Twitterable? What To Twitter About

A great deal of your success on Twitter is based on what you choose to Twitter about.

We covered this a bit in last week's article, but it's worth reconsidering and going deeper.

The key is to recognize that every follower you have on Twitter is earned, and that every post you write has the potential to attract more followers or to drive off the ones you already have.

No stress...

First some don'ts:

In last week's article we stressed the importance of NOT filling your Twitter feed with totally personal items that nobody cares about. Don't greet the world when you get up, tell them what you had for breakfast, or when you're going to bed. Unless you're a celebrity, who people actually get paid for taking pictures of you doing those things, twittering on those subjects will just push people away.

Don't do inside jokes that only a few people will understand.

Don't complain about the world. Nobody likes whiners in real life, and they certainly aren't going to continually follow you if you do it online.

Don't use it as a place for spouting off on whatever subject is on your mind at the moment. Think, then write.

Unless your audience is following you because of your religious or political views, you generally should stay away from those subjects. Sorry, I know. You'll never believe how hard it was for me to not hit the enter key after writing some amazing posts during the recent US election...

Now some do's:

Figure out what audience you really want to have, and what kinds of posts will attract them. Then write those posts.

Balance your information with information from others in your posts. When you make a post about something someone else has done, try to add your slant on that subject to add value. (All in 140 characters, of course.)

Studies have shown that information that is unique to you is one of the best attractors of new audience and retweets. If you don't have some, go get some. Or, at least give your slant on things. The more unique you can be, rather than being yet another person saying the same thing, the more likely you are to build a tribe of followers.

Read Set Godin's book, Tribes: We Need You To Lead Us. Use it. That's what you're doing.

Add personal touches that are unique to you from time to time. Though most of my posts are pure business, when I've posted that my daughter got married, that my son got accepted to his dream college, and that I had just gotten finished writing my weekly letter to my kids, the response was overwhelmingly positive. People like seeing a bit of humanness in you, just don't overwhelm them with daily doses of the useless.

Wisdom's good. Especially if it's yours. But in a pinch, a quote by someone famous (especially that oft-quoted guy "Anonymous" - have you ever wondered what his royalties must be?) will work.

Twitter often. Several times a day is good. It's only 140 characters, a few seconds, sheesh!

Save up your best stuff for morning hours in the Eastern U.S. A recent study shows that posts made during that timeframe are most likely to get retweeted (passed along to others.)

Several other tips:

Don't pitch your business right out of the box. Shockingly, about 80% of the people who send me a private message include their URL in the very *first* communication they have with me. That's just not cool. Build trust, then tell people about your business.

Some people use a strategy of interacting with their readers by using @ replies liberally. Frankly, many people think that's rude. If you want to have a private conversation, have a private conversation by using d theirusername rather than @theirusername. @ sends the message to everyone, d just to them.

This is a public medium, so keep your private conversations to yourselves.

Admittedly, some people totally disagree with this, and you can turn off the receipt of @ replies in twitter (highly recommended,) but many people refuse to follow people who have high levels of @ replies and comments that aren't of general interest in their post lists.

If you're going to send something on that someone else has written, it's appropriate to "retweet" it. Type RT @theirusername then the point they made. That attributes the information to the source.

By the way, one of the key measures of Twitter success is the number of times you've been retweeted. We'll cover how to improve your retweet rate in a future article.

Let me know how your Twitter campaign is working. I'm always interested!

And, if you decided to follow me on Twitter last week, welcome. If you didn't here's your chance!
Click the follow button underneath my picture.

Don Crowther

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