How To Find, Connect, And Influence Followers
Skeeter recently brushed up on the point of using hashtags and keywords to reach more people in his article Mistakes to Avoid, at least reach quality people and not wallflowers (you know, the ones that rarely tweet, or could still be figuring out Twitter, or might even be brewing up a spell of spam.)
What I would like to do is share on how to focus on that more, connect, and actually influence those followers.
1. Finding followers – quality followers. These are the ones that are truly interested and want to connect on some level with others. Keywords and hashtags only go so far. In order to find quality followers, you should dig deeper by reading through profiles.. Places like Twellow are great, and you can look up keywords and hashtags on the Twitter search. Also, websites like Mashable, TechCrunch, WebProNews, other popular blogs, and even here at TwitterWatchdog, some people actually leave their Twitter username. If they have said something that catches your eye, you might want to follow them because they are the ones more likely to be quality followers.
2. Connect with followers. Auto DMs (automatic direct messages) are not always great to use. Some of the followers might not have followed you if your Auto DM is not something that relates to the topic they had stepped into and decided to follow. So, if you do Auto DMs – try using a general message that attracts them to know about you. For example, you could try a Twitter landing page on your site that says “Welcome Tweeps” and introduces yourself. The page could direct your visitors to either a blog, or certain places you think your visitors might be interested in seeing. For example, Graham Smith (@imjustcreative) has a nice landing page with a video introduction.
Of course, it is difficult to keep up with everyone if you have a lot of followers. The key is to make the effort. Try asking thought provoking questions, tweet interesting articles, and make an effort to read other’s tweets. While you might not respond to them all, you can respond to the ones that could bring in others to the conversation.
3. Influence followers. So, now that you have found followers, and then connected with them, you now need to influence them. Along this process, with finding and connecting, you have built yourself as a trustworthy person. Whether you are selling your product or just trying to get people to read your blog, you need to become a person that people see as very knowledgeable in your niche. That is what the leg work was before you became influential. All those blog posts with powerful information that you wrote, tweeted, and received feedback will pay off on some level. Eventually your followers will retweet and even recommend you. This is what you want to work on by producing quality work while also being consistent as a person. If you are all over the place, it is difficult for your followers to know what you want them to learn or even buy.
This is a process that you will rinse and repeat many times over, but will find one thing: you will build solid connections that will last.
Do you use this process? If so, how has it worked? If not, do you have a process that has worked for you?
Follow Nile Flores on Twitter – @blondishnet
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