How to Build a Twitter Audience

Getting started on twitter is a lonely task. I can tell you from experience that your first tweet, will be your loneliest tweet, and you will feel like no one is listening. Honestly, no body probably will be, or very few anyways. But do not let this lonely first tweet discourage you! Building a twitter audience, a real audience that is, takes time & consistency, however with the right efforts, the audience you grow will be all ears to every next tweet!

Here are some tips on how to build an engaged & active twitter audience.

1. Talk to people

I put this as the first tip because I think it is the most important. Twitter is a social platform & the intention is to be social. So talk to the people you are interested in engaging with & form relationships with them. Take interest in what they are tweeting about, retweet their content & respond to their questions. Make friends & be social! If you are using twitter to market your business, engage with your target customers who are on twitter, with contacts who will help to support your business & build relationships with people you may want to work with.

2. Follow the people you want to talk to

So maybe it seems like I put the cart before the horse with tip 1 & tip 2, but in my opinion, you can follow as many people as you want, but if your not engaging with them, there is no point; therefore, remember tip 1 first. Start following the people you are hoping to reach – customers, supporters, alliances. I also follow like-minded individuals who share content I am interested in. For me, these are other social media consultants & although they are not necessarily the customers I am hoping to reach, they share content that I am interested in reading & re-sharing.

3. Don’t be afraid to unfollow people

Unfollowing someone is not an insult. People unfollow other users for all kinds of reasons; sometimes the content they are sharing is not interesting to them, or maybe they are not sharing anything at all. When deciding who to follow, remember that your twitter stream will be made up of the tweets by the people you follow. If you are following a ton of inactive users, your stream will be pretty slow, so these may be the users you want to unfollow. Even if some of these users are your target audiences, if they are not active, you will not have the opportunity to interact with them anyways.

4. Don’t be a ‘follow-for-a-follow-back’

Maybe this tip is more my opinion, but here is my thoughts on it. A lot of twitter users gain followers by offering a ‘follow-back’ to anyone who follows them. This to me, is a bad strategy & goes against everything I’ve tried to communicate here, which is building an engaged audience (not just the greatest amount of followers). If you are just following-back anyone who follows you, regardless if they are your target audience, you will likely get a ton of followers, but how many of them will turn into customers for you business? On this same note, when you are followed by someone who is not your target audience, think about whether or not to follow them back – are they someone you’d like to build a relationship with? Will they share content you are interested in? If the answer is no, maybe do not follow-back.

Building a twitter audience is not a quick process. Getting followers can be relatively quick, after all you could just purchase a followers list which would immediately get your follower count up, however building an engaged audience, who is listening to your message & interacting with you, takes time, effort & consistency.

If you would like to learn more about building a twitter audience or just getting your business started on twitter, get in touch by visiting my website Pigeon Post Media  & thanks for reading.

 

How Small Businesses can use Twitter Lists

Twitter lists, in my opinion, may be the most underutilized, useful feature on twitter. Twitter lists are exactly what they sound like: lists created by users of other users & organized according to a common theme, location or other characteristic. The list creator chooses a name to reflect the lists members, choose what twitter users are on the list, remove & add users, as well as set the lists visibility to ‘Public’ or ‘Private’ in order to allow other users to see the lists & its members.

So how can twitter lists be helpful for small businesses?

Well, twitter lists provide a place for you to organize and “store” the potential customers you come across on twitter in a way that is easier to access them then by simply following them. For example, say you own a small car repair shop. Your target customers are local community members who own vehicles. You may want to create a twitter list called “Community Members”. To this list, you will start adding the twitter users who you identify as members of your community. You may still follow these users, a likely will for most, but by adding them to the twitter list, you can now see all the users you follow who are in your community, instead of searching through your entire following list, which may be made up of some community members, but likely also includes news outlets, celebrities and other interested tweeters, but not necessarily potential clients.

Now that you have created a twitter list of your potential clients, how can this be helpful for your business?

Well now you can use that list to filter the twitter feed you are viewing & can view a feed made exclusively of tweets by your potential customers. Back to our automobile repair shop example, as the owner of the shop, you may want to view your list called ‘Community Members’ twitter feed and set aside some time in your marketing plan to specifically view this feed, respond to tweets & engage with all those twitter users who are your potential clients in order to solicit their attention & create that relationship that may drive their business into your shop.

To get you started, here is a quick step-by-step guide on how to create your first twitter list & then view your list’s feed:

Step 1 – Login to twitter & select your user icon on the top right hand corner. From the drop down menu, select ‘Lists’

Step 2 – Click ‘Create new list’ on the middle, right hand screen.

create new twitter list

Step 3 – Complete the pop-up screen by entering the name of your list & a brief description of the list or its users. This is also where you set the lists visibility to ‘Public’ so everyone can view and subscribe to your list or ‘Private’ so only you may view the list.

Step 4 – Click ‘Save list’ & your list has been created! The next screen is your lists feed. As you begin adding users, your list’s twitter feed will begin to generate. This page allows you to add users, but also view the number of users in the list, recently added members & if your list is public, any subscribers to your list (other twitter users who are following your list). Step 5 – You can add users to your list by simply typing their handle into the search bar & clicking ‘Search’. The returned search will take you to the user you want to add to you list. You add this user to the list by clicking the wheel next to the ‘follow’ button & select ‘Add to or Remove from Lists’. A pop-up box called ‘Your Lists’ will appear. Check the list you want to add the user to & ‘x’ out of the pop-up menu. As long as the box is checked, that user will appear on your list.

Alternatively, you can add users to your lists by clicking their profile and choosing the same wheel to prompt the ‘Your Lists’ pop-up menu.

Once you have finished adding members to your list, you can view your list’s feed by repeating step 1 and then clicking the list you wish to view.

And that, is twitter lists! Have fun with them, create & delete as many as you like until you find the lists that are most helpful for you & your business.

Questions about twitter lists or anything else? Send us an email kelly@pigeonpostmedia.ca & let’s chat!