This post is for everyone who is wondering what to do with Twitter and how to leverage it as a marketing tool for your startup brand. Twitter is about conversations with real people. How can a brand invade the space and hope for followers of its brand.

Follow and you Shall be Followed
While experimenting with Twitter on my first attempt at getting scores of followers for a website, I did the usual thing and followed around 400 users. A quick analysis revealed that around 8-10% returned the favour and I was delighted.

Twitter Spam
Its only when you get a taste of your own medicine, do you realise your folly. When my personal profile got followed by another brand, I immediately viewed the act with suspicion. A click on their profile displayed a dismal following to follower ratio and you realise that at some level this is twitter's method of spamming you. Somehow you know that the website has no genuine interest in you and is following you in the hope of you following them.

Do your research
Search for twitter conversations on Summize (update: acquired by Twitter) which match what you have to sell. Just imagine what would people write about if they were remotely interested in your service.

A fashion site, would look for people who have talked about their latest purchases of what constitutes fahion in the land. Unfortunately I am not into fashion and can't give any great examples :).

If I were Nike I would seach for keywords like running, basketball, cricket, football etc. and follow those who seem to be inclined towards sport. Hope you get the drift

Add those with few followers
Those with fewer followers are more likely to notice an additional follower and reciprocate, compared to a guy who has no clue why so many people are following him.

Twit Ban
Add people but be sure to ban them soon after if they don't bother following you. There has to be a conscious attempt prune the non followers to try and attract new followers. The key is to keep a high ratio of followers to following at all times.

Content Please
Give people a reason to follow you. Update them on relevant content, news about your brand, ask questions, conduct surveys, free samples, sneak peeks etc. Make sure they interact and stay engaged. After all Twitter is just a great huge conversation

 

Success on Twitter cannot happen overnight. Take it easy and you will have long term successful Twitter presence.

Let me know if you have tried something and it has worked.

Follow Ishwar on Twitter

 

 

Image Courtesy : ComicBase

 


Comments

Prateek link
06/06/2008 3:02am

"Search for twitter conversations on Summize which match what you have to sell. Just imagine what would people write about if they were remotely interested in your service."

Great piece of advice .. here I go searching for people who talk about creating music :)

Reply
andymurd link
09/06/2008 2:45am

One of the best ways to get followers is simply to publish your twitter name/homepage everywhere you can - FriendFeed, Sphinn, Facebook and on your blog.

I've got lots of followers that I've never heard of before and they're not friends of friends. I guess they just stumbled across a link and checked out my insightful, pithy tweets.

Reply
Ishwar
11/06/2008 9:15pm

All the best Prateek

Andy - The strategy you mention is important especially for personal twitter accounts, but have you tried it for the twitter account of a brand like mmmeeja.com ?

Twitter is about conversations with real people, how do you invade that space with a brand and hope for followers of your brand,

That was the reason this post was born

Reply
Nithya link
17/06/2008 10:44pm

Summize is a real cool way to know whom u shud follow!

Reply
Ishwar
18/06/2008 9:05am

Glad you found it useful Nithya

Reply



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