A few days ago Twitter announced on their status blog that all Twitter users are only allowed to follow a maximum of 1000 people a day. This rule was designed to cut down on ‘follow spam’, the act of following many Twitter users in order to get them to follow you back or click on your links. When combined with the already existing limit based on follow ratios, this means that it will be more difficult for marketers or self-promoters to rapidly increase their Twitter follower count by following many people. The old days of following thousands of users a day to get thousands of followers back are gone.
That’s not to say the strategy of mass following users to increase your Twitter followers doesn’t work anymore. It does. Why? Because many people use tools to auto-follow anyone who follows them. And there are new users who think its only polite to reciprocate. So you can easily get tens of thousands of followers from this strategy over time.
I see quite a few people still practicing this method. Some are social media enthusiasts or consultants, some are internet marketers or bloggers. All of them are people who want to get something in return. They want to:
Many people think that to achieve all of the above, they need to build a large list of Twitter followers and broadcast links to get free traffic. It’s a simple strategy. The more followers you have, the more people listen to you, and the easier it is to spread your messages.
But do you really need a large number of followers to promote yourself successfully on Twitter? The answer is no. Not at all. But many people still persist in mass following users. Let’s look at some of the reasons why you don’t need to use this marketing tactic.

Image Credit: ittybittiesforyou
Many products on Twitter marketing have been released by internet marketers looking to profit from the growing interest in Twitter. These products give you the same blueprint: just get more twitter followers. All you need to do is to follow many users everyday, drop non-mutuals and then follow more. Repeat until you get a ton of followers and look like a social media rockstar. If people follow you, you must be awesome, right?
The only problem is that these are low-value followers. Not because they are dumb or socially inferior but because a good amount of these followers are not ultra-targeted, active or responsive. Many of them are self-promoters, spammers or automated feed accounts. These people aren’t interested in you. They don’t care about you. They didn’t REALLY opt-in. They even followed you automatically, didn’t they?
If we were to draw comparisons to a email list or newsletter, these types of people are the ones who would use a temporary email address to sign up so they can get your freebie and disappear. Most of them aren’t going to end up retweeting your stuff, most of them don’t even read your tweets. Most of them don’t give a damn about your ideas.
It’s not about the follower count, its about conversions. A carefully cultivated list of 1000 followers can beat a list of 10,000 twitter followers anytime when it comes to spreading content or getting traffic/sales. A social media strategy that only involves mass following all sorts of people and shooting out links in order to hook buyers or readers is quite inadequate.
Low-value followers are incredibly easy to get and the only positive thing about them is that they’ll make you look good. Judging influence by the follower count is something that people do. It’s social proof. So you have 80,000 followers. You can probably start a social media consulting business and tell everyone that you’re an expert. Or write that ebook and flaunt your follower count on the sales page. You can fool a lot of people and you’ll make money too.
So play the Twitter game of mass adding and dropping users for a few months. You may even meet some cool people but don’t assume that you have 50,000 users who actually read your tweets or are interested in you. They aren’t. And you’re irrelevant to them.
Remember, you’re not getting natural opt-in follows preempted by interest. All you have is an inflated number. Maybe you think that’s something to be proud of but if a 7 year old kid can press a auto-follow button and get 500 followers in 24 hrs, you’re not that impressive.

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Unless you are a celebrity or a famous brand, you will never get hundreds of thousands of natural follows from people who are interested in what you have to say. If you want to look like a VIP, you can fake it by manipulating follower counts like most self-promoters.
But do you really think that’s effective Twitter marketing? Sometimes I feel that marketers should stop this obsession with volume and carefully think about cultivating a better follower list as well as other more effective ways of using Twitter for marketing.
I don’t want to blindly label all mass-following users as spammers. Some are not malicious nor are they aggressive self-promoters. I’m just questioning the overwhelming focus on this tactic, as if its the only way to accumulate influence or market yourself on Twitter. It’s not.
This isn’t an attack on anyone. If you think that mass following many users to boost your follower count is great, keep doing it. I’ve got no problems with that. I’m just offering my opinion on why I think its flawed. This comes from having actually experimented with this strategy, so it’s not just theoretical postulations.
In my opinion, while having a large number of Twitter followers is not a bad thing, there are some other key factors you should consider if you’re want to use Twitter to market yourself or your website/brand. These are points which I think are quite important even if your ONLY reason for using Twitter is to make money or get traffic.
The most important thing you should remember: It’s not about the number of Twitter followers you have, its about who follows you and the responsiveness of your audience.

