By Chris Johnson of Guerrilla.me – Follow him @genuinechris
Like you, I get bombarded with followers telling people how to make money on Twitter. And, maybe some of those systems work, I don’t care to learn. They aren’t who I want to be or who I represent. I do make a ton of money from Twitter. None of it’s automated. Because Twitter… is about relationships.
Part 1: Your Own Followers
I started with my own followers. I went through, unscientifically, and looked at the websites that they had. I keyed in on obvious and easy stuff I could help with–improving blogs, super basic SEO (i.e. getting rid of keyword stuffing), or doing some writing work for languishing blogs. I’d look at the blog, and pitch a specific service with a price. Again, only people with obvious low hanging fruit.
“Hi, I’m Chris Johnson. I’m GenuineChris on Twitter and I follow you. I looked at your site, and noticed it needs Title Tags. I wanted to know if I could either do it for you or show you how to do it for $50 to $100 bucks.” Note: charge for value, not time.
It worked. My own followers had some familiarity with me, had seen my tweets. And that became the first pool of people I started serving. Once you get a client, it’s easy to keep and expand what you do for them. I took a Twitter relationship offline and up to the next level. Generally, the people had intended to get to what I pitched. Generally they were happy to hear from me. And, it was an excuse to call folks and deepen the relationship. (Twitter is about relationships).
Part 2: Your New Followers
The next thing I did was to find a way to honor new followers. I get about 10-20 follows a day, and probably 3-5 are human beings that found me however they found me. I go through the list about every other day (it’s filtered in Gmail), I click on everyone, and follow the people. I look at their sites, and if they are earnest, I call them. I don’t have any agenda here, but people comment and love it.
I introduce myself, and say simply, “Hey, I saw your site from twitter, clicked around a bit, and I wanted to let you know that you can count on me to promote whatever you’re doing.” No agenda at this time, because I’m basically a stranger. I’m not trying to sell, I’m only letting people know (honestly) that I’m a resource if they get something good to promote. Anytime I get a RT I try to call and thank the person. IT takes time, but relationships do, and twitter is…about relationships.
The hook here is that instantly people know me. I instantly rise above their other 1,000 followers into the top 2% of their awareness. I’d rather have 10 people that would run through walls for me than 10,000 followers that barely remember my name
Part 3: Strangers From Search.Twitter.Com
People love timely help. And they talk about what they are doing a lot: WordPress CSS issues is one example. If you can solve this problem, they GENERALLY will welcome a tweet (or if you’re me, a call) about it. I don’t automate anything, I just mess with search and find phrases that suit my business. “Launching a blog,” “hosting account,” and other things that I figured out from a mind map ultimately what searches to go after, what things that people need. I alternate running it in TweetDeck and on search.twitter.com.
When you do a bang up job, you get results and testimonials. And if you think you’re spammy, you’re not. You’re here to help. A freelancer’s security is in–and only in–the ability to serve others at a high level. And Twitter is some built in rapport with others, and when done right, a nice living. Just remember, Twitter is about relationships, and you can make six figures and remain in the cool kids tribe.
@jbwagner
Good tips. It’s nice to see a logically thought out plan.
@philipnowak
Interesting points Chris. I never even gave it any thought to call someone that I met on Twitter, and this is coming from someone who spent 4 years cold calling 50-60 people a day as a commercial real estate broker.
It’s actually a brilliant move because not only are you calling for a valid reason, it also shouldn’t be perceived as a cold call since they are the ones who initially followed you. I might have to eventually try it myself.
@genuinechris
Phil- Why would you care how you’re perceived? It’s a fun time. You, however have a wall up and I couldn’t find you. Another time…
@CasJam
Interesting article. Love the personal approach.
@lawton_chiles
Wow. This is one of those Why-Didn’t-I-Think-Of-That posts. Great content and yes the psychological impacts of getting a phone call must be huge. I will try this.
Thanks,
Lawton
@bryanwp
One site that I found wonderful for doing real time Twitter searches is Tweet Grid, http://tweetgrid.com It keeps everything nicely flowing and you can reply from the page itself.
Its helped me to follow some of the recommendations you mentioned here.
@andrewmsmyth
What a powerful way to build lasting relationships with your Twitter followers. With this approach it seems all you need are one hundred followers that actually pay attention to your tweets and you are set.
@iqi616
This has to be the best description of how to make Twitter part of your business that I have ever read. This doesn’t just apply to Twitter, it applies to any social network.
@joshfialkoff
Great post Chris!
This is a smart idea… I’m going to give it a try.
-Josh
@Uhfgood
The title doesn’t explain what kind of business. Next you only gave examples on stuff you helped other people with. While I do run my own blog, I’m not that advanced to really instruct others on how to do something via website/blog development. Should have made it a bit more general.
@Technogati
Wonderful tips,Even more followers can give more power to sell anything on Twitter.
Be smart ,Be polished and sell your product like you are the product for sale on Twitter.
@srpatterson
Some of the automated eBay stuff worked until yesterday when eBay stopped accepting traffic from shortened urls. Make sense for them, they don’t like profit and bringing in loads of traffic for those running auctions on their site.
@gillianpearce
I’m impressed you actually call people. Food for thought.
Also, like the idea of filtering your emails and only checking new followers every couple of days. I’m definately going to give that a go.
Cheers
Gillian
@jdarko82
I enjoyed this. Thanks for sharing. I hope to be able to utilize these tips in my future endeavors on Twitter. I feel as if I am sometimes not using Twitter properly or establishing rapport. I agree that I would much rather have genuine followers than a list of people who disregard everything that I tweet.
@genuinechris
@ufngood does it matter what kind of business? Seriously. I freelance. But if you have anything to give, figure out search.twitter.com and give it.
@bloggingbistro
Cool ideas, Chris. I like the way you take things you are truly an expert at and invite people in a non-intrusive way to check out your services. Too many freelancers spend all their time trying to collect followers and updating every moment of their day, as opposed to doing the hard work: researching your followers and learning THEIR needs. You’ve inspired me!
@marketlikeachik
Very practical ideas that just we all probably already knew to do but didn’t take action on it. I don’t I had ever thought of actually calling someone, but it does nail down the personal relationship. Great kick in the butt article!
@flabastida
Love Chris’ posts. th is is one of this best articles yet. He inspired me to do a lot of these things already, but seeing it put like this in a very organized way helps provide clarity. I’ve been using Twitter in a similar way to connect with potential clients in Mexico, Argentina, and Spain. Twitter and Skype are a freelancer’s best friends!
Good article!
It relates to a post that deals about twitter as the new blogging area…
It’s much easier to get a crowed with twitter rather than getting people to your blog RSS.
@siosism
I agree with you, wholeheartedly, on every single point made here!
@SmugBaldy
I couldn’t agree more. Chris, what you’ve captured here is one of the core properties just about all social media, not just Twitter. Social media is about us, our relationships, our ideas, our hopes, our mistakes, our victories. As a psychologist and an entrepreneur, I think you hit the nail on the head: it’s about relationships.
@kosireddi
Clean and clear as a whistle
@mharis
Thank you for an awesome post Chris. I hope to follow these steps for my business asap.
@CooperCoopDogg
Chris, what if you’re selling an actual, physical product?