Do you have thousands of followers, or thousands of spammers linked to your Twitter account? That is the real question suggested by Scott Greenfield this morning in his post Unfollowed In St. Louis. This quote by Scott really says it all:
“Give me 10 followers with whom I actually want to interact and I’ll trade you 10,000 spammers.”
Isn’t that what it’s all about, finding a loyal tribe of like-minded individuals? It is interesting that Scott used the number “10” because that is the same number used by the marketing genius Seth Godin:
Find ten people. Ten people who trust you/respect you/need you/listen to you…
Those ten people need what you have to sell, or want it. And if they love it, you win. If they love it, they’ll each find you ten more people (or a hundred or a thousand or, perhaps, just three). Repeat.
So today, I’m not going to tell you how to gain thousands of followers- I am going to share with you three practices online that will help you get to the magic number 10, and and three analytic tools to see if the online practices are working..
1. Care
Nobody really pays attention to what you have to say on Twitter unless you have shown that you know how to listen. How do you show you you can listen? Very simply, you visit other blogs that discuss issues you are passionate about- and you leave thoughtful comments. On the flip-side, when somebody visits your site and leaves a comment, “treat them like gold, send them a personal email” as I learned at a local tweet-up from Keith Burtis. He blogs about wood turning, but the same principle apply no matter what your industry is.
2. Share
Don’t just post YOUR articles on Twitter, share the great articles you find that pertain to your subject. This is so crucial because it shows you are willing to give. If you come across as too self-promoting on Twitter you will never find your 10 people. (Remember we aren’t talking about 10 followers, we are talking about 10 people who are engaged specifically in what you are putting out there)
3. Create
Passing on links and commenting on blogs is not enough. You need to create original content. What should you write about? I tell professionals all the time that they should write about what they know. Most attorneys have no idea how valuable the most general legal information about their practice area is to the right people. They just need to put it out there in the right form that is informal, digestible, and useful. A little: when you are creating a title for your article, think of it as if you were a newspaper editor- they need a headline with a hook to sell papers. And you need a great title for people to click through to read your post. Nobody clicks on articles that have boring names.
IS IT WORKING?
There are literally hundreds of analytics tools out there, and while I don’t want to go into detail I will just give you three free tools that I use on a daily basis that I recommend you try out:
This free tool can be installed directly to your blog or site and it tells you some pretty amazing things. How many unique visitors to your site, how long they spent, and which pages they viewed. It will also tell you which other sites have linked to your site- and how many have clicked through from each one. This is an awesome tool, it’s simple to use, and its free.
2. Sitemeter
There are high traffic times of the day on Facebook and Twitter, and by high traffic I mean the times of the day when most people are online using social media. These times are just when you would suspect- in the morning, during lunch, and at the end of the work day. I recommend posting new articles during those times. Immediately after posting your article, the free version of Sitemeter will let you see how many visitors come to your site each hour. You can monitor this, and it can help you figure out which high traffic time works best for posting your new links.
3. bit.ly
This is one of the single most powerful tools for Twitter. With bit.ly you can track how many individuals are clicking each link you send out in your messages. You will quickly find that if you post uninteresting titles and articles, even if you have 10,000 followers, you won’t get a single click.
You can learn a lot just by watching these numbers.
Scott Greenfield had it all wrong when he referred to gathering a following: “it’s a hobby, like collecting rubber bands. But there’s no prize at the end of the game.”
The prize at the end of the day is instant traffic to your site. Can your website convert that traffic into business and paying clients? That is another story altogether. For the strategy required to make that happen, you’ll need to check out the Rainmaker Alert for five tips to turn your traffic into a lead generation tool.
So just remember, the magic number is 10. Find 10 loyal followers that will tell 10 more and they tell 10…. well you know the rest. Worst case scenario, you will have made 10 new friends. If you find 100 or 1000, even better. But just start with 10.
1 Comment. Leave new
Adrian, this post is very well-written and, equally as important, contains extremely useful information about how to make Twitter and Social Media work in our businesses. I am constantly amazed at the people who put down the efforts of others when they have not made the effort to make it work. There is no power in belittling or condemning the efforts of others’ marketing efforts. There is a world of power in offering a hand up, constructive suggestion or an ear when one is needed.
Your suggestions above are simple, easy-to-do, and are representative of marketing tactics overall. Once businesspeople, and yes, that includes all the professional services, decide they are in business, they need to dedicate themselves to that skill which takes care of communicating and delivering to our clients what they need to be successful, and that is marketing.
Dedicate resources to marketing, just as you have suggested above. Do it before you turn the lights on every day if that’s what you need to do to be able to afford the resources. Dedicate resources to marketing before you buy new file folders, before you buy new computers, before you replace that old, worn carpeting in your office, before you do most anything else that doesn’t have to do with growing your business. If you aren’t willing to do that, shut the door, pull the blinds, and go work for someone else who is willing to dedicate resources to marketing. Either that, or talk to Adrian or others about how to right your marketing ship now before it’s too late.
Adrian, again, wonderful job….keep up the conversation, which is what doing business and caring for our clients is all about.