The Business of Twitter: Is It Quality or Quantity?

Twitter is a phenomenal social media networking tool. While supposedly still lagging behind Facebook in the number of users, Twitter is rapidly growing every day, and is ranked as the third largest social network.¹ Twitter is used by mainstream media, individuals, celebrities and businesses to relay news, chat & be social, generate buzz and generate income.

The action really happens on Twitter via followers, which are the people who choose to follow the tweets you send on Twitter. While I’m among many who dislikes the term ‘followers’, it is what it is – but make no doubt, followers and those you are following, are people.  They are not just numbers. A very important point to mention before continuing.

There are generally two main schools of thought when it comes to followers/following on Twitter.

1. Follow everyone who follows you – either through an auto-follow tool, or by manually following each new follower.
2. Following only those you feel a good fit for you, whether because there is a common interest, a referral or some other criteria; or they fit your target market.

There is a more obscure third group, who follows practically no one, but for the purposes of this article, I’ll deal with the first two groups, where most Twitter users fall as they pertain to business users only.

If you are a business owner, there is a fine line in using Twitter as a professional tool to help build your business and find customers in your target market, and still being social. You need to build that Know – Like – Trust factor first.

• Your followers need to get to know who you are. They do that by you tweeting a bit about yourself.
• They need to get a chance to like you. They can do that when you reply to others and engage them in conversation.
• Trust comes from the Knowing and Liking and seeing that you are willing to think of other people and not just yourself and your business.

As Tina Williams at Coaching The KLT Factor says, “The more light you spread the more your KLT Factor develops. As you light up others, you will see that instead of seeing your light dim, the circle of light around you just keeps getting brighter!”

Finding Your Target Market

Search: There are a few ways you can find and follow targeted people to follow. You can go to Twellow and enter in keywords that pertain to your market, or search among their listed categories. Twellow searches Twitter bios, usernames and recent tweets. This works, but you have to go through and find/follow each person manually. This takes quite a bit of time.

Follow the following: this is where you find someone who is in your target market, then you click the link to view everyone they are following and you in turn follow all those people. This also works at finding a targeted market, assuming the original person was following only those in your target market. Again, this is a manual process and very time consuming.

Automated Tools: There are automated tools that will find and follow people for you. However, most that I found were not great at finding a targeted market.   I did recently download and test Hummingbird. Hummbird is Twitter marketing software designed to find targeted people and follow them automatically for you; and it will then, should you select it to do so, will automatically unfollow any who do not return the follow. Of all the auto tools I’ve seen, I truly like Hummingbird the best, because of it’s targeted market finding feature and automation. While it is not free, I believe this tool proves the saying ‘you get what you pay for’, and this one is worth every penny. This is a serious marketing tool.

Should It Be Quality or Quantity?

Why not both! If you are seeking out a targeted market within your business niche, then there is no reason to limit your number of followers – other than any following limits placed on you by Twitter. While it is true that the more people you follow, the less likely it is that you will have a one-on-one interaction with every single one of them every day, that isn’t the goal or point of Twitter. The goal should be to:

• Tweet some personable, as well as valuable,  information so your followers can get to Know you.
• They will Like you when you interact and become social: so reply, re-tweet and interact with your followers and those you’re following.
• Once they know and like you, and you have interacted, the Trust naturally comes.

If you do that, then you are engaging your tweetstream of followers and they will respond favorably by visiting your site when you tweet a promotional link.

The key is in the balance of social interaction and promotion.  If you are tweeting as a business or corporation – you need a person, with a name, tweeting on your behalf. Personalize your Twitter presence and you will get a much more favorable response. You will build your Know-Like-Trust factor and your business will grow.  Twitter is an excellent marketing tool – if used properly, the results are amazing.

¹ Twitter Wikipedia