How To Achieve Your Social Media Marketing Goals On Twitter Without A Large Amount Of Followers (Day 18)

Photo by JoeLaz

This is day 18 of the 31 Day Challenge To Optimize Your Blog With Social Media. We talked about using Facebook to promote your blog. Today, we’ll start talking about Twitter.

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Before we dive into Twitter, we need to get one thing straight: Size does not matter!

As I mentioned before, Someone who has 1,000 unengaged followers has the ability to reach 1,000 people – at best. But someone with 100 passionate followers, each with 100 of their own followers can reach 10,000 people – and probably more.

A social media strategy that only consists of mass following – and mass spamming – will not produce any real long-term value for anyone. The only exception to this rule is when Twitter is used as a broadcaster of discounts, promotions or customer support information. Beyond that, it’s about leveraging and nurturing strategic relationships.

That said, there are three types of followers everyone has:

Bots – Forget about these followers – they offer no value. Unfollow.
Friend- You know these people. They retweet your posts – consistently. They engage in regular conversations with you on a variety of topics.
Friends you haven’t met yet – These are possible future fans.

So great… You know the three types of followers. Big deal. Now what?

How To Achieve Your Social Media Marketing Goals On Twitter Without A Large Amount Of Followers

Before, we go any further, I need to be completely honest with you about something: I am not an expert on using Twitter for business. However, I am an expert on the strategies and tactics I’ve used to get real, living, breathing customers from using Twitter. In fact, about 40% of my business comes directly from Twitter.

I have two approaches that I manage simultaneously:

Nurture my existing friendbase

Again, I’m no Harvard MBA, but here’s what’s been working for me:

I keep several private Twitter Lists of folks depending upon how “intimate” our business relationship is (you can use this method for donors and volunteers). For example, I have a list called “prospects” for people who have gone from casual conversations on Twitter to email conversations. I also have a list called “potential partners”, “partners” and one called “clients”. All these are private for obvious reasons.
I wrack my brain to the edge of aneurysm thinking one thought: How can I help my friends achieve their goals? My personal belief that’s been tested and proven is this: People want to help someone who helps others succeed. I shared some of these tactics over at @Problogger’s TwiTip blog: “How To Be Useful On Twitter Without Going Crazy”.
Once I enter into a business relationship with a friend, I record the details and deals in Highrise, by 37 signals (Non-profits should check out DonorTools). Highrise has Twitter integration too. For other friends that have gone beyond Tweets and DMs, I use excel and my iPhone contact app to keep in touch.

Expand my reach into the “friends I haven’t met yet”

Again, People who automatically follow you do not count as interested followers. The easiest way to see who’s interested is by looking at folks who’ve replied to you. As I mentioned in my post on Twitter lists, this is one of the first places I go when looking to see who’s part of my friendbase.
I have a Twitter list called “Testing” where I put folks who may share similar interests and goals.
When I have the time, I focus on diverse conversations. I’ll look up trending hashtags on Twitter or scan through my home feed on Twitter to see if there are conversations I might be interested in. I’ve found that broadening out my conversation strategy has created a number of new opportunities (and clients) that I wouldn’t have found otherwise.

To help make sense of all this, I create a Super Simple Mind Map On How To Manage Twitter Relationships