Twitip

As a followup to her previous post on how to be someone that others will want to follow on Twitter - Jo-Lynne (follow her at @dcrmom) has put together a post on how to get UNFOLLOWED on Twitter.

If you’re reading this site, you already know the benefits of Twitter. And whether you are promoting a business or looking for social interaction, chances are you’d like to know how to get more followers and make Twitter more beneficial to you. We’ve all read plenty of posts on Twitter ettiquete. Here’s a list of things that are sure to get you UN-followed on Twitter.

1) Bore everyone to tears with your mundane account of your day. Let us know every time you complete a task, every bite of food you put in your mouth, and every time you visit the lavatory. They will be sure to unfollow you.

2) Clog the Twitterstream with what I like to call “Serial Twittering”. Reply to everyone who has been online in the past two hours and continue to converse back and forth even when your conversation has no purpose for anyone else. Link to every page open on your browser. You’ll be sure to lose a few followers that way.

3) Or you could take the opposite approach. Don’t bother to participate at all. Don’t respond to other tweets or answer questions. You’re far too important for those peons. Just link to your latest post and move along about your day. Wait. On second thought, there’s a robot to do that for you. Just set up that plugin and you’ll never have to bother logging in to Twitter again.

4) Now it’s time to go in for the kill. Set your robot to reply to new followers with a canned greeting. In fact! You can even set it to respond when your followers post their first tweet of the day! That’s the ticket! Your followers are dropping like flies now.

And there you have it — my best advice on how to get unfollowed on Twitter. You’re welcome.

‘How do I get followers on Twitter?’ – it’s a question it seems everyone is asking. In this post Jo-Lynne (follow her at @dcrmom) shares some tips on being the kind of Twitter users people want to follow.

Hi. I’m Jo-Lynne and I’m a Twitteraholic. Yes, I’m unashamedly and unapologetically addicted to Twitter. I use Twitter to build relationships, to keep connected to the outside world, to distract me from the housework, and to find articles and information that I wouldn’t discover otherwise. I choose carefully whom I follow on Twitter. As with any other social network, there are ways to grow your community. In Twitter-speak, this means to gain followers. I’ve put together this list based on the characteristics of the people I most enjoy following on Twitter.

1) Be Interesting

It’s fine to announce what you’re doing and thinking and what you had for lunch, as long as you do it in a way that is entertaining to your followers. Twitter is micro-blogging, and like on your blog, if all you do is give a play-by-play of your mundane daily happenings, you will lose followers. The people I enjoy following find a way to make me smile with their quips and one-liners, even if they are just informing me what they had for breakfast. Here are a couple of examples from the past few days.

@subdiva could have said, “Packing to go to Disney tonight!” but instead she wrote: “Packing up to ring in the New Year on the happiest place on earth. No, not the wine store…”

@rocksinmydryer could have said, “I hate dieting” but instead she wrote: “May I just say, for the record, that PORTION CONTROL STINKS? Thank you, that is all.”

Of course not everything you post has to be clever, but if you’re just sharing your thoughts and happenings, try to make it worth reading.

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YesterdayI saw the tweet of someone on Twitter telling another person that they’d decided to stop following me. His tweet was a little cutting and included the question (about me) ‘is anyone more tedious?‘

Ouch!

As someone who works hard at this social media and blogging game (and who makes a living from it) comments from others along these lines (and this one was tame in comparison to many I see) can be a little disillusioning.

So what’s a Twitter user (or blogger) to do when they lose a Twitter follower (or reader)?

note: I’m not suggesting that you do this with every follower that you lose – just those who do so in a public way. You could spend your whole life interacting with those who choose to stop following you!

1. Acknowledge the Persons Decision and Ask for Constructive Feedback

The first thing that I always try to do (and it can take some self control when people leave an an attacking way) is to respond to the person in some way to firstly acknowledge that you’ve seen what they’ve said, to farewell them from your network and to ask for feedback.

Usually I would try to do this in the medium that the person has made their public comment. So in the example above I responded with a public tweet – “sorry to lose you – happy to take some constructive feedback if you’d like to give it”

Responding in this way does a number of things:

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Have you ever stopped to ponder what value you are creating for your followers on Twitter?

I’ve written numerous times about the benefits of Twitter to me – what I get out of it – but perhaps a more pertinent question for Twitter users to be asking is not what THEY get OUT of Twitter – but what THEY put INTO Twitter.

Don’t get me wrong – Twitter is a medium which can significantly benefit YOU and enhance your life in many ways – however when you talk to most successful Twitter users you find that they’ve discovered one thing:

I’ve seen this to be true many times in my own 1 year journey with Twitter. The more you put in, the more helpful you are, the more value you bring, the more effort you put in to enhancing the lives of others – the more comes back to you.

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Sara Rosso, digital strategist (@rosso) and Ms. Adventures in Italy shares some tips for optimizing your Twitter profile to increase your followers.

Since Twitter’s focus is on saying a lot with very little, it makes sense that the Twitter profile space is very brief and the default settings leave little room to present yourself in detail. It’s also the first and last thing potential followers will see before deciding to click “Follow” or to click away from your profile. Here’s a few tips to customize your profile so that potential followers will be convinced they can’t miss your Tweets!

