Are you a selfish Twitterer? Are you tweeting but not reading?
One of the writers I follow on Twitter, tweeted the following:
I’m wondering just where in cyberspace my question tweets go. B/c I rarely get replies. What’s up w/ that?
When I saw her tweet I laughed a little to myself because its something I’ve seen expressed by a lot of people on Twitter.
With so many people tweeting random thoughts, how many of your tweets are really being read? And if you yourself are on Twitter to promote a blog, business, book or product, are you tweeting to a captive audience or to a selected few?
Sidenote: Watch this hilarious video if you want to know what Twitter looks like in real life!
On the flip side, there are several “social media gurus” who claim Twitter is a great place to market a blog, business, book or product.
But how?
For months, even though I had a Twitter account, I would just observe my timeline. Hardly any tweets… just me observing the interactions of others.
And all of these social media gurus who said that Twitter was the best thing since sliced bread!?! You know what they said the secret was to gaining a captive audience?
Now this is a huge, so I want you to really pay attention.
Engage your audience.
Wait?!? What?!?
It simply means that you need to read and respond to the tweets of others, and not just your friends and family. You need to actively engage your target audience in the manner you’d like them to do you.
And…
Believe it or not, it works! Not only on the Twitter platform, but blogs, Youtube, Facebook, you name it!
So for those of you who are wondering why there is no support for your tweets, blogs, Facebook posts, etc…aside from great content, are you responding to tweets, blogs, and the Facebook posts of others? Now granted, you can have great content and respond to other people’s tweets and there will still be those who just skim past your content. But if you actively engage your audience, you will eventually build a dedicated audience.
Tomorrow, I’m going to discuss why a lot of Twitterers, Facebookers, and blogs (this one included), gain support then lose momentum. But in the meantime…
What is your Twitter experience like? Are you only tweeting your friends? Or are you actively engaging your target audience? Please share in the comment section below.
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I would like to think I have a healthy medium. I talk about interesting topics, retweet others, and reply to peoples comments. Thought I do feel at times I am talking to myself, but it is okay, because I Can see from my online analytic programs I am gaining traffic referrals from twitter. So my readers might just be readers, not people who interact.
And this is so true, some people read and don't comment. I used to be that person, but now I try to support people by commenting on their blogs and tweets.
I certainly engage my audience. Sure, once my novel's published I'd like to use these social media platforms to promote, but I'm more interested in getting to know my followers and, hopefully, giving them the opportunity to know me. It's cool to post links to blog posts and send out the call to action to buy buy buy … but it's even cooler to just get to know people.
Very true!
Very true Minolta. I actually was very active on FB first but I've since put my focus on Twitter. Thanks for sharing!
Hello!
I reading all of as possible. I try to focus on my interest in following persons; my interests are the children, family and charity. So, it's easy to read what they post.
This is a great point! If you follow people with similar interests, its much easier to interact.
Twittering is not as fun as it used to be. I do not see anything interesting to follow on twitter at times I just re-tweet things that I feel are worth re-tweeting and I go back to FB
Oh no reason to be sorry. It sounds like your community is on FB. Thanks for commenting.