7 Habits of Highly Successful Twitterers
I was just thinking about this the other day and decided to compile a list of what I see as the 7 highly effective habits of successful Twitter-folks:
- Let your profile speak for itself.
Just as you would with your blog, your LinkedIn or Facebook profiles, or any of your other online personas, add some personality and depth to your profile. Make sure to customize your one line bio. If your screen name doesn’t reflect it, think of your bio as “SEO for your profile”. People can only find you by what you describe yourself as, or what you post. So if you want to be found, give them every opportunity. - Maximize your efforts.
Twitter can become overwhelming really easily if you post often. Make sure to utilize a desktop or mobile application to make your life easier. There are tons out there. Test several out and see which works best for you. Here’s a few that I see pretty often around twitter: Twhirl, Tweetdeck, Twitterberry, and PocketTweets. - You’ll catch more bees with honey than vinegar.
It’s easy to make comments about “This website sucks” or “Man, I hate how much XYZ charges me monthly”. Those are fine every so often, but more often than not, you don’t get as many new followers or as much buzz as when you provide insightful criticism or positive insights on your niche. - Go find your community and bring it to you.
When I first started using Twitter the first people I added to my list were my friends, colleagues, and a few other people I knew were on Twitter. That was it. I think that ended at about 20-30 people, all of which I already talked with via email, instant messenger, on my blog, on the phone, or in person. And that’s how it stayed for a while until I began searching for people who I knew would have a similar interest. Searching for “chicago marketers” yields several hundred results. There’s several people who I’d like to connect with. Searching for “b2b marketers”, there’s another hundred or so. Searching for people talking about “SEO” or “usability”, there’s several hundred more as well. All of a sudden, I’m at 300 followers, just from me connecting with people and they follow me back, which then causes a chain reaction as we interact more and more. And now I approach 450 followers. Most of them one way or another interested in topics I speak about regularly, and which I get to read about from them in turn. - Be generous and share the wealth.
This leads me to my next point, which is to share the wealth. If someone posts something truly inspiring, insightful, or interesting let others know about it via “retweeting“. Don’t just take a link or thought they’ve posted and repost it as your own. Give them credit where credit is due. I believe in karma and for me, not citing an original source is bad karma, so just avoid that whole mess and let others know where you get your great information. - Respond as often as you can.
Just because you may not ever see these people in person or interact with them outside of twitter does not mean you can just blow off their efforts to interact. If you have the time, respond to every reply and direct message you can. And if you don’t have the time, let people know. That’s the whole point. It’s an ambient awareness tool. It’s to make people aware of what you’re thinking, feeling, or doing. 140 characters is no more than 30 seconds of typing, even if your a terrible typist. - 140 characters of fun.
Twitter is fun. Nobody likes a Debbie Downer, so whenever possible, spice it up a bit with some light humor. With all the nuttiness happening lately, everyone could use a laugh. And at the end of the day, isn’t it just more fun?
Enjoy.
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Couldn’t agree more with you Jeff, especially on points 5 & 6. Twitter & Friendfeed have a way of surfacing the most relevant news and knowledge resources.
The key I suppose is to define one’s goal`Success is clearly not about gathering more followers or following hundreds.
Here are a few more tools that could help finding one’s community and thought leaders:
http://www.WhoShouldIFollow.com – A recommendation engine where you can filter users by popularity and distance. http://www.Twubble.com is a similar tool.
Twellow – Helps you find people who matter in your industry or domain.
It also has recently updated bios category, so revisiting your bio once in a while could be a good idea TwitDir is a similar tool.
Other tools include:
Tweetlater.com—allows you to auto-schedule tweets, auto-follow new followers, and send an auto-welcome.
Qwitter (www.useqwitter.com)– alerts you to who has stopped following you.
Twitter can also be used to track issues or identify business opportunities.
TweetScan allows you to set email /RSS alerts for keywords. I find this useful
Spy (http://spy.appspot.com/) is a hot new app developed by @benhedrington that tracks social media conversations across Twitter, Friendfeed, blogposts & Google Reader.
So as you can see there is a whole cottage industry of sites around twitter. Wonder if if many of them will survive the economic crash.
Vijay
(@VijaySankaran)
You may also want to check out an interesting post i came across my tweetstream:
Twitter PR | 5 Ways to Measure Rank, Reach, Results
The writer happens to be from Chicago too, like you.
http://barbararozgonyi-wiredprworks.com/2008/10/14/twitter-pr-5-ways-to-measure-rank-reach-results/
I resemble that remark, Jeff.
Great article, I’ve never tried PocketTweets, thanks! I use primarly Hahlo on my iPhone.
http://hahlo.com/
Can’t I just use Twitter ’cause it’s fun? Or can I only use it if I want to maximize my Web2.0 Upward Marketing Outreach to Potential Growth Resources?
Great post! I personalize all DM’s on Twitter to welcome followers (never an autoresponder) and always will respond back if someone directs a tweet to me. I also try once or twice a day to run through the tweets of my followers and give kudos, or share a point on tweets as it makes sense.
Yes it takes a few more minutes, and maybe I won’t be able to do it when I have thousands of followers
but isn’t that the whole point of social sites like Twitter–to interact, not just “collect” followers?
What a cool collection, Jeff. My favorite?
#5 Be generous and share the wealth
Thanks to Vijay for mentioning my article here and yours on my blog – that’s sharing the wealth.
Good to make a connection with you and hope to meet you in person at an event soon.
@wiredprworks on twitter.com
Jeff,
Some excellent guidelines for people like myself who tend to go in waves from one social media to another.
Having a clear plan helps avoid the wasted time and inconsistencies between my various accounts.
Jeff
Great post, Jeff!
5 and 7 are great! We all need encouragement and laughter.
excellent post and i just found it!