So you want to know the secret to my Twitter success that you can apply it to your Twitter business marketing strategy? You are not alone in the quest to learn what to tweet for success in marketing your business. This blog post is about Tip #2 in My Twenty Tips for Twitter Success.
Why are you reading this post – did one of your friends shared it via Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter? Are you subscribed to my blog via email or RSS (f you aren’t certainly click & do so now! LOL!) Perhaps the title of this post caught your attention, you are curious about My Twenty Twitter Success Tips!
As you may already know I love talking Twitter, teaching Twitter and playing on Twitter. My passion is helping small business owners and individuals use social media marketing sites, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and now adding Google+ to the mix!
If you missed Tip #1 – “Register your account, SEO Optimize your Twitter Bio, and Upload a Profile Picture” you can read it here.
2nd tip to achieving Twitter success:
Send your 1st Tweet: Welcome your new friends – Don’t SELL in the tweet
What exactly do I mean? Often someone will register a Twitter account and wait to send their first tweet. They will go out and start following others, which is an invitation for them to follow back, but they don’t send any tweets out for the potential follower to judge who they are and what they are about. When you follow someone they look at your Twitter stream and see what you are tweeting to determine if they want to follow back. If you haven’t tweeted they have nothing to look at to help them to make their decision.
If you are tweeting and it is all self-promoting, they will decide not to follow you and perhaps even block you so you can’t even follow them. Here are a few samples of these no-no first tweets:
- Check out my website http://websiteurl.com! (If they want your website url it’s included with your profile information.)
- Follow me on Facebook http://facebook.com/IAmVain. (If they want you on Facebook that bad right away – they will go find you & ask for the link connect with you on Facebook.)
- Let’s connect on LinkedIn http://linkedin.com/in/MoreVanity. (Same as above – they will go find you or ask.)
- I need a job in the _________ industry. Can you help me? (They might really know someone or have a good lead for you, but if you seem too pushy before they even get to know you it will scare them off.)
Quick add: It is ok to send the above tweets out occasionally after you have grown your following and developed a relationship with your followers.
The first tweets you send need to be worthy of a read. When I am setting up a new Twitter account or teaching one of my social media coaching clients how to use Twitter I tell them the first tweet needs to be something sincere. Don’t use any links at all. Give them a welcome, what you stand for …something that will help them decide to follow you. This is the tweet I use or something similar:
Welcome! Thank you for checking out my stream. I’ll be sharing __________ information with you. I am passionate about ____________.
You have sent the first tweet, the tweet that lets them know who you are! Now, go out and find some content that backs up this tweet and tweet it. Content that you can share that is information related to your business, what you’ll be sharing and what you are passionate about. Make sure and send out at least three others tweets. I realize you might be new to Twitter and you will not be tweeting as much as an experienced user, that’s ok, but do make sure and check your Twitter daily and tweet.
Realistically, you probably have already sent your first tweet and unfortunately you can’t undo that! Are you proud of what you sent? Maybe not ….
You can make up for it. Send out a few tweets on different days at different times letting those already following you know why they did – who you are and what you are passionate about. Luckily, Twitter is a timeline and those self-promoting tweets won’t be as visible after you have tweeted awhile.
Make sure you are tweeting to a theme. If you are using Twitter for business you would tweet stuff related to your industry. (i.e. If you are a web designer tweet articles and content related to design, graphic arts, technology trends, SEO related content).
Do mix it up a little and tweet some content about things you are passionate about also! Remember though when you tweet to avoid topics like politics, religion and profanity. When you are growing your following on Twitter you don’t want to tweet stuff that would make your potential follower decide not to follow or something that would make a follower unfollow!
That’s it for Twitter Business Success Tip #2. What I thought was going to be a very short blog post ended up a very long blog post. Hope you don’t mind!
It’s your turn – share your first Tweet success stories and horror stories. We all learn from each others’ mistakes after all!
(P.S.: People really don’t want to know what you are eating – keep those tweets to yourself, unless of course you consider yourself a foodie and want to share a great place you just checked out.)
