I was quite
astounded by the response to my last blog post ‘Missing the Point’ so I thought
I would follow it up with Part 2!
There is no
denying Twitter is amazing, whether you are selling a product or service,
looking for a lost dog or tweeting a celebrity, the possibilities are endless!
There are no hard and fast rules about how to use it, and I would like to think
common sense applies – but to my horror it doesn’t!
OK, common
sense in general seems to be disappearing before our very eyes
but that is a whole other blog post! However, when it comes to Twitter you
would have thought that a little would apply! Maybe? Well apparently not!
So what I am
referring to you wonder? Well, the fact that people follow people in the same
industry as they are in & then tweet them offering them their services!
Surely if you have read the bio about the person you are following you shouldn’t
have the ‘one tweet fits all’ approach? Auto responders are one of my pet hates
as it just shows people are not interested in what someone is doing and just
chasing the numbers. I get followed by lots of VA’s and that is absolutely
fine, it is great to connect with other people doing the same thing, but then
don’t tweet me telling me how you could support my business!
Now I have
‘process’ when deciding who to follow, yes a little Monica but as we
all know, that is what I am about ;-) So I am going to let you into a little
secret now & tell you my process!
- Profile Pic – still an egg? Not a good look!
- Bio – blank or little or no information – still not looking good!
- Twitter feed – this hard to judge but generally I will look for at least 2/3 interactions with other accounts within the last day or so to give me an idea of how active they are of if they are just trying to tell/sell me something. If it just constant tweets & re-tweets, sorry not going to get a follow.
I may not
always get time to do a personal thank you or my SAS tweet to all my new
followers, but I would never send my ‘Business in a mess, call in the SAS’
tweet to someone I can clearly see is in the same business, I would adjust my
tweet accordingly to reflect that I have taken the time to see what they do.
I know
people will think I am being more than a bit Monica about this (and yes I
probably am!) but I see Twitter like one giant daily networking meeting. My latest
little analogy on how you should use Twitter is:
- see your auto tweets as handing out your business cards to people telling them what you do
- your interactions are your conversations amongst the people in the group and connecting possible contacts (re-tweets)
- And your DM’s are for the next stage when you start talking about possible business together, where you wouldn’t want the whole world listening!
Maybe I am
over analysing and I am missing the point, I don’t know! All I do know is Twitter has been fantastic
for my business and long may that continue, with a large side order of common
sense pie on the side ;-)
