Finding The Right Followers

The Complete Guide To Building Your Twitter Audience

Chapter 3 – Chapter 3

twitter-more-followersYour goal should be to build a community that is mutually beneficial. That does not mean you should go follow 10k people on your first day. You must follow and respect the Twitter rules of engagement. The average Twitter account can only follow 2,000 people so choose your followers wisely.You should only follow people that fall into a certain category such as potential customer, potential influencer or a potential source of valuable information. Within each industry there are always those that rise to the top as social influencers, these are always great assets to know.

The Potential Customer

These are folks that tweet on topics that you have identified as prime keywords. This is much like creating your SEO or PPC keyword list. People talking about X topic are most likely in the market for the product or service you are offering.

  • Step 1 – Create your Keyword list.
  • Step 2 – Use advanced Twitter Search to find people tweeting about your topic.
  • Step 3 – Follow these people
  • Step 4 – Engage with your audience.

The Potential Influencer

These are the people like bloggers, writers, and business owners that are authority figures in their particular industry. They are the ones everyone wants to have in their back pocket because one tweet, one mention can get your name in front of a lot of eyes because of their reach.

How do you find such people?

Look for influencers that have made it to the top 25 or top 50 lists within your particular niche. Stay with people that influence on your topic whether they be bloggers or media members.

How do you get their attention?

Begin with the follow. It will be very unlikely they will follow you back right away but if you are persistent it might just pay off. The same rules apply as engaging general followers but positive attention goes a long way. Retweet their stories, be helpful by adding your own comments about how you found their article helpful.

Valuable Sources of Information

There are tons of people sharing insightful information that share on a regular basis. Often times these users share tidbits exclusively to their Twitter followers which can give you great insight. I recommend that only follow sources that you find benefit you in a special way.

Research The Competition

There is nothing better than spying on the competition and Twitter is the perfect place to do it. Be sure to follow your competitors and track how often they post, who follows them, and pay special attention to what they are saying. This can give you ideas for your own posts but also can be most useful when creating other marketing campaigns. For example: You happen to notice a trend of people complaining or asking questions about a specific feature or functionality of their product. If you understand that they have a pain point use that as a trigger for your own campaign showcasing how you solve the customers problem.

Understand Your Target Audience

Your first challenge in finding your audience is to define your typical customer, while this may sound easy at first glance there are several details that are often omitted when profiling your target audience. The most typical approach is to go for the most generic pool, while this provides a higher number of potential customers it may not be the most efficient use of your marketing budget. The more granular you are able to define a users preferences and behaviors the more opportunity you have to convert them to a sale.

Start by evaluating your existing customers, find out who you are really selling to and what makes them unique. Answer how your solution is solving their problems and use that to your benefit. Identify demographics, by answering where they are located, what is their average age, and many other details such as income levels. Then move into the details of attitude and taste preferences that often times dictate buying decisions. Fill in the details of how they usually make their purchases and where they like to buy answering questions like, do they read the newspaper or search online. Hobbies or interests are a great place to start if it ties into your product. Think of all the details that apply to you specifically.

audience

Once you have an accurate view of your customers it will help determine the best places to attract additional buyers as well as lending to the production of effective messaging. Make sure to incorporate your findings into your Twitter strategy.