Avoid the Twitter Trap!
Don't get this headline wrong. I think Twitter is great, and use it myself. Often described as a "mini-blog," Twitter is a social networking tool that uses the SMS text protocol (short messaging service) designed for mobile phones (which explains the 140-character limit). Twitter was originally conceived to allow a user to broadcast these messages to a group of subscribers, or in this case, "followers." It has grown to become one of the most popular web applications in the world.
Twitter is free and only takes minutes to set up an account. The first objective of most Twitter users (called "peeps," among other expressions, but that's my favorite) is to get followers. At the same time, you will likely seek out other peeps to follow, ideally based upon a common interest, industry, profession, location, other connections, etc. These factors are typically indicated in your profile. You will also be sending out "tweets" (message posts) that relate to what you do and those like interests of your prospective followers and clients. Such messages should also have keywords included so that potential followers will find you in their searches. Continue reading ...
Keith F. Luscher is author of the book Prospect & Flourish, and is a Marketing Representative with Principal Financial Group. Prior to joining Principal, he served professionals in the insurance and financial services industries as a management consultant. In that role, he advised producers on issues related to marketing and prospecting, and developed groundbreaking educational curriculum. Luscher is also a nationally known author, speaker, and expert in media, interpersonal communication and marketing.
There are definitely two schools of thought on this issue and both have merit. One group follows Keith's opinion and emphasizes quality versus quantity when it comes to Twitter followers. They believe that the results they see from having a smaller but more engaged group of followers is greater than if they had a larger but less engaged group of followers. I respectfully disagree.
We have two Twitter accounts. The first one, http://www.Twitter.com/StevenRothberg has close to 10,000 followers and the second, http://www.Twitter.com/EntryLevelJob, is closing in on 20,000 followers. Combined, we therefore have close to 30,000 followers. We tweet links to articles and jobs on our site and other sites one to two dozen times per day and those tweets generate dozens and sometimes hundreds of links to our site a day. Google sees those links and understands that we are an authoritative source of information about careers so ranks us higher in the search results for those search terms. In addition, the tweets and re-tweets from our almost 30,000 followers generates a lot of traffic to our site. Twitter is one of our highest sources of traffic and the thousands of visits we get per day don't cost us a dime.
Would we have all of that benefit if we had 100 very passionate followers? No way. What if we had 10,000 very passionate followers? Sure. A large number of very passionate followers is likely better than a slightly larger number of passive followers, but the choice usually isn't so marginal. It is usually between a lot of passive followers or a few passionate followers. It is kind of like a rock band having the choice between playing in front of 10 very passionate fans in a backyard or 18,000 somewhat interested fans in an arena. Almost every band will take the arena any day and I suspect that Keith would too if faced with that choice.