Do you want to develop an awesome following on Twitter?
Without awesome followers you can start to feel as if you’re using twitter to simply chat to yourself. Without a solid group of followers who are engaged, passionate and care about your business – You’re wasting your time.
There are three levels of followers, spambots & purchased followers excluded of course we have engaged followers, advocate followers and awesome followers.
Here’s a visual I put together to show the different levels:
As you can tell, the most important types of followers are those who are awesome. The ones who love your product, love your tweets and want to tell the story of your brand and business. These are the followers who not only send you new customers but also are willing to stand up and fight your battles when crisis breaks loose.
Here are six strategies that will help you build an awesome list of followers who are not only engaged but also love you.
Twitter Strategy #1: Content Curater
Content Curation is the act of discovering, evaluating and sharing relevant content with your network. This approach is a great way to answer the question “What should I tweet about”.
This approach allows you to take a position as someone who is passionate about a variety of different types of info and is a great source for excellent links driving to relevant content.
The better the content you share, the more connections you’ll make with people all over the world. As you share great content, people will ask you questions and tweet you with comments. From here, it’s important to engage and interact with these people so you can further strengthen an existing online relationship.
There are several great content Curators on Twitter and many of them have gathered large followings. A few of my favourites include Jesse Newhart, Gary Thomas and Guy Kawasaki.
Without question, Guy Kawasaki is one of the most popular Content Curator on the web with a following of more than 500K people. He shares everything from content about businesses and the importance of social media to the Top 100 Quotes from Nicholas Cage.
The key is providing content that is compelling, interesting and most importantly, relevant to the audience you’re trying to connect with. Taking this approach you will quickly find people advocating for you and sharing your tweets. The key to success is striking up a few engaging conversations and re-tweeting great content to migrate your advocate followers into awesome ones.
Twitter Strategy #2: Niche Industry/Insight Expert
Miyagi – Wax on… wax off. Wax on… wax off.
This quote has absolutely nothing to do with the idea of being a Niche Area expert.
That said, Mr. Miyagi was an expert in Karate and that’s the reason why his photo is here. Anyways, what does it mean to be a niche area expert?
Well, a niche expert is someone who understands a specific industry, product, service, business, issue, philosophy or trend better than most people. They are seen as an expert in a specific field and are looked at as an authority figure in every sense of the word. The idea of becoming a niche area expert is a strategy that takes time but always guarantees great success if the subject is relevant and important to a passionate audience.
One of the most popular niche experts on Twitter is Personal Branding expert, Dan Schawbel. He saw an opportunity to be known as the guy who knows everything there is to know about personal branding and has developed an outstanding career in the process.
It’s very rare to find Dan tweeting or even blogging about anything other than Personal Branding and business. This strategy has helped Dan generate a following of over 100,000 people on Twitter and an awesome resume. The key to success using this strategy is consistency and putting in the time. You won’t become an expert over night – It’s going to take late nights and a lot of self-education.
So for example, if you’re running a coffee shop and are looking to develop a great social media strategy this is one that will work. Instead of simply tweeting about what you have to offer everyday, tweet about the health benefits associated with Tea. Tweet about the History behind coffee or the process that is required to find the perfect bean. Whatever fits within your business and will allow you to be seen as an expert is the best approach to take here.
Twitter Strategy #3: Social & Conversational Butterfly
A social butterfly tends to be someone who is a social butterfly in real life.
In turn, this is how they come off online striking up conversations with everyone and anyone building authentic relationships with multiple people. With this approach, the majority of your tweets are mentioning someone else rather than sharing things about yourself.
This is a strategy all about engagement and interaction. It’s all about promoting others more than you promote yourself and helping others whenever they tweet a question. The social butterfly approach works well for those who are social by nature. The best people who implement this strategy have a general passion for people and their lives.
Twitter Strategy #4: The Information Contrarian
There aren’t many people who can pull this strategy off effectively but those who do – Do it very well. Taking this approach you may not win a whole lot of friends but you will certainly increase your profile by going against the norm.
The key to finding success when implementing the contrarian approach is to identify a position you’re passionate about. From there, this positioning (against the norm) needs to be the essence of your tweets and interactions on a regular basis. It’s important to build this reputation as a contrarian across different channels as twitter is limited to only 140 characters or less.
Twitter Strategy #5: Bring the Funny
Humour is the easiest way to a persons heart. If you can make them laugh, you can make them do anything. This is one of the most difficult approaches to social media because the same way not everyone can be a comedian, not everyone can be a funny tweeter.
There are a few people who do this very well but there are more who do this very poorly. If you’re not funny by nature, then you will have a hard time implementing this approach. The key here is to find humour in a specific topic and be able to spread that humour over the course of 365 days. Not easy.
Are there any other strategies out there that will make followers go from Average to Awesome?
Let me know if you take an approach I didn’t mention above… If you want to discuss how we can make your following even better – Send me an email!
