Within the next two years 70% of all Dutch organisations will be using social media. More reason to put extra attention and effort in making your own tools effective! In this blog I will focus on a question of which answer may interest you…
How to get more interaction and traffic to your social media tools?
In this blog I will focus on the social medium Twitter, a tool I discovered since a few months and find very handy. In my opinion, Twitter is one of powerful social marketing tools available today. For organisations with offline or online business, having a Twitter account is a must. Nevertheless, creating a network of followers is a whole other story. By searching in several social media sites I bumped into three (FREE) tools and different tips that can help you get lots of followers in just a few weeks.In following blogs, I will try to focus on more different social media and report my findings on the web.
Google Alerts & Twitter Feed
When you created a Twitter account you need to make you use it. Using Twitter does not mean posting a message every week, but posting interesting messages every day! When you do not have that interesting information to share, lets Twitter Feed do it for you!
First create a Google account and install Google Alerts, a programme
that selects news items, blogposts, discussion groups and websites on subjects that you select. Create a new alert by selecting specific keywords* and get them delivered in a Feed. Second, create an account on www.Twitterfeed.com and link your Google Feeds to this account. Finally, allow Twitterfeed to connect with your Twitteraccount to get several posts a day about the subjects you have selected in Google Alerts. You can set up lots of different feeds and have them posted at different intervals during the day.
I think it is important to keep an eye this tool. Make sure the program does not post every feed, every minute but select the most interesting links (that may be interesting and helpful for you followers) and post these. (*It is very important that you choose your keywords carefully, Google selects all items on these keywords and does not filter them!)Social Oomph
Now your amount of followers on Twitter is growing, it is time to make this network interactive. It takes a few minutes of your time and a little help from Social Oomph. Social Oomph is a tool that helps you to boost your Social Media activity with a whole list of applications. One of them in particular, I find very handy: when you add a new Twitter account to Social Oomph, you can select a tool that automatically sends a welcome message to new followers. You can also automatically follow them back or set their ‘follow’ requests on hold. This tool is a great way to inform your new followers about your interests or the subjects you tweet about.
Other tips to create more interaction on you Twitter account
- Tweet to people who follow you and react to their tweets.
- When you talk about specific subjects place # for it, other interested tweeters will find you naturally.
- Ask questions to your followers, you will get answers!
7 Ways to be worth following on Twitter
When you think the question is not answered yet, check www.twitip.com. This site helps you ‘getting more out of Twitter’. On this site a Twitterholic Jo-Leanne (follow her @dcrmom) shares tips on being the kind of Twitter users want to follow.
- Be interesting – try to make everything you tweet worth reading
- Be informative – be helpful to your followers and post links
- Be interactive – Twitter is a conversation, not a monologue
- Be promotional – promote yourself as much as your followers
- Be personal – tweet to your followers, ask questions and make comments
- Be considerate – do not clog in Twitterspace with endless conversations
- Find a balance
Another interesting link is http://www.nowsourcing.com/, Social Media Marketing Explained.
4 reacties:
Could you explain how will I get more followers by automatically posting news items through Twitterfeed and Google Alerts? I know a few people who do this and it actually annoys me, because they have no idea of the quality of that post and haven't even checked it themselves. Which is actually the most important reason to tweet a link: because you personally find the content valuable.
The same goes for sending an automatic welcome message to new followers and automatically following new followers back. Automatic DMs are quite unpersonal (and you recognize them from afar) and I only want to follow someone because they tweet relevant content or opinions, not because they're following me.
I think one of the best ways to get more followers is to find a focus for your Twitter account. I'm still working on that myself (also for my blog and business). This way it's easier to attrack and find people that tweet relevant content.
Just my 2 cents ;)
As I argued in my blog, Google Alerts does not filter the articles on anything but the keywords. Because of this, it is important to keep an eye on the feeds you receive.
I argued that it may help users of Google Alert and Twitter, to receive articles they find interessting and that may be interesting to post on Twitter. I do not encourage them to post these feeds every minute of every single day.
Personally I use Google Alerst only to scan the internet on articles I find interessting. When I think that they might be worth sharing, I post them on Twitter. Posting interesting information like this, can provide you with followers that are interested in the same subject.
About Social Oomph... I have the following message when people begin to follow me:
Thanks for following me! I tweet about my experiences during my study businesscommunication and about every sort of (social)media I bumb into.
The only reason I do this is because not all followers choose to follow you, they are automatically linked to my profile by Twitter (as you may know). By informing them about what I do on Twitter, I hope to keep them as followers. In half of the cases i get a private message back about what they do. Quite handy I persume. As you mention in your reaction, you think it is the best way to find a focus for your Twitter, I think it is important to share this focus with your potential followers.
One thing that makes this extra important for me. I tweet in English as well as Ducht, when foreign people get linked to my Twitter, they migh ignore my profile because of Dutch Tweets. When I inform them about my interests, they might reconsider following me back.
In other words, you can use the tools for worthless gaining of followers, but you can also use them in a more personal way... :)
I still believe the gaining and keeping of followers should be based on what you tweet, not on an automatic message. I follow someone because of the info in their profile (probably the same as your direct message) and their most recent tweets (are they relevant for me?). I think the automatic welcome DM is 'voer' for a good discussion. I know a lot of people hate it, but at the same time a lot of people use it.
Thank you, I'll give it a try!
Ben
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