It matters who reads your tweets. Are these people interested in you or your business? An interested follower is naturally more engaged with whatever you put out on Twitter. People who automatically follow you do not count as interested followers.
Are your followers active? Active users share your links, they give you feedback, they talk to you. Automated or semi-automated users are not active users that will interact with you.
And do the people who follow you have influence? Would you rather get 50 retweets from users with 10 to 100 random followers? Or you rather get 10 retweets from influencers in same niche, with all of them having 1000 to 10,000 very relevant followers?
How about tweeting out a link or idea and having someone with a blog in the same niche write about it and link to you? Can your army of auto-followers offer the same? Not every Twitter user has the same audience size. Some users can reach more people much faster and these are the ones that can help you.
This is not to suggest that the average twitterer is useless but to highlight the unequal influence of each user. Who follows you matters a great deal because powerful Twitter marketing involves not just link-blasting but networking and relationship development.

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Responsiveness is the degree to which your Twitter audience is engaged with whatever messages you put out on Twitter. A responsive audience connects with you, retweeting your links and answering your questions. They interact with your Twitter stream.
When we talk about a responsive email list, we’re talking about subscribers who are willing to buy or take action on your offers. Responsive Twitter followers are similar: they take action on your tweets by spreading them or talking back to you.
An easy way to measure responsiveness is to ask a question and see how many people respond. The no. of link clicks and retweets are other factors as well but anyone can click on a random link: it just shows that they’re interested in the link title or story. But are they interested in you? Actual responses to your queries are a good measure of that.
A responsive Twitter audience naturally develops when people are interested in you, what you do and who you are. Celebrities have the most responsive followers, many of their subscribers even sign up for a Twitter account just to interact with their tweets. They’re actively looking forward to reading new tweets from their favorite personality. This anticipation and interest makes them a perfect audience for conversions and call-to-actions.
If you’re not already famous, you will have a tougher time building a responsive audience because you don’t get natural interest in you from the start. One way to generate this interest is to develop a reputation in your field so that your name or brand is known.
This means you shouldn’t just spend your whole day following/unfollowing, tweeting links and chit-chatting. You have to work at your brand away from Twitter. If you put out an interesting tool or piece of content, you’ll get interest. If you’re selling a product that solves a problem, you’ll get interest. As you become more known online, you will get people following you.
When on Twitter itself, you can develop responsiveness through reciprocation. By actively interacting with other users, you will induce them to pay more attention to your updates. But don’t just send out updates and only talk to people who reply to your tweets. Actively monitor and engage users. Over time they will warm up to you and responsiveness will increase.
Remember, you don’t just want a large follower count. You want a responsive group of followers. People who are genuinely interested in you and people who will click on your links, retweet you or respond to your queries. Ultimately this group of Twitter followers can help you popularize your website or grow your business.

