DOOO, that's a great question. You're trying to make sure that you're making the best use of Twitter. I applaud you for that.
I believe you need to have a clear and concise vision how you're going to use Twitter. You need to know going in exactly what you want from Twitter. Are you going to use Twitter for fun, as a serious business tool, or for casual, social purposes? What is your end game?
The fact of the matter is, you can use Twitter anyway you like. You can use it to build a mailing list - to announce specials or discounts - to take surveys - to announce new blog posts. Brick and mortar stores can use it to pre-take orders for pickup, like one coffee shop is doing. Authors can use it to post brief book excerpts. I'm using to promote my articles, and announce the launch of my new website, Reviews-by-Customers.com. I could go on and on and on. The point is you are limited only by your imagination.
I hope this helps!
David Jackson
Last edited by David Jackson; September 30th, 2009 at 10:24 AM.
Your blog post is excellent, Lynn -- I totally agree with your view on how to best use Twitter.
I think many people don't understand that Twitter is not really like a blog. If they have 100 followers, they think all 100 of them read their tweets (updates).
I don't use TweetDeck (but plan to)... I just use the Twitter page itself. If I'm not there reading posts at the same time people I'm following are posting, I'm not likely to see those posts. There are exceptions. Occasionally I'll go to a person's home Twitter page and read through several days' worth of their posts. But that's rare.
So, thinking others use Twitter like I do, I realize that most of my followers (non-IM niche) are NOT seeing most of my posts.
With that in mind, I use Twitter mainly to build relationships.
First, by sharing helpful information for people in my target niche... TRULY helpful information, not sales pitches disguised as helpful advice. I'd say 95% of the links I share via Twitter are to other people's content, not my own.
And that helps me with the second aspect of building relationships -- with colleagues who are in the same (or similar) niche.
By retweeting their information (which they can see me doing), I'm showing them that I value what they're doing enough to share it with my own followers, even if what they're doing may be competing with what I'm doing. (I hope that makes sense... I'm talking about my Best-Interview-Strategies.com site here; I retweet posts by others in the careers/jobs niche.)
So, when I do post about my own content (which is rare; I should do it more often), they are much more likely to retweet it to their own followers. Also, if/when I launch a product, they'll "know" me and be more likely to say yes to being affiliates or JVs.
If you are just starting out and have no followers, the easiest way to get them is to find people in the niche you're interested in and follow them. I'd say do that even before you tweet your first post.
I used to think, "You gotta have content/tweets/posts on your Twitter account first, because when people are checking out your Twitter page to consider following you, if they don't see many tweets, they will NOT follow you."
I've changed my mind about that. Sort of. I started a new Twitter account (different niche from careers). I had zero followers, but instead of making any posts, the first thing I did was find people in that niche to follow. (You can use something like Twellow.com to find people to follow based on subject.)
I spent about 10 minutes to start following about 30 people.
Within 24 hours, I had 26 followers for my new Twitter account, without having posted a single tweet.
This is a way to take advantage of that "rule" some Twitter users go by -- "If you follow me, I'll follow you." 86% of those people I had followed felt obliged to follow me back, even though I had zero content and they had no idea about the quality of my tweets.
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