My view on twitter marketing

[paulbart1]

First of all I apologise for yet another terrible headline, I mean 'Twittarketing'...What?

Any ways lately I have seen a lot of interest in the use of Twitter as a marketing tool. Now don't get me wrong twitter can be a very good marketing tool...if used correctly.

I have been doing some research into twitter and marketing through twitter and found some flaws in what some people teach, and in what I used to first believe.

Twitter marketing is very good...it is short, snappy, to the point and people who are following you receive it directly to their feed so there's a high percentage chance that your follower will click that link you have put up on Twitter.

"So why don't I just follow everyone on Twitter and some of them will follow back?"
I don't know about you, but that was my first initial thought. Follow thousands of people on twitter and generally speaking most people follow you back. So after a few weeks of clicking the 'follow' button, you should have a little marketable army following you...(marketable? I mean people who you can market to)


So with this vast amount following you and your own twitter feed going crazy as you follow so many people, all you can think about is posting affiliate links and everyone will click it as their following you? Well this is something I learnt after my hard weeks spent following everyone expecting a follow back.

There only following you because they are thanking you or using you as someone to market to.
If you build your followers just by following random people and they follow you back; You're going down the wrong route with twitter. Twitter is about sharing your status to people...but people that care. For example:

Say you had 20,000 followers and your following those 20,000 (plus a few thousand more that didn't return the 'follow you favour') and you put your link up saying about your blog post. Most of those 20,000 (pretty much all of them) won't click it.

But if you had 10 followers who are following you because they like what you write and do....those 10 followers will click as they have a genuine interest and trust in what you do. (And they do not require you to follow them back, although that is nice).

The reason I am pointing this out is because I have looked into some people on twitter that have been following me, and they are following 14,000+ people with say 13,000+ followers and the first inital thought is...what...this guy is a genuius...but then you actually dig a little deeper and it reads followers names like '6packabs', 'richin1day', 'yungfreendsingl'. These so called 'followers' are just looking to market what they have and try and sell it to you.

All I am saying is that when it comes to Twitter, follow who you genuinely want to follow and hear about. Post about your blog on twitter and do not worry about followers. Place a twitter link on your blog and once you start receiving visitors and readers, if they are on twitter, they will start to follow you.