Benefits from Keeping your Twitter Followers Active

Lots of social media users turned their attention to Twitter. It seems that the level of interaction and the ability to quickly exchange and send ideas made it one of the most used social tool by marketers, social media consultants, big companies, bloggers, web services providers and many others. I too decided to start using Twitter in October this year and found some great people to connect with and expanded my knowledge by learning what others had to offer.

Twitter as a Social Networking Tool

There are many social tools out there and I’ll not talk about it in this article. What I’m gonna talk here is about Twitter. You know, that microblogging platform that only allows you to post 140 characters at once. Yes that’s the one : great to send out ideas and arouse peoples curiosity and go check your links, great to start conversations and establish new connections but poor when it comes to detailing your ideas. But this weakness is also one of the strongest points of Twitter because this social tool is just for establishing the connection. The rest can go on off line. And how do you connect ? By following what different people have to say. You can choose to follow who ever you want and if you do good things some other users will start following you. And here comes the tricky part. Lets say you have 1000 followers that are spread across the globe (if someone knows a tool to see the geographical statistics of your followers would be great). When you post a link during the day how many clicks you think you’ll get ?

Communicate With Your Followers

If you’re just sending links in your posts probably the click rate isn’t that high. This click rate is directly depending on how many of your followers are used to talk to you. All that is happening socially between people has some connection to these things : trust, how often two people talk, how often they meet, what things they are discussing (work, usual stuff, friends and so on). This principles apply to Twitter also. You’ll see that the more you try to interact with your followers the more answers you’ll get and they’ll also involve you in their discussions.

So how do you interact :

• Whatever you do don’t spam; if you haven’t got anything good to say then it’s better to be quiet;

• Simple messages like “good morning” or “good night” or “hello” are good to start a conversation but don’t use it to often. You don’t want your posts to be filled with this kind of messages;

• I usually start talking to someone when he/she posts a link to an article. This kind of talk can be very productive for both and a great way to exchange ideas;

• Get into conversations with power users that have many followers (if you can of course; they get so many replays that yours will probably go unnoticed – but keep trying)

• You can start conversations yourself : just by asking “what are your plans for today” or “what are you working on” or just “what do you think of this” could be a great way to start a conversations

• Small talk can also help but you have to have a limit and always remember why are you there;

What are the benefits of an active Communication

As I said : people like to talk with other people. That is why interaction is so important; otherwise you’ll look like a robot that keeps posting things and doesn’t care about what others have to say about it. Talking to people that are following you and with those that you follow and helping users that have no connection with you will only get you benefits :

• your chances to get new clients will increase because people will start to trust you

• you’ll get new followers

• your blog will receive more traffic from Twitter

• you’ll establish yourself in the market

• your brand will gain in image

• you’ll be able to offer quick support to your clients

• you’ll be able to help others with small tips and maybe get them to be your clients

• if all your discussions are about your market then you can establish yourself as a person that “knows things”

How many of your followers are really following you ?

I would like to end this by posing some questions to all of you.

How many of your followers are really following you ? How many are reacting to your posts ? What time of the day you have more followers online ?

Twitter is a social tool so use it in order to socialize not to broadcast your links.