Twitter: Think About Who You Follow

The mantra on Twitter is "it's not about the number of followers, it's the quality". Which is great, true and legitimate for using twitter to market your business. If you are working a highly regionalized industry, particularly a niche industry, you are going to have a smaller number of followers on twitter. If your target market is Dentists in Middlesex County in Massachusetts and you know that there are (this is an arbitrary number) 4,000 practicing Dentists in this county. Then if through some Twitter genie you find out that 20% of the Dentists in your target area have Twitter accounts, you would want those 800 people to follow you, right? Ok, so you might find a few Dentists in other surrounding counties might follow you, dental students might follow you and it's all okay. There is potential value in all of these people. So you may have about 1,000 total followers within your target and potential target demographic. This is all quality followers - any one above and beyond that niche is 'waste' audience(to use an old marketing term). I prefer to call them 'bonus' audience because twitter is free and you're not wasting money, or intellect on them. So this whole thought and theory is right on. Check out the thoughts of this mantra to further my point. Soshable has a great post that really fleshes out the quality vs quantity theory with followers on Twitter.

But that's not the bee in my bonnet today. My issue is with the people trying to do business with Twitter who are following without thinking. There are two local businesses (who shall not be named because I'm trying to land them as clients) who are not paying attention to the value of following. One is huge, well-known and is only following their sister locations. Another is a small, super funky business who is following more celebrity-tweeters - in fact when I went through their following list, I was hard pressed to not find a "verified" Twitter account. Neither of these companies are following their clients. Uhhhh, how do you expect to Listen when you're not looking at your marketplace? Yes, you can get a Google Alert - but they miss some things. Set up a filter on tweetdeck, but you're apt to miss something there too. (Not everyone 'gets' hashtags. ) So please tell me, WHY ARE YOU FOLLOWING MASHABLE, ASHTON KUTCHER & OPRAH, but not your CUSTOMERS?!?!?! Having twitter is great and all, but if you aren't going to use it with some thoughtfulness, then don't be disappointed with your results. Okay, enough with the crabbing.

What I'm trying to get to is - when you use Twitter to market your business, signing up with your brand name is not enough. Tweeting your promotions and partners is not enough. Following interesting people is NOT ENOUGH! Find your customers, listen to them, talk to them - ENGAGE with them. You will be surprised with the awareness you get. And yes, what you are doing right now is not enough, what you will do is never enough. You need to practice KAIZEN with all of your business processes and put your Twitter marketing at the top of your list.

Ashton Kutcher is a cool guy, but he lives in California. He's not in Massachusetts where my two "doing it all wrongers" are - so what good is he going to do for your business? Follow your customers on Twitter to see what they are saying about you or your competition. Then take the initiative to talk to them, encourage them and engage them. Then you won't be disappointed with the results.

Takeaways:

• Dentists and Marketers to Dentists - don't believe my stats. They are arbitrary to help illustrate my point. (and Send me kudos because I floss regularly.)
• Identify your audience in twitter
• Follow your audience in twitter.
• Have fun in Twitter (okay, I didn't go over this, but don't you like doing things better when they are fun?)
• Talk to your audience in and out of Twitter.

Thank you, my rant is now over. And it appears so is my blog writing block!