If Your Twitter Followers Aren’t Targeted, You’re Doing It Wrong

So you went and did it. You signed your business up for a Twitter, now what? Most people go ahead and follow a bunch of their favorite comedians and businesses and may get a couple followers. However, these followers don’t give a crap about your business. So what do you do?

Tip #1 Sign Up On a Twitter Networking Website

As we’ve mentioned before in our post Twitter For Business: A How-To Guide you should definitely consider signing up on a website like twellow.com or similar.

By doing so you can accomplish two things. First, you will be adding your Twitter handle to the correct industry which will lead to other interested people following your account. Second, you can find people in your industry and follow their Twitter handles. As you follow people in your industry, some of their followers will begin to follow you. Don’t ask me how it works, try it out and see for yourself!

Tip #2 Add A Twitter Widget To Your Website

By adding a Twitter Widget to your website, interested readers of your blog or visitors to your website have the option to follow you on Twitter. The key is to post relevant and interesting content on your Twitter feed so they don’t have any reason to unfollow you. Because the people are already fans and are most likely already interested in your work, they will be targeted Twitter followers from the start!

Tip #3 Get Creative

This tip is actually a mini case study. We learned this one within the last week by trying it out ourselves. As we mentioned in tip #1 following people in your industry will lead to industry people following your brand. BUT, what if you don’t want industry people following you. Don’t get us wrong we’re not saying we don’t want these people following us, but they are just not our target market.

Our business involves creating graphic design, websites & eMarketing campaigns for small businesses. Therefore, us creating a situation where people in the design and marketing industry wasn’t really ideal as far as targeted twitter followers were concerned. What we really wanted was for local businesses to follow us. That’s where we got creative. We began to think about what kinds of Twitter accounts local businesses would follow. That’s when we got the bright idea to follow local Chamber of Commerce accounts and their followers.

Here is how you can use this tip to your advantage. Think about your customer. Actually put yourself in their shoes. What do they like? What Twitter accounts would they follow? If you can answer that question, you will be able to figure out the accounts you can follow to get targeted twitter followers for your business!

Our last tip to get targeted Twitter followers is actually something that we learned recently. You can do a search on hashtags relevant to the people you want to target. Favorite or retweet all of the interesting posts that you see in that category. The people who receive the favorites and retweets will be so gracious they may return the favor by favoriting, retweeting or following your account!