If you came to Twitter simply to sell your product, I hate to be the one to break some bad news to you. Are you ready for this?
<Insert drum roll here> It’s not all about you.
To achieve your goal, you must invest in others—other Tweepsters’ success, happiness, and achievements. All those things we yearn for, we must help others achieve. Social networking succeeds best in a mutually supportive environment.
A simple rule of thumb is that our activities on Twitter should be 80% geared toward others, leaving only 20% for ourselves.
I have a confession to share with you. Before I follow someone, I scan their most recent tweets. If all I see is self-promo, I don’t follow that person. Many others do the same thing.
The bottom line? We must be supportive, authentic, even, occasionally, vulnerable. We all have hopes and dreams, fears and triumphs, troubles and tragedies. We need to reach out through Twitter and touch another human being’s life, even if only for a couple of seconds.
Here are 9 tips to help your social networking efforts:
- Ask not what your followers can do for you, but what you can do for your followers. It’s all about how you can help someone else achieve their goal.
- It’s called a social network for a reason. Interact with your followers. Engage them, e.g. share something about yourself, ask a question (book recommendation, music recommendation, restaurant recommendation, etc.). People are happy to help.
- Be generous about helping your followers. Re-tweet. Quote a great review. Offer congratulations when they receive good news. Randomly select followers and give a shout-out about them.
- Be positive about others. And if you can’t be positive, say nothing.
- Provide added value. Be useful. Some people tweet breaking news, others tweet writing tips, free promo sites, industry news.
- Tweet information you find beneficial. Share the knowledge. Tweet links to great blog articles. Tweet about interesting facts, inspirational quotes, jokes.
- Don’t be a bore. No one cares that you’re eating dinner. Or sleepy. Use your tweets wisely.
- Be courteous. Offer thanks for those follows and re-tweets.
- If you follow back or receive a follow back, don’t immediately spam your new follower with your promo material or try to drive them to your buy links.
Remember, folks. It really isn’t all about you.
