Twitter for Blog Promotion - Shotgun approach?

[chardee42]

@Brandon
Thanks for the info and thanks for following me. I'm going to hold off on posting any more Tweets until I learn how to do it correctly.

[chardee42]

Is it me, or does the Twitter web client not seem very intuitive?

[Melody]

Twitter is not hard and it gets easier and easier over time. Your profile needs to reflect the kind of follower you're trying to get. You seem interested in pet dogs. You need a background that reflects your interest animals rather than a standard blue twitter background.

Those twitter follower checkers are useless! Don't use them. All it will do is put up a hurdle for those who follow you, and you WANT followers. Some of them may later turn out to be very interested in what you have to say. Just because you're being followed doesn't mean that you have to follow back.

Be generous in who you follow back. Essentially, when someone follows me, I look and see (i) are they a Seattlelite? (ii) Can I tell by their profile if they have an interest in coffee or Starbucks? I follow back about 80% of who I follow.

Drop people you're following who truly have NOTHING to do with what you're interested in and appear to have zero engagement with your. Try not to let the number of people your following exceed too much the number of followers you have. Very astute twitterers see this a sign or a symptom of just trying to play numbers to spam.

Use the search button to find others who like what you like. Do not just haphazardly follow people, and never use those programs that say "get 100 followers a day". I seriously once or twice a day follow people who are talking about Starbucks. I wait a bit to see if they follow back, or have more Starbucks conversation. Surprisingly, this works incredibly well. People like finding others with a common interest. I get a lot of follow backs.

Whew! Sorry that was a lot of info!

[Melody]

More on twitter: Watch what happens on Follow Friday, and pick a few of your favorite followers and mention them. You'll great nice connections that way.

Once in a while, re-tweet something that sounds really good and relevant to your main interest. But don't over re-tweet. You'll irritate people if you tweet more than even 3 or 4 times in a row, at very most.

As for followers, and those stupid follower checkers. I remember when I was brand new I had this follower name @hellobesu - She followed me for 3 months before I followed back! I wish I had sooner! I would look at her profile and think, 'I have no idea why she is following me' because I saw that she made handcrafted purses, and baked. Much later, I learned she is a former-Starbucks employee. She is a great follower, and I'm glad to follow her back - Very engaged and interesting. Most people don't want to work to follow people so those follow checkers defeat half of what your trying to accomplish at twitter!

[chardee42]

Fantastic advice, Melody! Thank you so much for taking the time to write it.

Since my blog is mostly written by my dogs, I'm thinking about dumping my chardee42 account on Twitter for now and starting over as one of my dog writers. I've learned a lot in the past few weeks and I would rather have 15 followers that listen and communicate rather than 600 that put out adverts automatically every day.

Thanks again, it was very helpful.
Chris

[chardee42]

I also found this to be very helpful.
Five ways NOT to use Twitter

[Melody]

Those look like good tips too Chardee. Did you start over with a new profile? I'll follow you.

[chardee42]

Shadow has set up his own profile (he blogs, so why can't he Twitter?) and even tried his hand at making a Twitter homepage. Considering he sees things in black and white, I think he did a great job. : )

When I last checked, he only had 2 followers. So please feel free to follow him. I've spoken with him at long length about the evils of spamming on Twitter and he promises he will be a good citizen. (Hey, if he stays out of the garbage, I'll be happy.)

His page is: ShadowTheAlphaDog (ShadowAlphaDog) on Twitter

Thanks a bunch!
Chris