Twitter Success Strategies

I want to share everything I've been doing to create a successful Twitter account. My hope is that I can help you out. :)

Background (before I knew what I was doing):

I recently started a new website with a partner. I had created a Twitter account having known about Twitter for a while, but never really used it.

I went around following all the top dogs in my niche and the people they're following. I would post about different things I was doing and throw a link on when I created a new article or something of that nature.

My response? Nothing!!!

I thought to myself, "Twitter sucks... what a stupid website. What is the big deal about Twitter?"

I write this here because this seems to be most people's experience. They get on there, put their product, their website or themselves up there, only to be totally ignored! And as a result, frustrated and unenthusiastic about Twitter.

The strategy I figured out (that DOES work well):

Twitter is about conversations - Yeah, yeah, you may have heard that before. Let me translate it to something meaningful: Twitter is about MUTUAL INTERESTS. When people are making that split second decision on whether or not they follow you, they look at the following things.

- the number of people following you (we'll get to inflating this later)
- the value of the content in your posts ("tweets")
- the regularity at which you converse with your followers

Let's talk about that last thing - how often you talk with your followers. See, if people see that you DON'T talk to the people that follow you, they will not want to follow you either. Again, Twitter is about MUTUAL INTERESTS, so if they believe that you won't acknowledge them as a follower, they're not going to bother following you (and by extension, your interests).

Talking to followers involves writing @ and then your message. That user can then see your @ reply to them in his/her @ list. It makes them feel warm and fuzzy because you are publicly acknowledging them, which means you are implicitly endorsing them to your followers.


Twitter is about contributing value to your followers - OK, how can you do this (and how have I done this effectively)... People value posts about:

a. Breaking news (and links to the news)
b. QUOTES (I post about 5 quotes relevant to my niche everyday and my followers go bananas!!)
c. Something funny.
d. A great, relevant link within your niche which is not self-promotion.

When you tweet things that are of value to your followers, they will often "retweet" you. This means that they will write "RT @ ... your message ..." to spread the message you sent to all their followers. YOU WANT THIS. It's a great way to get new followers and it also shows users that you are a good, legitimate person to follow who gives value.

To make yourself more "retweet" worthy, write posts about the 4 things I mentioned above regularly and choose a SHORT twitter name (if possible). Also, because twitter messages are limited to 140 characters per message, leave about 12 - 20 characters unused in your original message to leave room for them to credit you on the retweet.

With that said, give back by retweeting the posts that you find valuable. It's the ultimate compliment to give on Twitter.

People will judge you on your number of followers... get a bunch! - It's true, people treat people differently depending on the number of followers they have.

When I had 300 followers, people didn't really care all that much about what I was saying. But after I broke 2000 followers, tons of people started coming out of the woodwork, kissing my butt and trying to get on MY radar screen!

The difference goes back to mutual interests again. People know that if you have over 2000 followers, you have a good sphere of influence. Therefore, they are going to try and get you to like them so that maybe you will say something good about them to your following, which helps them out.

Good luck and hope it helps.