social media profiles.
At first, you can join 10 categories to target your certain niche. Some categories I belong to are: Network Marketing, Small Business, Entrepreneur, Meditation, Spirituality, Alternative Medicine, Theater, Social Networks, etc. Now I belong to 21 categories and subcategories.
An overall great place to find and be found by those who share your interests!
#3 Twitter-Karma
This site will display a full list of everyone you follow and everyone who follows you back. It’s simply a spreadsheet of profile names and faces that allows you to “unfollow” someone who hasn’t followed you back. It will also show how recently they tweeted and give you an idea of who is aware of following people. It’s always nice to return the favor and if not ‘Twitter Karma will get you’. He will look you straight in the face. You’d better pull yourself together, honey. Join the Twitter race!
#4 Hashtags.Org
This site will allow you to put specific keywords in your niche or in your topic of interest, and it will give you information related to tags, users and trends. Use hashtags to start categorizing your tweets so that your tweets fall within that niche. Make sense? For example, if you tweet about something related to network marketing, you’ll add a hashtag (#) to the beginning of the keyword. This will categorize your tweet into that category, so when someone goes on Twitter and searches for #networkmarketing-related tweets, yours will show up. The idea here is to make sure that your niche can find you. Not the other way.
#5 Image Classifications
Having your own custom Twitter background is an important component of establishing your brand across all platforms. You definitely want to be consistent with your image and Twitter allows you to customize yours. None of your images will contain links to your other sites, but there is plenty of unused screen space for you to customize your Twitter background more effectively. You can add additional images, your website, social media icons, or more specific information about what you do.
You can try TwitterBackground.com to access free generic Twitter backgrounds. The other alternative is to design one yourself or ask someone to help you with the design. If you’re looking for a fantastic, experienced graphic designer to help you with your branding or image, check out Scott Harwig for some stellar work! For more information on image dimensions, see this article.
#6 tweet cover
This service allows you to view Twitter updates in real time. It’s basically a 5-column screen that organizes your Twitter layout. In these columns you can access recent tweets from all your friends, recent retweets or mentions from friends, direct messages, what’s trending on Twitter, and recommendations from TweetDeck. You can also upgrade to 6 different social media platforms all in one go. TweetDeck recently updated their system so that users are no longer limited to a 140-character Tweet. TweetDeck’s new interface uses what is called Deck.ly to enable longer tweeted messages. We still have the same capabilities as the old system, except now it runs in the Google Chrome browser instead of being a separate application. The download is free and can be run on Google Chrome, your desktop, or Android phones. Coming soon to iPad and iPhone. The new interface now allows you to connect all your contacts through Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz and Foursquare.
#7 TwiTip Blog
There are plenty of high-profile blogs to choose from when looking for truly informative social media news, tips and strategies. TwiTip.com was launched around 2005 by Darren Rowse, co-author of Pro Blogger and editor of ProBlogger.net. TwiTip is a place of tips, news and tools for those who want to improve their use of Twitter. Whether it’s for personal reasons, to expand your personal brand or grow your business.