We all know that “Follow Friday” is a great way to show your appreciation to new followers and followers you like.
I have a few ways I use to thank my followers that go beyond just a #FF shout.
Having 500 followers or 46,000 like I do, it means nothing if you don’t learn to be grateful or show your followers some appreciation in some way.
Here’s what I do…
1. I say “Thank You” to every person that RTs any of my tweets.
2. I #ff shout every person that RTs any of my tweets. (more…)
I know how you think. Here’s what you tell yourself about Twitter: “If I follow Mr. Celebrity Man and if I get Mr. Celebrity Man to notice and reply to me, I’ll get all sorts of new followers!” You heard the story of the girl whose life changed because Conan followed her, you’ve seen how cool it is when Shaq answers people’s questions, and you’re thinking that you’ve found your ticket to fame. (more…)
Is your Twitter Stream out of control?
Is your Twitter Stream starting to get too crowded? Do you have 15 – 20 columns on your Twitter client to keep track of all your info?
Twitter provide an abundance of quality information. You just have to start use your Twitter clients more efficient to take advantage of this great tool.
In my efforts to create Social Media Experience I developed various “toolboxes” for my Social Networks. One toolbox is my Tweet Client Toolbox. (more…)
As Twitter evolves, many things become either forgotten or ignored. There are mistakes that people make because they’re new or unaware, but sometimes people just don’t do certain things because they’re not reminded of their functions. Here are 5 common things people tend to lose track of.
1. Starting a Tweet with an @
This is definitely the top mistake I see being made on Twitter. They want to mention somebody by their Twitter name but they don’t realize that when you start a Tweet with an @, the only people who see it are the people who follow you and that person. This wasn’t the case before May 2009 or so when Twitter changed it.
To get around it, many people will start a Tweet with a period but I prefer when people rework their sentence so it doesn’t seem so obvious. Something like “So @somebody and I were at dinner….” (more…)
I’ll be honest: I’m a bad tweeter (or twitterer?). I’ve been on Twitter for about seven months, and I only have 680 followers. It’s been a struggle, mainly because I haven’t put much time into it as I should.
So recently I’ve resolved get better. I’ve RT’d my followers tweets, focused less of my tweets on my blog, and started building relationships. But I’ve discovered something crazy: guest posting rocks for twitter. To start the month of February, after over six months of twittering, I had 347 followers. As of today I have 680. In that time, I had two guest posts go up on Daily Blog Tips and Write to Done. After we published the guest post on Daily Blog Tips, we went from 400 followers to about 575 in one week. We gained nearly 20 followers a day. The next week, when we had a guest post on Write to Done, we added about 75 more. (more…)
Twitter is a great tool for people and business but many still use it wrong or just have no clue what’s going on. Some of these people are mis-informed and some know their bad practices but just don’t care. I’m guessing most people don’t want to get ignored on twitter. It’s kind of like showing up at a party and not having a single person talk to you. Who wants that?!
So here are some things that will get people to ignore you on twitter!
1. Talk about yourself
This is simple. People don’t want to hear all about you! Twitter is not a platform to yell and scream your message, ideas or show off how smart you are. Well actually it can be but it has to be done tastefully. You need to be asking people questions. Don’t sit back and talk about how smart you are. Ask others what their take is or if they have something interesting to read or simply how their day was.
It’s just like a party. Would you approach a stranger and say “Hi my name is and I do this and I live here and I like this etc etc”. No! You want ask them something and get them talking and before long they will be asking you questions. (more…)
In June 2009 Twitter launched ‘verified Twitter accounts’. As someone who had had numerous instances of people impersonating my brands (and myself personally) I was really pleased with the new feature and immediately applied to become verified.
Since that time there’s been no word from Twitter. I’ve seen a few accounts ‘verified’ since that time but they are largely fairly sizeable businesses or celebrities. Fair enough I guess – the amount of people applying to be verified must have been pretty large and to verify someone must be a pretty manual process – I put it down to Twitter biting off a bit more than they could chew….