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Instead of autofollowing a ton of people and rinsing them out to get mutual followers who are either not interested or very poorly interested in you, go for ultra-relevant Twitter users.
There are two types of twitter users you can target: people who have the power to help your business grow and the average user who is a potential customer. Whichever type you choose depends on your goals and what you want to get from Twitter.
Generally I’m more in favor in targeting twitter users who can best promote my business interests so you can get customers/buyers/readers through their efforts instead of your own. Potential end-users/customers are equally important although you’ll have a tougher time trying to determine their level of interest in your website/product.
Yes, you can use keywords to track tweets and find prospects on Twitter directories but interacting with each and every prospect (there are thousands out there) takes a lot of time and energy. I would prefer networking with influencers who can promote my site/brand in and outside of Twitter because they have a built-in audience and a platform.
Mass following can get you followers. But it doesn’t drastically improve your reputation, no matter how attractive a high follower count looks. A mass follower tweeting out a link is very different from an authority in the field endorsing a link by putting it in a tweet. The influencer is followed by a targeted list of other taste-makers.
The core of influence will spiral outwards based on the initial endorsement. This is more powerful than a link sent out to an auto-follow audience. Sure, you can easily get traffic but your tweets are not as effective as a voice that is respected by your target market.
So who should you network with? Not just end-users with your keyword in their bio. But bloggers, webmasters, publishers, journalists and business owners. People who work in your field and own web sites that can send you links and traffic. You can focus on networking with the superstars in your field but don’t ever forget about less famous people. This article by Brett Borders offers a good explanation of why you shouldn’t ignore the average Twitter user.
So in essence, you should use Twitter as a relationship building tool to extract benefits from a core group of influencers who are relevant to your business/website. Network actively with the right Twitter users, talk to them, spread their links, give them feedback, support their content. Be a participant in their Twitter experience.
If you do this long enough, you will eventually make them comfortable with helping you or promoting your stuff either on Twitter or away from it.
If someone talks to me very often on Twitter, shares my content or points me to good resources, I’m more than willing to retweet their stuff. Especially if its great content. I wouldn’t think twice about it. The desire to reciprocate is a very powerful instinct.

Image Credit: Erica_Marshall
And if you want to talk about ‘going viral’, just a few retweets from several users with responsive audiences and your link will get all the momentum it needs. You don’t need to build up an account with tens of thousands of users only to send your message out to people who aren’t even half-interested in your content.
You will gradually grow your business or website by getting more readers, clients or buyers through the help of that core group. And after you’ve achieved some success, people will naturally start to follow you on Twitter. And these are the best kinds of Twitter followers to have, people who opt-in because they are interested in you or your work.
Then you can concentrate on these new batch of followers and by interacting with them, turn them into people who will actively support your content or initiatives. Many of them might be site owners or bloggers as well so this is a great way to network and learn if you’re looking for some help to improve your core business offerings.
In terms of making money indirectly or directly through Twitter, I’ve realized that the no. of Twitter followers you have is not always proportional to the income you’ll make.
It’s not necessary to inflate your Twitter follow count through an automated game of mass following. But I understand why people do it. It’s the same old strategy used on Myspace, Facebook and pretty much any social site where people can ‘friend’ each other and capture attention. The mentality is go for maximum volume and hook the few that will listen.
You can go down that route if you want but I think you can easily achieve the same results and more by cultivating a high quality list of followers and networking smartly with the right people. Marketing on Twitter does not just involve getting as many followers as you can.
Think beyond that. If you want followers, you should get them to come to you. You don’t have to chase after them. It’s devastatingly easy once you learn how to leverage other users with established audiences and create bait that entices people to opt-in because of interest.
Source: http://www.doshdosh.com/twitter-marketing-mass-follow-users/
1. Provide a central gathering place.
2. Set up web analytics at your site.
3. Start listening to find where your customers & potential customers are at
4. Monitor and start noting trends
5. Participate
6. Build Brand

