Thursday, May 12, 2011

How to build a Loyal and Engaged Twitter Following?

The main reason for Internet Marketing through Twitter is to engage with the right target audience with your business. But it needs a lot of time to be spent to build a loyal and engaged Twitter following. Twitter is all about creating a personal connection; try to leverage what you know about your followers. In Twitter, focusing on the right kind of audience you want to interact with will pay off greatly. Here are some of the important tips to build a loyal Twitter following:
Build the Right Community: It is very important to figure out to whom you are targeting to reach through Twitter. Once you have an idea regarding this, you will think of what kind of content they require and accordingly you can share valuable content with these people. Automatically, this will offer you a chance to improve your following with these people and then promoting your business to their networks. There are a lot many sources in Twitter such as TwitterDeck's Directory and WeFollow, from where you can search for the right users who have an interest in your field of business. Another helpful source to find out the target audience is “Backtweets”, if you are maintaining a blog. Put your post’s URL into Backtweets and get in touch with the folks retweeting your post.
Promote ‘Helpful’ Content: Share content that solves problems of others. Remember, sharing helpful content helps you to connect with the people who are in need of a service that you offer. And this increases the chance that someone will mention your company if they are in contact with a firm that needs help.
Be aware of Twitter etiquette: Remember some of the important Twitter etiquette rules, which are very helpful to create a relation with someone on Twitter. They are:
  • Include the person’s username when retweeting their tweet—give them credit for the content they shared.
  • Reply in a timely manner—Twitter is very spontaneous, so make sure to be there for @replies if you are tweeting something. Particularly if you schedule a few tweets.
  • Thank others for retweeting your tweets. Give them a quick note of appreciation that they found your content worth sharing with their community.
  • If the above gets very time-consuming, you might want to try replying to those who edited the retweet and showed particular appreciation for your tweet.
  • If you tweet articles, include the authors’ names. Give them credit for their work.
Deliver Great Content: The best way to build a big following on Twitter is to share valuable content. It is better to think of tweets like small blog post with original content. Whenever you tweet an article, try to link it with the interests of your community. This means that sometimes the title of the article will fit this purpose very well, sometimes it won’t. Try finding a quote in the article that particularly relates to your community’s and followers’ interests. If you consistently share interesting content, you will naturally build a loyal following on Twitter.
Promote on Your Website: Give your Twitter profile link prominent placement on your website – mainly in the upper right or left header of your site, across all pages in your site. This helps the Twitter users to click on your profile link and add you to their networks.
Host a Contest: Contests are quite popular on Twitter and can help to quickly build a following. Ideally you want to offer one or more prizes in exchange for a tweet. This automatically helps your to get engaged with loyal followers.
Apart from the above mentioned tips, add a “Follow us on Twitter” message to your business cards, brochures, advertisements, Email Templates and other marketing materials. If you send promotional e-mail messages to your clients and prospects, be sure to announce your Twitter presence. Also include your Twitter link as a regular feature in your e-mail campaigns so that recipients see it each and every time you send out a message. If people can learn from your posts, you will definitely see an increase in followers. Do not be a spammer just to advertise a link to your website. Be helpful, and people will thank you. 
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