Jeff Woelker : Chicago SEO, SEM, and Social Media Consultant

In case you’ve been living under a rock during 2009,  it was the year of Twitter. Twitter and “tweets” were all over the place. Many marketers were just trying to get their feet wet, while others jumped in wholeheartedly and even created national campaigns around it. At least until the next hot thing, it appears that Twitter is it for now. For many B2C, as well as B2B, marketers it was easy to setup a Twitter account and post a few things here and there, but after a few weeks or months they began to wonder:

• Am I reaching the right audience?
• How do I extend my audience?
• What are some quick ways, aside from giving away “the farm”, to grow my audience?

This post is specifically around those questions. Here are three quick ideas you can use to grow your Twitter following quickly and relevantly.

Media Publications
The first place to look is to existing trade publications who have migrated to Twitter. Over the last several years, traditional and offline media has really been taking it on the chin due to the rise of online. As a result, many of them have taken to social media and online venues as a way to stoke the fires of their online publications. Whether you are looking to reach teens and tweens (i.e. TigerBeat), yacht enthusiasts (i.e. Sailing Magazine) or professional contractors (i.e. Contractor Magazine), there are offline or newly created online publications on Twitter. All you have to do is click on their “Followers” link and presto, you have a captive audience for your products or services. If they are interested in what these publications have to say, they are probably also interested in what your company has to say. So what publications are important to your industry? Even if they don’t have a Twitter account setup, you might find people who are regularly readers, just talking about it too. See for yourself.

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I don’t think we’ve reached jumped the shark territory yet, but we’re getting there pretty fast.

I think we’ve either just about crossed over the peak or we’re about to shortly and are now heading towards disillusionment. As soon as American Idol starts using Twitter as a voting platform, we’re done.

During the workday today I noticed a post by GadgetVirtuoso speaking to GM’s hybrid initiatives:

Normally, this would be nothing to report. Within a few minutes though, GM was on top of this response:

A sincere and earnest inquiry into his original post. Not lashing out against what he had said. Not trying to correct him with some marketing speak. Just trying to get to the heart of the matter and better understand why he had posted that and how they could help. Normally, I’m all for bashing the industry which has caused so much pain in my home state of Michigan, however, this time, I’d like to applaud GM and their pro-active online actions.

And for anyone who is questioning the validity of social media marketing and interaction, here’s a great example of how it can help prevent small fires from burning out of control online. It just takes someone listening and a few seconds to respond. Here’s some tools to help you with that:

• 8 Essential Free Social Media Monitoring Tools
• 5 Online Reputation/PR Management Tools
• Twitter alerts or Twitter Search
• Radian6 (Not Free, but very good)

After presenting at the BMA breakfast luncheon last week, I had the chance to visit the Chicago 2016 Olympic bid offices. My friend Blagica is part of the social media team and got me an insider’s look into what they’re doing. It was really an inspiring couple of hours and it made me proud to be part of Chicago and, to a small extent, the bid itself.

Here are several of the efforts they’re using as part of the social media initiative. Feel free to pass these along or tell others about them:

• Chicago 2016 Website
• Facebook Groups – Chicagoans, Bloggers, Volunteers, and several more.
• Chicago 2016 on Twitter
• Chicago 2016 on YouTube
• Chicago 2016 Flickr Group, Chicago 2016 Flickr Photos

And here’s a video I saw, which frankly, brought a tear to my eye. Enjoy.

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.

I found this website yesterday on Twitter called Tweetbeep. Here’s Tweetbeep’s description of their service:

TweetBeep is like Google Alerts for Twitter! Put in a keyword or website, and get emails when others tweet it!

That’s pretty much it. I’ve already found several people on twitter talking about things related to me or my industry, but that I would have never found otherwise. One of my friends (@exitcreative) asked me, “why don’t I just subscribe to the RSS feed from Summize Search.Twitter.com?” Frankly, my tendency is going more and more away from RSS these days and pushing everything I can into email. Except for my really high volume RSS feeds, which would just inundate my email, I prefer to keep everything in as few repositories as possible.

In closing, check out Tweetbeep. It’s fantastic, even if you’re not on twitter. You can still see what others are saying and interact with them at your leisure.