1. Welcome new members.
Be personal.
The auto-generated email doesn’t count – but if that’s all you can do,
at least personalise it. This can scale – welcome new members publicly,
and your members will follow suit. If it all becomes a bit
overwhelming, you’ve already established a ‘welcome wagon’ as part of
your community’s culture. Your members will now take over.
When you welcome new members, they know they have been noticed.
Nobody wants to contribute to a community if they feel invisible.
2. Praise member contributions.
If members do good, tell them. Feature the best content in a
prominent position on the site. When responding to a member’s post,
tell them how great you think it is. Don’t forget the value of private
messaging, too – you might not want to get involved in a specific
discussion, but that shouldn’t stop you from dropping a member a PM to
thank them for their fantastic contribution.
3. Communicate with your members.
Don’t just talk to your members. Listen, too. Get involved in the
community you are managing. Get involved in discussions. When members
contact you, make sure they get a response (a real one – not an
auto-responder or link to the FAQs). If you forget to keep in touch
with your members, they may forget to keep in touch with the community.
4. Get to know your members.
Similar to above. You can’t get to know your members if you’re not
involved in the community. Don’t just reply to existing discussions.
Don’t just start new discussions. Ask questions. Learn about your
members and learn from your members. Figure out what makes them tick –
you’ll then be in a better position to tailor the community to their
needs.
5. Show interest in your members.
If you’re not a ‘people person’, you can’t be a community manager.
You need to be interested in people and you need to love getting to
know people. Show an interest in your members and what they do. Does a
member have a blog? Go read it – and drop the occasional comment. Do
they have a new website? Take a look and offer some feedback. Share a
link to their site with the community.
Show an interest in your members, and they’ll continue to show an interest in your community.
6. Interview your members.
I have to admit, this is something I have only started doing
recently. It works wonders, though. Initially, members wondered what
the point of interviews would be – after all, they are already getting
to know other members by reading their posts and getting involved in
discussions. However, after the very first interview, the sceptics were
won over.
Interviews allow you to really dig deep into the personality and
experience of individual members. They are a great opportunity for
members to open up and talk about things they wouldn’t normally share
or start a discussion about. They can bring the community closer
together, and the replies from other members after an interview make
the interviewee feel special and valued.
Don’t just interview existing members of your online community,
though – get out there and interview people you want as members, too.
7. Give members additional responsibilities.
Empowerment is a powerful tool. You don’t need to necessarily give away real powers – just assign individual members certain tasks and responsibilities. At Female Forum, one of our members is in charge of the Twitter account. Brave? Dangerous? Risky? No – it just shows the community how much I respect and trust them.
8. Give members a reason to keep coming back.
Nobody will come back to your community if there is no fresh content. You need to get members addicted.
Newsletters can be used to highlight the best conversations (or the
most controversial). Quiz leagues can bring out a competitive spirit.
Put yourself in the shoes of your members. Would you want to return tomorrow?
9. Know when to use power.
You have lots of power. You can edit posts, delete posts, delete
members and ban members. Use these powers sparingly. Don’t oppress
members. They don’t want to live in fear. The more they worry about
moderator intervention, the less they’ll be inclined to post. Members
will make mistakes from time to time – don’t come down on them like a
tonne of bricks if they do. Be understanding. Genuine mistakes happen.
Personal circumstances may result in someone acting completely out of
character.
Use your power sparingly and wisely.
10. Be genuine.
You can’t fake it when it comes to being a community manager. You
need to be genuinely interested in your members. You need to be
genuinely passionate about the community. Members can tell when you’re
faking it – if that happens, you’re in trouble.
How to attract new members to your online community
See above. If you work hard for your existing members, you’ll naturally attract new ones.
Source: http://www.communityspark.com/dont-lose-existing-members-of-your-online-community/

