Don’t Make This Twitter Mistake
If it isn’t every day, it is every other day I see people or brands trying to persuade others to follow them on Twitter. The best way to get followers is to engage with amazing content day in and day out; however, it seems like people and brands like giving things away to the 100th or 1,000th (or whatever number it may be) follower they get on Twitter. Let me tell you why this strategy, well, sucks. When somebody’s Twitter page is up to it’s 97th follow, it makes that person or brand long for its 100th follower, for example. You didn’t get the first 97 people to follow you by giving out something publicly, so you don’t need to start now. When you tell somebody the 100th person will get something, like a free drink or free food if it is a bar or restaurant, or a discount on clothing if it is an department store, you are setting yourself up for failure. Not only are you talking to those who already follow you (so it is useless), but you are going to halt those who are likely to follow you. Who will want to be the 98th follower and miss out on the drinks/food or discounts?! Not me for one; most will just wait until the 99th person starts following you and swoop in to claim their prize. This is similar to a radio contest, where the 100th caller wins tickets to a concert, except, Twitter, unlike radio, is transparent; you can’t see the 99th caller with radio, but you can see the 99th follower. For that reason, it’s a pretty ineffective tactic. Moving forward, let’s not oversee what effects this has on the original people who have been following you since day one. I’m a firm believer of inbound marketing, or focusing on those who already focus on you – so in this case, the original 97 followers. When you offer somebody new something, you are in a way screwing over the original people who saw something in you to follow you. While this may be unintentional in your attempt to garner new followers, it is happening. My recommendation is to engage with your original 97 followers in ways where they’ll want to share your Twitter page with friends, family and colleagues. The best way to give out free things in an attempt to do something for your original followers is to do it unexpectedly. If you have a Twitter tactic where you follow everybody who follows you, then you’ll be able to direct message (DM) people and be very personal with them. Maybe you want to reward somebody for having the insight to follow you and being your 100th follower. While you’re not announcing you’re giving out a free drink to your followers, you are still doing something for your follower, who will hopefully be grateful and in turn likely tweet your page to their friends saying what they’ve just won and how awesome you are. Having them, rather than you talk about your page is so much more effective. It’s why people have agents, managers or PR teams working for them – you always want a third party talking about you, so you don’t seem like a self-promoting machine. A final reason you do not want to announce the 100th person will get X, Y & Z is because you never know who that person will be. It is out of your control who decides to eventually be the 100th person, so if you’re deciding to give out a free dinner to that person, and that person lives in New Hampshire and your restaurant is in New York, for example, well how likely is it that they’ll be able to come enjoy a dinner at your place? Not very likely. So now you have done something negative to the person who will clearly miss out on the deal. And that was just an example of an actual person following you, but what about if the 100th “person” it is one of those accounts following 1,507 people with 3 following them – do you really want to reward a robotic like Twitter account? Didn’t think so. Here is what you can do if you’re adamant on telling people you’ll be giving something away for your Twitter followers. Tweet that you’re going to do something special for one follower who emails you at your personal email address. State what the prize will be, so if it is a geographic sensitive prize, like dining at a restaurant, only those who actually live in the vicinity will email you, this way, no body will be let down. If you’re a department store, you don’t have this problem because you should have a website where people can shop online; in that case, just give that one person a special code they can use at the checkout for a discount. When your inbox starts filling up with people who are interested in winning, you’ll need to respond to each and every person, whether they are the winner, or not. These are clearly your fans who care enough to email you – if they took out 2 minutes of their day to email you, you most assuredly better respond even if they haven’t won to keep them engaged with you as a person or brand. They’ll still feel like it was worth their time to email you, so they’ll likely email you again for your next contest.
