Twitter

I know that social media is all about sharing great information and finding links that are relevant to your industry and tweeting them out to the masses. I believe in that…I really do.

But, it seems that everyone has a link attached to their twitter posts these days. I search my various Twitter lists for interesting comments and posts so that I can re-tweet it to my followers and offer different perspectives than my own. As I was searching recently, I noticed that only 1 in about 500 posts were just a comment without a link. I’m sure people have some profound statements to make that are not attached to a blog post or a video, or an affiliate link.

Now don’t get me wrong, I do all of the above and I think it’s a great way to promote your online business or service. But surely we can occasionally post on Twitter just a regular message, a favorite quote or a random thought.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic. Am I expecting too much or have we become a society that can’t tweet without a bit.ly, ow.ly or tiny.ur link attached?

What do you think?

Why do you Follow People on Twitter?

I have been asking a few people this question lately. Why do you follow people on Twitter? Some of the answers I received were:

Because they are famous
I want to connect with other people in my industry
I follow all my friends so I can keep with them
My marketing strategy includes following thought leaders
I just love to follow everyone
I’m connecting with my clients and customers to be more in touch with them
I’m looking for a job so I’m following key management of companies that I would like to work for
I have a local store, so I connect with local people in my city

As you can see there are millions of different reasons to follow people on Twitter, but the key to really being engaged and using Twitter as it was designed to be used, is to communicate with your followers. You can follow thousands of people, but if they don’t follow you back and listen to what you have to say, it’s not going to be beneficial to you.

I recently met Geoff Hampton (@geoffhampton) on Twitter. He actually lives in the same city as me, but we had never actually met – until Twitter. I had been watching how he grew his Twitter following pretty quickly and I was interested to learn how he did it so I could share his “best practice” with you. So I DM’d (direct messaged) him on Twitter and asked if I could interview him for a little series I was doing on Internet Marketing Winners. He graciously agreed and he shared some of the ways he has grown his Twitter followers. He has even enlisted several of his friends on Twitter to help him launch a new health initiative and he has board members from all over the world. He is now the Executive Director of The Weekly Fitness Challenge, an International organization that is passionate about getting people moving and one the road to better health.

Isn’t that amazing! He did this through Twitter!

Some of his strategies included:

He connected with people who he thought would be relevant to his business
Follow Friday (a strategy where you recommend others by tagging them with the @ symbol before their Twitter ID and also using the hastag #FF in your Tweet which lets your followers know this is someone you think would be a good person to follow)
Defining his market and developing a strong presence within that marketplace

Click below to listen to a small portion of my interview with Geoff

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So let me ask you, why do you follow people on Twitter? I’d love to hear your answers.