1. Create a Custom Profile Page Background

Since the visual impact of your Twitter background is the strongest tool you have available, customize it to give people an eyeful of who you are.

You can make your own image on your computer and upload it under Settings – Design – Change Background Image. The first 200-250 pixels width on the left hand side is a great place to put additional profile information and list websites.

For a quick solution, you can create just the sidebar (250×700) as your background image with “no tile” selected. Then, modify the rest of the Twitter color scheme to complement it. You can use the first 200 pixels from the top for your picture or “header” for a possible logo and tagline.

The rest of the 400-500 vertical pixels should be used to tell others what you’re about and most importantly, what you’re looking for. Are you using Twitter to get business? To gather ideas for a project? To get feedback from customers? This is the best place to reflect your interests and other facets of your professional life if necessary, so that others can see it immediately.

Alternatively, you can use it to tell people how best to contact you like @garyvee who encourages people to email him instead of sending a Direct Message on Twitter.

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The Twitaway: An Experiment In Social Media

It’s never too late to build a large, loyal Twitter following—if you think outside the box. In this guest post, Matthew Magain from SitePoint shares some tips on how you can grow your Twitter following to more than 10,000 in less than a week.

I admit it: we were a bit slow to recognize the potential of Twitter at SitePoint.

Sure, a few of us had dabbled with personal Twitter accounts, but we never really acknowledged Twitter as a viable medium for communicating with customers until, well, everyone else was doing it! By the time we decided to jump on board, our preferred username had already been snapped up by an enterprising squatter (we had to settle for @sitepointdotcom). Not the ideal beginnings for building a successful Twitter presence—and more than just a little ironic considering we pride ourselves with being at the cutting edge of the Web!

Despite beginning on the back foot, we were able to attract 13,000 followers in less than a week—an impressive following that surpasses CNN and the New York Times.

Here’s how we did it.

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One of the best ways to find new followers for your Twitter account is to leverage any other online profile that you might already have. If you have a website, blog or other social media account linking to your Twitter account is a great way to do this.

Doing it with an eye catching button, widget or counter can be even more effective. Of course there are some Official Twitter Badges available… but what if you want something a little different?

Below are some links to places where you can download 181 different free Twitter buttons, widgets, badges and counters to use on your site (actually there are over 181 when you consider the different sizes, colors, formats that are available on some of these options).

Randa Clay – Free Twitter Graphics

18 different Twitter buttons like this one.

Siah Design – Free Twitter Buttons

42 Twitter buttons – some of them animated

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Do you know what you are aiming to achieve with Twitter? Do you have Goals in mind as you Tweet?

Here is an instant messaging exchange that I had with a TwiTip reader yesterday.

Reader: “I want to grow my Twitter follower numbers? Can you help me!”
Darren: “Can I ask you a question?”
Reader: “Sure”
Darren: “Why do you want more followers?”
Reader: “Everyone wants more followers don’t they? I want to be more connected and to have more followers.”
Darren: “Let me ask another question – Why are you using Twitter?”
Reader: “I am using Twitter to get more connections. I want to connect with as many people as I can.”
Darren: “But why? What’s the purpose of that?”
Reader: “Because it means I’m a more powerful Twitter user. Tell me, how do I get more followers?”
Darren: “I’m still not sure why you want more followers or why you’re using Twitter?”
Reader: “That doesn’t matter – I just want more followers.”

This conversation went on for another few minutes – I won’t bore you with the details (we went in circles) but I think it illustrates an issue that I see many Twitter users having – they don’t know why they’re using the medium.

I can relate to this. In my own early days of using Twitter I didn’t really know why I was using it either. I saw everyone else doing it and while I was a little skeptical of the medium thought I ’should’ at least give it a go. I had no real outcomes in mind and as a result – it showed in my Tweeting.

My first few days (if not weeks) of using Twitter were unfocussed and scattered. As a result I didn’t really ‘achieve’ much. Sure I found a few followers – but because I didn’t know what I wanted to get out of Twitter I didn’t really get much.

It took me a while – but I slowly realized that I needed to be more focused in my use of Twitter and to work out what outcomes I was hoping for.

Being successful at something is very hard if you don’t know what you want to achieve. It’s much easier to hit your target…. if you know what it is.
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Broadcasting or Conversing on Twitter? Sonny Gill shares with us some tips on how to have Conversations rather than be a Broadcaster.

So you want to join the Twitter. You think of a cool username, sign up and get excited at the thought that you have complete freedom (140 characters worth) to tweet about whatever you want. You seek out the most popular Twitterers and start following them along with hundreds of others. How simple, you think. Now, the time has come for your first tweet:

“Hey all! Check out my blog www.pleasereadmyblognow.com!”

Hmm, no responses and not many people following you back. Let’s try that again:

“Glad to finally be on Twitter all. Leave some love on my latest post!”

Ok, we get it – it’s about you. Unfortunately, other people aren’t as accepting to your philosophy and won’t listen to you. Why, you ask? It’s because you’ve become a broadcaster – someone who constantly tweets about themselves and their blog/site. You fail to get involved with the community and end up providing little to no value to your network.

Wait – don’t give up on Twitter already because no one is listening to the broadcaster in you. As with any network, group or forum, there are always basic cultural mores to understand that’ll help you become a better communicator. Twitter has a few of its own that will help your experience:

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