Here are three tips we created based on our own experiences to help companies better manage their Twitter accounts.
– Manage Your Following List
One of the worst pieces of social media advice is that to build a following, you need to follow a bunch of accounts and hope they follow you back. Aside from running into possible spam issues, this goes against the point of social media because if you follow 5,000 people to get 5,000 followers, what if any interaction will you have with your audience? Most of the people that follow your account won’t be able to engage in any meaningful interaction and even if they do, you might miss it.
Google doesn’t reveal what role follower / following ratios play in how they see accounts but I have a feeling that Google gives more weight to accounts that are leaders not followers. If some has 600 followers and follows 30 accounts, engines might view them as a leader as opposed to someone who has 20,000 followers but follows 15,000 accounts. I don’t have experimental data but if I was a search engine, I would give more weight to a leader account rather than a follower account when it comes to their impact on SEO.
Keep in mind that you don’t have any obligation to follow back unless you feel that you will have a meaningful interaction with that account (whether its a conversation or whether that account provides relevant and engaging content). Following an account only because they followed you won’t do anything except clutter your feed and make it more difficult to manage. If you worry that someone will un-follow you because you didn’t follow back, what’s that say about the true intentions of the other account?
– Have a Real Bio
Your bio: “Hi I’m Joe and I’m a social media coach, inspirational speaker, internet guru, technologist, life coach, online media mentor”
My reaction: “Hi, I don’t know what any of that means and I’m probably not going to follow you”
Your Twitter bio should be a handshake as in if you meet me and have 2 seconds to introduce yourself, what is the most important thing I need to know. Don’t make yourself look shallow and insincere with a bio that looks like you’re bragging rather than sharing who you really are. After all, would you introduce yourself in the real world as “Hi, I’m JoeTheSocialMediaCoachInspirationalSpeakerInternetGuruTechnologistLifeCoachOnlineMediaMentor. And you are?” If I want to connect with you, how do I start the conversation? “Hey Joe @fahrenheitllc here, how’s social media coaching speaking guru mentoring going? Any tips?”
– Don’t tweet a constant stream of links, motivational quotes or promos
If you don’t care about your followers, they won’t care about you. Interact with people, try to start discussions … don’t fill your follower’s time line with junk. If your tweet doesn’t provide value to your followers then don’t send it.
Three Steps to Improve Your Twitter Account