Today I got an email from Twitter with a subject line of – ‘Account verification status update‘. Yay – an update!
I opened the email to see this:
OK – so I’m not verified and there are problems with my request. But what I find odd is that there is no way for me to address the issues. The email says that if I’m a business I can go to a ‘Business Center Page’ for more information – but I have no idea what such a page is or where to find it. I do run a business and my Twitter account is used in conjunction with that business – but I’ve never registered as a business and have never been told about any such ‘Business Center’.
Of course I Googled for more information – only to find others have had the same message in the last few hours.
Not sure what is going on but it leaves me feeling a little confused and disillusioned. In the scheme of things it doesn’t matter too much whether I’m verified or not – however to refer people to some mystical business center when no-one seems to be aware of what it is doesn’t really help anyone.
Many companies like Dell or Moonfruit have discovered Twitter as a separate sales channel. Both use rather similar strategies: They either offer special discounts or work with giveaways to attract followers, drive traffic to their sites and boost sales. In 2008 (when Dell was one of the first companies to use Twitter as a direct sales channel) the social network had made Dell over $ 1 million in revenue already. (more…)
Have you ever been the lucky recipient of a #followfriday or #ff from a friend on Twitter?
It’s a great feeling when someone goes out of their way to recognize you as a resource for great insight and connection on Twitter. Recognition for being someone worth following is great for those trying to figure out the point of Twitter.
However, the common practice for a typical #followfriday tweet is to pack as many of your favorite followers into 140 as possible. While this strategy is great for pinging people in your network to let them know you’re thinking of them, it also can appear cheap and potentially a little off putting if the group of folks you include don’t have much in common.
Now, it’s rare that folks are actually offended by being included in a #followfriday. Most do in fact love to be included and recognized in some way by their followers. Some may even get a few new followers because of the referral.
As with most situations in life, however, #followfriday offers people the opportunity to cut through the noise with valuable tweets that create signal and meaning for folks.
The #1 Secret to Follow Friday Success
Something folks love even more than simply having their Twitter handle included in a mass #ff tweet is when someone devotes an entire tweet to something they specifically peg as a reason to follow somebody.
By taking an extra five minutes to break apart your #ff tweets and doing individual #ff tweets instead, you’re showing your followers that you value something specific about what they’re doing. It’s another level of respect you’re paying forward to the folks you value in your Twitter stream.
Rules
1) Use the entire 120 or so characters (How to Get Retweeted – The Formula) to describe something specific and amazing about the people whose tweets you value the most. For my handle (@dayneshuda) I can get away with leaving 15 characters available.
2) Include #ff
3) Include a Website (preferably the actual URL vs. a shortened version…for branding)
4) Give a specific reason for people to follow
Examples
Benefits of Going the Extra Mile
I’ve been trying to do this each Friday (although I do miss some) for some of my favorite folks on Twitter and the response has been wonderful and more than I could have imagined.
The folks that I highlight in detailed #followfridays are generally very thankful to be highlighted in a specific way. They seem to appreciate that someone takes the time to recognize their hard work in a field or for being a great friend and someone worth following because of their personality.
Sometimes in response (but never expected) folks have responded with similar, detailed tweets about me. It’s a nice little bonus for making the gesture.
What about your #ff experiences?
Do you leave detailed #ff tweets or the more popular styled #ff tweets?
What are some pros and cons of each?
Related articles on Twitip
I have a love/hate relationship with TweetDeck. While TweetDeck is a great tool that does so many things so well (the Love), it doesn’t do everything I want and need it to do and it still suffers from some pretty annoying technical issues (the Hate).
To be sure, some of those issues involve Twitter itself earning Team TweetDeck kudos for dealing with the limitations of the Twitter platform. After all, it isn’t easy coming up with the next earth-shattering, must have, whiz-bang feature when the platform you’re dependent upon not always reliable. It’s also no small challenge when your primary competitor, Seesmic, is aggressively introducing new features (listen to Seesmic Founder Loic Le Meur give me Exclusive Seesmic News during my podcast interview last week on Addicted to Social Media). (more…)