1. Why do you want an online community?
If your answer is, ‘because everyone else has one’, it’ll probably fail. If it’s because you want to be more customer focused and want to offer more value to your customers, you’re more likely to succeed.
Ask yourself (and your company, if applicable) a lot of questions before going any further.
2. Where do you build the new online community?
There are a number of options here. You can develop the community under its own URL, develop it alongside your existing website, or keep out of the ‘under the hood’ tinkering completely by developing a community using existing sites such as Facebook.
My advice? Integrate your community within your existing website – it proves you are serious about your community, and gives the community the respect it deserves. Build communities externally, too. Reach out to your target audience via Twitter, Facebook and wherever else they might be. If your community is only in one place, you’re limiting its exposure.
3. Where are your members?
I touched on this in point 2. Don’t expect people to flock to your community as soon as you hit the ‘Upload’ button. More than likely, you’ll need to go out and find those early adopters. Even if you’re lucky and have a hugely passionate audience, you should still consider being proactive by finding the right members for your community. Fill it with ‘perfect members’ from the outset and you’ll have a far more productive community as a result. Don’t overlook bloggers – they could be your best early members; passionate, targeted and they come with an audience.
4. What makes your community unique?
The internet is saturated with online communities. Chances are, a community already exists for the niche you are currently exploring. If your community offers nothing unique, people aren’t likely to join.
There is nothing wrong with developing a community for a niche already served by existing communities. You just need to offer something different. Your differentiator could be a number of things – for example, better quality (members and content) or better usability. Just don’t think your community is better because it offers more features – you’ll probably just end up turning people off.
5. How will you attract members and manage the community?
So you know where your potential members are and know where the community will be built. Who’s going to put all the work into attracting these members and managing the resulting community? There’s nothing wrong with learning as you go (that’s how I did it) – but be aware that community building takes a lot of time and effort. Results take a long time to arrive – do you have the patience, commitment and spare time?
Your online community will require more time as it grows, not less. You’ll need to manage conflict, you’ll need to make members feel special and you’ll need to be involved in the community.
Building a new online community
1. Keep it simple.
Are you going for a full blown social network? (Make sure you’re not just investing in a Facebook clone). A forum? Force yourself to justify every feature of your community – particularly in the early days. You don’t want distractions – your community needs to be simple. As soon as people arrive, they need to know the purpose of the community. They need to be able to register quickly and easily (if at all). They need to be able to contribute to the community easily.
Don’t use fancy words. Don’t hide things (whether intentionally or not).
2. Respect your community.
If you’re serious about building a community, show it the respect it deserves. Incorporate the community into your main website. Have community content appear on your homepage – don’t hide it all behind a ‘community’ tab.
Your community needs to be primarily for the benefit of its members. You reap the secondary benefits. Don’t sell to your community. Treat them with respect. Listen to them. Talk to them. Be involved.
3. Keep it private (at first).
Your community will never be perfect – just as it will never be ‘finished’. Keep your community small in the early days – don’t email thousands of people announcing the launch; you only get one chance to make this announcement and if your community isn’t ready, you’ll be wasting everyone’s time.
Consider keeping the community closed during the early days. Only allow certain people in – the people that you really want as members. They’ll help you fine tune the community. They’ll help generate content so that when the community goes public it isn’t a ghost town. Exclusivity is powerful – those that are in will want to stay in. Those that are out will want to be in. Use this to your advantage.
4. Have guidelines and processes from day one.
You’ll deal with troublemakers. You’ll be called names. You need to be professional and consistent. You can only do this by having community guidelines and internal processes established from day one (or even before).
Ensure your community guidelines are visible and accessible. If you need to post reams of legal text with your community guidelines, then fine – but pull a copy of the guidelines out and post them somewhere prominent. Nobody reads legal disclaimers – but they’ll read your guidelines if they are simple, clear and accessible.
How will you deal with troublemakers? Will you ignore them? Will you warn them? Will you ban them? If you’re unsure how to proceed here, why not make your guidelines and processes a collaborative effort? Your members are far likelier to respect them if they helped draw them up.
5. Highlight members and their content.
Members of your online community need to feel valued. They are members because of self interest – they want to receive (respect, attention, admiration, information). Keep them motivated by telling them how great they are – but be genuine.
If a member writes a great post, drop them a message telling them so. Make your admiration public by highlighting the best member content. Interview your members to put them in the spotlight. Don’t worry too much about jealousy – it’s a great motivator for other members to contribute even better content so they receive the next ego stroke.
Be realistic. Be adventurous.
Your community won’t be a success overnight. It may take weeks, months or even years for success to come (oh, and make sure you’re measuring success in the right ways). Lots of people give up on their community project too soon. You need to take a long term approach – remember, you’re building human relationships here. You can’t rush this.
At the same time, be sure to experiment and take risks from time to time. Some will work, some won’t. The more adventurous you are, the better your chances of success – you’ll be doing something different and you might just stumble on the ultimate community building strategy. If you do, be sure to let me know the secret – in return, here’s what I’ve learnt so far.
Source: http://www.communityspark.com/how-to-build-an-online-community/

LinkedIn helps local businesses become global. LinkedIn is the largest professional networking site on the Internet. It's a place to connect with colleagues from around the world. You can share what you do, promote yourself and find work. LinkedIn gives a small business in Nebraska the power to have a major client in New York.Source: http://www.trumpuniversity.com/blog/post/2009/09/five-websites-every-entrepreneur-should-use.cfm
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