Yea! You are on twitter, go on rock star and be quippy with your bad self. Whether you’re getting your feet wet with twitter or have been playing there for a while here are some tips to help gauge your effectiveness and influence. You need to check yourself before you wreck your (twitter) self.
Make a list or two (or twenty)
Lists are great because you can segment folks by any criteria that you give them. Those close to you geographically, competitors, friends, news sites-anything can all be put in separate lists that you can check when you have the time. Nobody has time to look at their stream 24/7, that’s the beauty of creating a list. Plus, you’ll notice when you create lists, people will start to put you on their list, which will increase your influence.
Honor thy @ & RT
Thank the people who give you a RT. Even if it’s a couple days after the fact, that thank you will make it more likely that they will RT you again. Make a goal of a number of RTs to get in a period of time. This will challenge you to post better quality tweets. After a while you’ll be getting a handful of RTs a day, just be sure to thank them for it!
Likewise if somebody mentions you in a tweet give them a thank you. You can even be really crafty and make a list of people who have give you a @ or RT, that way you can make an online friend by reaching out to them on a regular basis.
Horatio is more than a character in CSI
Your ratio of followers to those that you follow should be in check. If you follow 2,000, but only 240 are following you then your ratio is out of whack. The celebrities have ratios where they are following a couple hundred, yet have hundreds of thousands of followers. You can follow who you like, but realistically, what does following a Kardashian mean to you? Probably nothing, plus following one of them or an Ashton Kutcher makes you look like you don’t know what you’re doing on twitter. If you’re following a social media or tech trailblazer who has high ratios, that is a different matter, but skip the Hollywood twits.
Untweeps can help you with your ratio. Most people who sign up for a twitter account do not use it after a month or two. That is where you can take advantage of the lemmings and unfollow those dead accounts. Simply type in your twitter information and what period you’d like to list those stale twitters and it’ll run its program magic. Once it’s done, just click ‘unfollow’ and they will disappear from your account.
Twitter is great. Do not give up if you aren’t getting any results or conversation. There is a ‘new’ period where folks will watch you to see if you’ll stick around; after that period you’ll be in like Flynn.
