Everyone from the main stream media (even
Oprah) and celebrities through to leading global brands have embraced the new and exciting communications platform known as Twitter.
Many of you reading this would know I am a huge fan of Twitter and believe it to be one of the most significant and disruptive web sites/platforms to come along in a long, long while.
For me at least I see Twitter being to today’s crop of social media sites/platforms what Google was to the then disparate and unprofitable ‘search’ space.
That is, I believe Twitter will be the brand that finally works out how to make a real business from a space that while extremely popular is yet to produce a business model that can deliver sustainable and substantial profitability (Twitter is a relatively new entrant to the social media space and while people now feel they ‘need’ to be part of it, many are not sure ‘why’ they should use it or ‘what’ they need to do to benefit from it once they have taken the trouble to join it.)
An interesting quote from a recent article on Twitter (written by Bill Heil and Mikolaj Piskorski) provides some insight into what Twitter is …
This implies that Twitter's resembles more of a one-way, one-to-many publishing service more than a two-way, peer-to-peer communication network. http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/cs/2009/06/new_twitter_research_men_follo.html
Researched thoroughly (over a glass or 3 of Margaret River Red), one of Twitter's greatest supporters, me, feels it’s time to get to blogging on the topic.
This blog post will cover two commonly asked questions (asked of me at least).
“How do I build a following on Twitter?” (Building an audience on Twitter) and “How do I manage my presence on Twitter?” (Managing your twitter presence)
I should point out at the outset that this post is in the main about building a following on Twitter and continuing to grow it for commercial purposes. That’s not to say that the advice contained here-in can not be used for personal Twitter account building, just that the relatively ‘broad’ targeting of many of the suggested techniques is better suited to less personal accounts… 'one to many' as the article mentioned above suggest.
There are a number of tools I have used and researched for the various Twitter accounts I have (each of these using some or all of the following tools to varying degrees.)
Flashtweet is a tool I first tested early on in the Tweetspace with my ‘
Better Sports’ Twitter account (
Better Sports is a small startup that sells a simple guide to the rules of golf that I started with my father.)
Flashtweet is a collection of Twitter Tools that help you manage en masse many repetitive tasks in a clean, simple to use interface. With Flashtweet (according to their website) “…you will be able to bulk follow up to 100 friends at a time, unfollow individuals who are not following you back, display mutual friends and all of your followers.”
What to use it for: 2 things.
- The Mass follow tool allows you to pull up the ‘followers’ of another Twitter users profile (say someone that shares similar interests to yours or is in the same industry as your business) and then ‘mass follow’ (or select individually) those profiles that may be interested in you. The aim here is to follow people that you find interesting and in turn hope that they find you interesting enough to follow you back. Tip: When using this tool, only follow those profiles that have a photo as these profiles are more likely to be active and therefore a greater chance of following you back. (Further tip… avoid the ‘make easy money now’ style profiles that often show a shot of an attractive model. They may follow you back but will be noisy and likely clog your Twitter stream with all manner of ‘get rich quick’ schemes.)
- The Mass Unfollow tool allows you to list all those people that you are following that are not following you back. Simply select them individually or in bulk (lots of 100).
Personal preference for Twitter Karma for this sort of thing (which I mention further on.)
Twollo (pronounced tee-wollow) is a relatively new tool that allows you to find and follow Twitter users automatically.
What to use it for: Allows you to automatically follow people based on topics that you are interested in. Twollo will follow as few or as many people as you set it to do (within Twitter limitations) all day, every day.
I have only used this tool a handful of times and even then have turned it off shortly after using it .
Is difficult to balance maximising the number of people you would like to follow using the tool with not ‘over’ using your allocated calls of the Twitter platform and restricting you from following people manually through the regular Twitter interface.
Buzzom (InRev TwitIn) offers several useful twitter tools including the ability to follow people that are ‘likely’ to follow you back (something they mention on their site) and ‘flush’ (unfollow) those that you are currently following that are not returning the favour.
What to use it for: This site is particularly useful for following people given its stated claim that those that it suggests you follow are likely to follow you back. While this claim is not substantiated, I’m guessing they suggest people that have around the same number of followers as they do people they are following.
You are limited to following a maximum of 25 people at once, so if you want to follow larger numbers, suggest you open multiple browser tabs and run the ‘grow’ tool in those additional tabs (is faster than repeating the process within one browser tab.)
The Flush tool on this site is also particularly useful, especially if you have a large number of people you are following that are not following you back (some of the other tools that provide ‘flushing’ functionality have trouble flushing large numbers of people in one hit).
Here the tool randomly selects 25 people that you are following that are not following you back and allows you to ‘remove’ them from your following list (either the whole 25 or those individually selected.)
Twitterkarma is a handy Twitter application that helps you manage a large list of followers (and those that you are following.) It pulls your info from your Twitter account, which you can then filter in several ways.
It has a very easy to follow interface that lists your connections and shows against each, your relationship to them including wether or not they are following you back.
What to use it for: Useful to see which followers you are following that aren’t following you back. Unlike Buzzom (mentioned earlier), TwitterKarma allows you to ‘bulk unfollow’ very large groups of people. As mentioned above however, the larger the list you are trying to manage the more likely you are to experience difficulties (including taking a substantial amount of time.)
Speaking of unfollowing, as I was putting this post together I came across the following article on the excellent Read Write Web site.
