If you’re like most people on Twitter, you revel in awe over those tweeps who have 10,000+ followers; and if you’re a newby, you’re just in awe over a cool 200. Now that you’ve seen a whole slew of celebrities’ impact on Twitter, the jealousy comes in the form of gawking at 100,000 or more. Are you tired yet?Honestly, I ask, what is the point of all this tweeting?! Celebrities don’t have to tweet; they just produce because of the viewer and envious masses. And when they do actually tweet, like @mrskutcher—look out world, a fail whale will now commence in the form of 10,000 or so @ replies. I do have to hand it to non-celebrities, though. How do you all do it? Is the label of ‘Twitter whore’ appropriate (where incessant tweeting gives you a guaranteed maximum of followers per day)? Or is it the fact that you build community over multiple platforms such as blogs, Facebook, Ning and you use Twitter as leverage? I’d say the latter. If you’re a smaller outfit like us, you’re just simply not big enough to keep up on all the shared links, gossip, and people to follow on Friday. So how does your organization manage tweeting?
Here are some methods that have worked for the @AxiomPR account:
- Offering 5-10 good tweets a day. By good, I mean juicy stuff. The stuff that is a hot topic on Twitter, such as #SusanBoyle, #twoonday, and like one Twitterer mentioned—the iPhone. That is followers-guaranteed.
- RT-ing tweets that have substance, and by that I mean the tweets that many have already RT-ed and you just have to get in on the action. Sometimes you’ll get a “thanks for the RT!” and when you’ve received that from a person who has 10,000 followers—you’re definitely in.
- An entire eight-hour day devoted to tweeting. That’s right. We stop all of our work and devote our time to reaching the almighty 100,000 followers of influence, where DMs count up in mass numbers and there are so many @ replies, we start seeing the Ctrl 2 symbol appear on our foreheads…
Now if you haven’t figured it out already, this is all a big joke, BUT… so many PR and marketing agencies are coming up with strategies like these for small business clients and beyond. The problem with strategizing Twitter involvement is that it’s entirely built upon contrived interaction—a deadly way to conduct any social media venture, in fact.
While your followers may not see your strategy, you certainly do… and it stinks. If you really care about using Twitter appropriately, you’ll hold to this “Twisdom”: Do what comes naturally. And don’t worry about being a Twelebrity. If you’ve driven one consumer to your product Web site and it resulted in trial or purchase, that’s far better than having 100,000 fans of your jovial tweets, which is no way substantiate your reason for being on Twitter in the first place.
Happy Tweeting!
Tim