The Value of a Relationship Driven Twitter Presence

Have you ever partied with robots?  Me either. They're no fun.

And Siri? Well, sometimes she is there for you when you need her, but she is not your friend.

When you automate your tweets and don’t engage with your followers, you may as well be a robot as well.

Twitter is not a numbers game. There are services that promise you thousands of followers, but by using them you are valuing quantity over quality.

These followers are not likely to become any kind of advocate or prospect for your business.  Since these followers are mainly focused on quantity, you may see a drop in your followers if you aren’t following them back.  Follow the people who you gain value from following.

If you try to follow too many people, you will never be able to keep up.

Develop a Relationship Driven Twitter Presence

Have Conversations

In life, building relationships begins with having conversations.  The same principle applies to Twitter.  Don’t just send a tweet and walk away.  Ask questions and respond to the people who answer them. Answer other peoples’ questions and offer opinions when you have them.  Thank those who retweet you personally and use their first name.  Also add a follow up comment when you can.

Consider participating in or even hosting a TweetChat.  TweetChats are virtual meetings on Twitter where people discuss a specific topic.  TweetChats are participated in by designating an associated hashtag.  A great use of TweetChats is during webinars.  This allows attendees to tweet with you in real time during the webinar, and to keep the conversation going after.

Don’t Automate Everything

Automating is great for when you want to set up your weekend tweets before leaving the office on a Friday, but you should be tweeting in real time as much as possible. You can’t spend all of your time on Twitter, but when you check in to Tweet in real time you are in a better position to find conversation opportunities as they happen.

Show Personality

Tweeting for business is great, but don’t Tweet exclusively about your business. You have a personality, so show it.

Mention things that show who you are on your profile.  Link to things you think are funny, chances are your followers will find them funny too.  The more personality you show, the more you become a real person to your followers.

Always Share Great Content

Twitter is a two-way street.  If you want people to share your content, you need to share content too.  If you find great content always share it.  Sharing great content makes you a person worth following.  It also means that you are not just self-promoting.

By @mentioning the person whose content you are posting, you are initiating a conversation with that person, and taking the first step towards building a Twitter relationship with them.

A hand full of quality followers on Twitter will be more beneficial than thousands of low quality followers you obtained by following someone's followers.

Focus your time on building strong relationships with humans, and don’t worry about what the robots think.