Twitter: Avoid being Hidden & Boring

I met with a friend this morning to launch a blog for his blossoming Real Estate Company, and after going from registering a domain to an up and running blog we talked about Twitter for a few minutes.

“You Should Write a Post about that” -Jeff

He suggested after I told him a few quick ideas I like about using twitter, and I agreed. So here you go.

Are you Hidden and Boring?

Exit

Whats behind the door? If this was your storefront how many customers would come in?

As you strive to drive business via online marketing efforts, you need to consider this fact: No matter how great your content is or how compelling your offer is, it is only going to be as effective as the number of people who see it. If I tweeted this post to 10 people how many do you think would read it versus when I tweet this to the nearly 25,000 that follow me? I will safely say the readership would be significantly smaller.

That is why your activity online can not be hidden and you can not be boring.

Lets look at those two qualities.

1) Hidden Activity

If your twitter profile is PRIVATE, you are not using it for marketing. If you think you are, I will repeat, YOU ARE NOT USING IT FOR MARKETING. You want your tweets to be seen by anyone who looks. That is why you share your twitter handle on your business cards, menus, promo materials, the bottom of your emails, and anywhere else it makes sense. You want your posts to be searchable in (under-appreciated) twitter search results.

Remember that twitter is different, it allows you to follow anyone you want, and send them @mentions whenever you want. They may or may not respond, but you can. You don’t need them to accept a request like on Facebook (unless it is private which is rare). Afraid of spammers, fake followers, or some other extraneous reason I hear about all the time? Why? What harm does it do you? I will answer that for you, NONE, in fact your marketing suffers greatly by walling off what you are doing. I would suggest you quit Twitter if you think you need to keep it private.

2) Boring Activity

First and foremost, be yourself. Don’t self censor and nueter your thoughts. You may get a person here or there that gives you some lip, but they are free to unfollow. If you worry that everyone is going to like what you say, and you share only what you think nobody would have issue with, you will struggle to build any kind of following. You will be vanilla in a mocha cherry chocolate world. Screw it. Say what you think, mean what you say, and let the chips fall where they may. If you are funny it will shine through, if you are smart it will shine through, there will be lots of people that agree who were to chicken to say the same thing. Now the by the same logic, if you are an asshole, it will shine through. Just making sure I say that too.

Your activity should strive to be a mixture of sharing your marketing, sharing other peoples’ content that you enjoyed, anecdotes from your life that are unrelated to work, and whatever comes to your mind. Twitter is great for that, I love posting random things and seeing the reaction from people all over the world. Did you grow up in a small town and the 49 yr old virgin library janitor with a pinky ring is sitting next to you at the local dive bar?  I tweeted it, and it started many conversations. Things like that make you human to people who have never met you… they can lead to relationships business or otherwise.

So here is the wrap up, you have no reason to hide, and no reason to be overly careful what you say if you genuinely mean it. That is who you are, share it. Trust me a lot of people will appreciate it, why do you think tosh.o is the most popular show on comedy central. He says what he thinks, sometimes it makes you cringe, but chances are you want to watch another one after the first episode you saw.

Ok thats my two cents. If this is the first post you have read from me, or the 100th, thank you. If you like reading quick ideas like these please consider subscribing to my updates via email, you can do that HERE.

Here is Another Quick Twitter Marketing Tip

So what do you think?


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One response to “Twitter: Avoid being Hidden & Boring”

  1. Geoff Birmingham Avatar
    Geoff Birmingham

    I’m new to Twitter and this is helpful, Spiro.  I particularly like #2 about giving personality to your tweets. 

    On a somewhat separate note, but still related to making Twitter personal: do you have thoughts on public tweets that are really more like DMs?  I often see tweets that folks are making that are clearly responses to something someone has tweeted them, but it’s totally out of context for the rest of us (or at least to me!) and makes no sense. 

    Or maybe this should be a case of: “Don’t sweat it and move on”  ;>