The general thrust of the story is that Twitter will be clamping down on people that unfollow (or flush) large numbers of people on a regular basic.
According to the story, Twitter’s Doug William’s stated "There is no limit to the number of unfollows. Using software to constantly churn followers in a repeated pattern of following and unfollowing will however risk suspension."
In lieu of this, suggest you use any of the tools suggested (especially those with the ‘unfollow’ feature) sparingly, possibly experimenting with a test account (one you could afford to have suspended, or worse removed).
Tweepme is a site that houses a growing group of tweeple whom via this site follow each other.
So in theory if the site has 10000 members then eventually all 10000 members will have 10000 followers and so on.
What to use it for: Useful to get a jumpstart and increase credibility (in some peoples eyes) on Twitter by having a high number of followers.
Note: I tried this a couple of months ago and didn’t’ find any measurable increase in my followers for the account that I used it on.
I have included it here however as in theory this type of site seems like a clever idea, especially for commercial Twitter accounts where bragging rights of follower numbers matter.
The Twitter Tag Project - Follow Friday is a fun way to increase followers for you and your friends on a Friday.
Rather than entering them manually this tool will scan through your last 200 tweets, count the duplicates and return your most active friends for you to then promote to your followers.
Having mentioned all these ways to increase the amount of people you follow and in turn have them follow you, there are also some useful tools to unfollow.
Untweeps is a simple way to unfollow inactive Twitter profiles.
What to use it for: Allows you to unfollow people who haven’t updated their profiles in 30 days. Useful for removing inactive accounts, often those that have been set up yet never used (or used sparingly) i.e. spam accounts or squatters.
Using the mentioned methods above you should be able to increase your presence on twitter. But the key is to maintain this presence and keep on tweeting.
Many of us don’t have the time to tweet constantly throughout the day. However there are tools to make it seem that way by auto tweeting on your behalf.
Tweetlater is a handy tool that allows you to schedule tweets minutes, hours or even days ahead of when you would like them posted.
What to use it for: Tweetlater is especially useful for when the bulk of your followers are from another time zone (as is the case with myself, based in Bali and Australia.)
In my case, quite often I will find useful information around Movies and Technology first thing in the morning (my morning), yet a lot of my followers are based in the US. With Tweetlater I can schedule some of these posts much later in my day to coincide with early morning in the US
Hootsuite is a similar site to Tweetlater (allowing you to schedule tweets to be posted later) but can also do a whole lot more. My favourite feature is the ability to manage multiple accounts, something I use to handle my main Twitter account (
@whodeani) and my many business Twitter accounts.
What to use it for: Not only does it allow you to schedule your tweets minutes/hours/days ahead it has a nifty ‘hootlet’ function that allows you to post the page you are currently viewing within your browser to Twitter as a short URL (via the URL ow.ly).
It also provides statistics on posts that include these short URL’s including clicks per URL and a popularity ranking. Outside of Power Twitter (a plug in for Firefox), this is my most used Twitter tool.
Tweetie is an iPhone based Twitter tool that includes everything you would expect from a 3rd party Twitter app (the ability to post tweets, search trending topics, read your ‘@’ and Direct Messages) and additional features specific to the iPhone.
2 of these iPhone specific features I used earlier this year while ‘live’ tweeting the Anzac Day AFL match from the MCG in Melbourne (using my Anzac Day account
@anzacday).
Firstly, I was able to take photos of the match using my iPhone and upload them (compressed) onto to Twitter. Second, I was able to post alongside these photos, my location using GPS and Google Maps.
So not only was I able to post score updates on the match as they happened, I was also able to show visual highlights of the match and let people know exactly where it was happening.
Yes it’s true I am a twitterholic! And twitterholic proves it to be true. This is a useful tool to check how you rank in your area (against those other Twitter users whom have submitted their site to Twitterholic or had it submitted to the site by someone else.)
As of posting this blog, I am currently ranked 13th in my location on
Twitterholic (Australia). A ‘long’ way to go to the number 1 position where
@kevinruddpm, the Australian Prime Minister, has 4 times my followers.
I can dream.
(Note: Global Chart)
Your Checklist for Managing Your Twitter Profile.
- Say something interesting. Simply getting people to follow you is of little use if you aren’t saying anything that will interest them. As easy as it is for people to follow you, it’s just as easy for people to unfollow you.
- Post regularly. As mentioned above, there are a growing list of tools that allow you to ‘unfollow’ profiles that are inactive. This needs to be balanced of course with ensuring your posts are interesting and that you don’t post too much and cause people to unfollow you (or worse be tagged as spam).
- Use the various tools mentioned here to find interesting people and follow them. Ideally these people will find you and your posts interesting and follow you back.
- On a regular basis, review those that you are following and see those that are not following you back (using tools like Flashtweet and Twitter Karma). Consider removing those that are not following you back. This will allow you to follow new people. This particular tip is very useful for those trying to break through 2000 ‘following’. (To be able to follow more than 2000 people, you need to have 2000 people follow you.)
- Track the success of your posts via tools like Hootsuite to see what people found interesting.
This is just a brief overview of the many applications that support Twitter.
Test them out. Some may work for you and your needs more than others.
There may be other tools that spring to mind so feel free share your experiences with using the tools I’ve mentioned and any others in the comments section below.
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