Archive - September, 2009

September 30, 2009

How I Increased My Twitter Following by 45% In One Week

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I’ve been fascinated by the art and science of building a relevant network of Twitter followers in the past few months. Like I’ve written before, I didn’t really twitterbirdspend a large amount of time with Twitter until May of this year. Since then, I’ve learned quite a bit. In previous posts I’ve written about ways I feel Twitter can be useful, and the debate of quality vs. quantity. I still believe that there is value in ensuring that those you follow are relevant to you, but as your following grows, this can be a tricky thing to manage.

In the past week, I’ve incorporated some new tactics that have had me grow my following more in one week, then in previous week’s combined. Below I’ve listed some steps you can take to possibly produce similar results.

First, some disclaimers on my methods/motivations of using Twitter. There isn’t a one size fits all approach to using Twitter. I don’t claim that my way is the right way, or that it would work for everyone. But for me, it works.

I only tweet a couple times a day on average…
There are tons of users who tweet everything they see, find, experience, etc. That’s not me. I don’t have that kind of time, nor do I have any interest in spending that amount of time on Twitter. I keep my tweets to a minimum only sharing my 1-2 blog posts a week, very interesting/entertaining articles and retweets. I imagine this accomplishes two things. One, my followers appreciate I am not flooding their Twitter streams with endless tweets about everything I experience. Two, it makes the content I share more valuable, as those that follow me know that when I share something, it may actually be worth checking out.

A large (albeit, relevant) following is important to me…
I am working to gain credibility in social media marketing and community building while building out my business. I also have aspirations to write a book if I can every get my ass in gear. Imagine having a 10, 20 or even a 50,000 following of potential readers/customers. As long as you took the time to build a strong, relevant, spam free following, I would imagine that a large following might open some doors with publishers that would otherwise be closed. At the very least, some potential buyers/customers.  Chris Brogan touches on this nicely in his latest book, Trust Agents (must read).

The following strategies assume you have some Twitter history with your account..  First being that you already have a Twitter account and some degree of followers/following established.  If you’re just starting out, these tactics might not be as effective (but I imagine they will still produce good results).  Second, that you have some sort of tweeting history.  People won’t be as interested in following you if you don’t have some of this history.  Of course many won’t care at all.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, here’s some steps you can take to possibly mimic some of the success I’ve had:

1. Use a 3rd party Twitter software solution. I have been using TweetAdder for the past few months, and it’s been a fantastic tool.  I am not a corporate shill for them in any way (yes, it’s an affiliate link, but c’mon, who wouldn’t?), I’m simply someone that tried out the demo, had early success, and since then, it’s been a no brainer tool that I use everyday.  I DO NOT recommend anything that I don’t stand behind.  It’s great software, works on Windows and Mac, and they recently updated with some great new features.  Don’t take my word for it.  Check them out and try the free demo yourself.  If you’re serious about wanting to grow your Twitter following, I promise you’ll find yourself a customer.

2. Follow the followers of those you respect. There are so many spam accounts, robots, etc. out there it can be hard to know who’s real or who’s not.  In addition to using TweetAdder to identify relevant users to follow, I’ve found that using the software to identify followers of those users I respect have produced tremendous results.  The idea here is simple.  If you choose to follow users of those you respect or are related to you in some way, there’s a high probability that the majority of those users are real people with similar interests.  The follow back rates tripled for me using this tactic.  TweetAdder has a great feature where you can simply add a user’s name and it will extract those who follow them and add them to your “follow list” that you can use within the software.

3. Add yourself to the wefollow directory. This one is a bit harder to measure, but the fact is this can be a great tool to find others to follow that are relevant to you (including their networks).  You simply add your account and choose categories that are relevant to you.  For example, I listed myself as Seattle, WA, community manager, and social media.  While I probably won’t be cracking the Top 10 for social media anytime soon, I’m currently #9 for Seattle, WA and #3 for community manager.  It’s kind of fun, but more importantly, it’s a great resource because you can simply enter the users in these lists into TweetAdder and add their networks into your queue to follow.

Those are the 3 key areas I’ve focused on in the past week and it’s produced significant results.  There are many users that think using automated software is evil, spammy, etc.  I couldn’t disagree more.  With anything in life, anything can be abused and used in the wrong way.  But utilized the right way, ethically, there’s no reason to not take advantage of tools that can help you be more successful and efficient with what you do.  It’s worked for me, and it can work for you.

September 14, 2009

Vanns Community Manager Update: I Turned The Opportunity Down

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Because so many of my family, friends, friends of friends, etc. came out in hordes to support my Vanns Community Manager role video application, I felt it was important and appropriate to write a follow up for everyone.

I turned down the opportunity to be in the Top 5.

Some of you might wonder why in the world would I do such a thing after going through so much effort to win a spot.  Well, it unfortunately came down to something that had I known from day one, might have deterred my involvement in the first place.  The salary was WAY WAY too low to consider moving and supporting my family for.  I received a call the morning of the Top 5 announcement telling me I was being considered as a Top 5 finalist, but they wanted to share some job details with me first.  I was told the salary range first, and I was floored.  It didn’t make sense to me.

From their site:

So how much will you make? Let’s say for the purposes of starting a conversation that you’ll make a wage that is commensurate with your experience level in a job of this nature and get to live in what is probably the most incredible place to live in the Mountain West – Missoula, MT.

I was offended that a role as important as this one, and one that was so highly publicized and recruited for, was as low as it was and/or they were implying that’s what they thought my “experience level” was worth.  I know Community Manager and Social Media roles are still working on gaining credibility for themselves, but I was very surprised regardless.  Especially considering the great lengths Vanns went to hire someone for this role.  Yes, the cost of living in Montana is less then many areas, but I did my homework.  Missoula is not a small town, and the cost of living isn’t that low.  At least not for those newly finding their way there.

