Why would I follow you if you never tweet?
I unfollowed about 400 people on Twitter yesterday. Not the ones in this image, but they could be next. I unfollowed people who haven’t posted a single tweet in more than 2 months, in some cases in over a year!
What was really interesting was who they were. I wish I had made a note of who they were and I wish I had time to tell them, because they could well be missing out on lots of business opportunities, or opportunities to be seen as leaders to watch and follow.
What surprised me was that there were several New Zealand Government MP’s (really interesting given that next year is election year and it appears no post is safe). There were also a large number of people who claim to be social media ‘experts’ and consultants, business consultants; even major national and multinational brands.
Do you get more than your fair share of business? Do you spend money on advertising and marketing? Do you follow where your business comes from? Have you heard stories about how people don’t trust advertising as much as they trust people they relate to? Twitter is another form of Word of Mouth (WOM), which as you know is one of the most powerful forms of marketing there is.
Is Twitter worth using as a marketing tool? Here are some stats to think about from June this year:
- Almost 555 Million active registered users.
- 135,000 new users signing up every day.
- 190 Million UNIQUE users per month.
- 2.1 BILLION Search Engine queries on Twitter EVERY DAY
- Number of days it takes for 1 Billion Tweets? 5
So if you have a Twitter account and aren’t using it to capture some attention, but you spend money on other forms of marketing, are you serious about growing your business?
Maybe you don’t know how to use it, or what to tweet about? Get some help. Talk to people like me. Tweet for advice. Tweet your story. Tweet your customers. Do something! If I unfollow you on Twitter, maybe I am following your competitors. If I search for your type of product (did you see that search engine query stat above?) I’m probably looking to make a buying decision.
As to MP’s who have accounts and don’t use them, are you nuts?
Hey, while you’re here, have you visited my new Facebook page yet? Come and join in the conversation. You can also follow me on Twitter. Talk to me, tell me what you think.
SoLoMo Consulting 
Hi Luigi! Hope I’m not one of those! I do however fall into the category of so-called social media experts who don’t tweet a lot. The reason being that I spend most of my time on social media devoted to driving my client’s profiles not my own. So I fully see the value of Twitter for marketing, but at present don’t have an urgent need to promote my own brand. Also, in the B2B space I get more out LinkedIn than Twitter these days. LinkedIn delivers more blog reads & website visits than Twitter for my business and those of my clients.
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Hi Louis, I would never unfollow you:)
Despite your focus on other social media, I would strongly recommend you or your clients doing some searches, or checking what people are searching in their industry. The stats I quoted are real and whether people are looking for your clients’ products, talking about them or their competitors, they should be involved at least to some degree. As you know there are plenty of free tools, such as Hootsuite, that make it really easy to see what conversations are taking place.
It doesn’t take much time to generate a tweet, after all you only get 140 characters an even if its just a link to your blog or other social media (which you do keep up to date, don’t you), you never know which message will result in a new business opportunity.
Of course, as I said in the blog, if you and your clients are getting more business than you want already, forget this advice and carry on. If that is he case, maybe you could shout me a ticket to San Fran for the Americas Cup;)
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Would be interesting to see the revenue generated stats. I did go to the Xero conference who told me that they made lots of sales to people using twitter, yet couldn’t name one example. I’m open to hearing some real examples, but still not convinced that point number 6 should be anything other than;
6. $0 revenue generated.
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Next time I see Rod, I’ll ask him about that. In the meantime, as I said, people are talking about brands and companies all the time. So on the subject of Xero, check this out: https://twitter.com/search?q=Xero&src=typd
Look forward to seeing where you go with your new blog:)
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Reblogged this on Luigicappel's Weblog and commented:
Do you have a dormant Twitter Account? Did you know that there are 2.1 Billion Twitter Search Queries Every Day?
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I love this Post Luigi!
I do this Twitter cleaning at least once in 2 months.
Twitter is a very powerful tool, but often not given enough credit for that or not properly used. When I joined a team to promote some internet marketing stuff, they had a very badly manged Twitter account. Their idea of a Twitter account was about having an account with over 50k followers and Tweeting the same link 3-4 times a day. A lot of bad management ranging from buying followers to not being engaged.
Thats the case I assume with many business and individuals maintaining a Twitter account. But at the same time a lot of business and individuals reap the benefits of this great tool.
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Many thanks for your comments and support Sunish, many people still don’t understand social media, they then pay it lip service and get poor results which reinforces their misconceptions. I guess that leaves more opportunities for the rest of us:)
I do ally enjoy helping people grow their social media presence and consequently their business though:)
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