I have no ill will towards Vanns, the process, or any of the wonderful candidates that made the Top 5.  They seriously are a group of talented, passionate, deserving individuals, and I’m sure Vanns will have a winner on their hands regardless of which direction they go.  And everyone is different in their needs, cost of living, personal circumstances.  Perhaps their range is well within other people’s situations.  It just couldn’t work for me and mine.

Of course, I can’t help but offer some feedback on the whole process being as passionate as I am about community managment.  Especially some misses from a community perspective that Vanns really missed out on to capitalize on the great idea:

  1. 1. Be more transparent. Vanns really should have disclosed a salary range from the get go.  I don’t know; maybe I was the only one burned on this one, but if you are going to do a nationwide search for candidates to this degree, AND put people through a ton of work just to apply, you need to disclose this to negate those that can’t consider the offering. “Commensurate with experience” was not entirely accurate.
  2. 2. Be more involved. Besides a few Twitter updates notifying followers of new videos, there was no company interaction with the site.  Nothing to continue the momentum, encourage dialogue, or get people excited about the milestones.  Yes, they obviously are hiring someone for these things, but it certainly wouldn’t have been too difficult to be more engaged.
  3. 3. Be more efficient. The whole process took to long.  Interest waned during the down times.
  4. 4. Media execution. The process of the video portion of the application was a patch work solution.  It was too confusing for many users to figure out how to vote on the videos, and many of the applicants didn’t get the system working correctly from day one.  Don’t reinvent the wheel when you don’t have to.  YouTube (and Vimeo for that matter), offer robust, fully featured video hosting solutions that could have accommodated all the videos and voting mechanisms without requiring any registration to do so.
  5. 5. Involve customers. Vanns already has a community site up and running.  Why not have involved them in the process?  Put out questions or poll the community to get feedback on what they would like to see in their community manager.  Offer prizes, incentives.  Something to turn the experience into something more viral.

I can’t give the constructive feedback without the good.  Here’s what I loved:

  1. 1. The platform. By far one of the most innovative, slick presentations on recruiting a position in your company.  It’s obvious the idea was a winner.  I personally scored two news stories based on their innovative approach (here and here).
  2. 2. Social Media. Great use of Twitter and Facebook to evangelize the opportunity.  There was plenty of chatter going on throughout the campaign.
  3. 3. Vanns Site Integration. Not only did the publicize the role on their main website.  They prominently featured it frequently on the front page.  Bold and shows how important they view this role.
  4. 4. Bottom line…it worked. Despite my criticisms, let’s be honest, the idea worked.  They may not have gotten as many applicants as they would have liked, but at the end of the day, I assure you they will come out much farther ahead from the process as opposed to if they went the traditional route.

So another chapter closes.  I loved making the video, I loved evangelizing it, and if anything, it’s provided quite a bit of visibility for me in other areas.  Good luck to Vanns, their future Community Manager and continued success.  In the end, it all works out as I have some exciting things in the works that will involve doing my own thing.  That’s always who I’ve been anyway.

More to come…

September 9, 2009

Twitter Auto DM: Just Say No!

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The absolute #1 pain in the neck Twitter nuisance for me these days are the hordes of Twitter auto direct messages I receive after following someone.  It has practically made Twitter DM a useless tool for me.  If anyone actually sends me a legitimate DM, it’s lost in a sea of spammy auto DMs failspam-300x225encouraging me to check out  ‘insert product/service/website here’.

I understand that it is impossible to manage a large following by personally welcoming each person that follows you, and it’s not my expectation that anyone would do this.  I rarely do unless there are unique circumstances such as someone I’ve stumbled across that has much in common with me.  But let’s be honest here, people and businesses are using Twitter auto DM to pimp something, which I get.  This sort of thing has been done for years on a variety of different mediums.  What makes it so frustrating, is that Twitter has not released features that allow it’s users to combat this.  Much like an email spam filter, there needs to be ways to block these auto DMs.  I know recently SocialToo has launched some options to help, but it’s certainly not as useful as a Twitter supported feature could be.

I’m certainly not the only advocate for seeing this trend go away.  Sites like StopAutoDM.com are springing up to help buck the trend.  There’s also some useful chatter on the subject on a recent TechCrunch article.

Some of you might say, “Just unfollow those that auto DM, you have the power to filter it out”.  Yes, this is true, but just because someone is utilizing auto DM, doesn’t necessarily mean that person or or organization has nothing valuable to offer.  Often times people just don’t realize that some of the tactics they use are not an ideal way of communicating.  While I disapprove of the tactic, I don’t automatically categorize the user as spam.  In some cases, yes, in many, not necessarily.

I’m not implying that auto DM tactics should  not be available to those who wish to use it.  I’m all for businesses, organizations, and people having the freedom and ability to evangelize their products and services in ways that make sense for their business.  What I’m saying is that as an end user, I should have access to tools that allow me to control whether I see those messages or not.  Yes, Twitter is a free service, but it’s not like they are making money through these tactics to keep the service afloat.  I can tolerate some small, targeted advertising in exchange for using a tremendous tool like Twitter, but we’ve certainly reached a point where we need some tools to better manage Twitter.

I can’t imagine that the click through rates to links in Twitter auto DMs are that high, let alone conversion rates, but it would certainly be interesting to see.  I haven’t found any studies on the subject, but Mashable posted some interesting finds on overall click through rates for Tweeting as a whole here.  If the CTR on tweet links is roughly around 1.5% or so, it’s got to be much lower on auto DMs.

So, if you utilize Twitter auto DMs, I’d be interested to hear your take.  Why do you use it, and what are the results?  And if you knew that your audience hated them, would you stop?