Tweet Fearlessly, Block Ruthlessly

Yes­ter­day, I had a tweet burp.

(If you’ve been liv­ing under a rock in the past year, a “tweet” is a brief, text mes­sage on micro-​​blogging plat­form Twit­ter.)

I call it a “tweet burp” because it’s some­thing like a brain fart. But I pre­fer “brain burp.” Rea­son is, unlike a brain fart where one for­gets some­thing basic or says some­thing mean­ing­less, what I thought, and sub­se­quently tweeted about, was sur­pris­ingly meaningful.

And for some, even profound.

They are tips on how to Twit­ter bet­ter. (Try to say that 10 times in a row really fast!) Let me share it with you by post­ing some of the high­lights here.

Some of these tips are not extra­or­di­nary, of course. Most of them are sim­ply com­mon sense. But they are some of the things I do in my own social media involve­ment that has proven to work well for me. I rec­om­mend you do the same…

It all started when Amrit Hal­lan asked on Twit­ter: “Won­der­ing what key­words should a con­tent writer or online copy­writer must tar­get. Any ideas?” We began tweet­ing back-​​and-​​forth in an effort to help him about his key­word selec­tion for his niche.

He told me that his key­words are pulling in very lit­tle traf­fic. A con­ver­sa­tion and a series of tips ensued, where, in short, I told him to tar­get bet­ter key­words — because the ones he chose may not be on his tar­get market’s radar.

The prob­lem, I gath­ered, is that he was bet­ting on words revolv­ing around his services.

My think­ing is, peo­ple don’t look for solu­tions by typ­ing them into search engines. They are likely look­ing for solu­tions by typ­ing in the prob­lem, or symp­tom, instead.

To prove my the­ory in Amrit’s case, I used a cou­ple of key­word tools. And sure enough, search vol­ume for terms related to the prob­lem peo­ple expe­ri­enced was much larger than those with key­words that included the solution.

True, traf­fic lev­els may still not be extrav­a­gant. But the chances are high they will bring in more traf­fic because seek­ers will have an affin­ity with the more tar­geted search results, as well as bring in more tar­geted traf­fic to boot.

This reminded me of some­thing bril­liant my friend and top copy­writer David Garfinkel once said. He said to write copy (or in this case, to write keyword-​​rich con­tent), you need to know three crit­i­cal things:

1. Who is my client,
2. What is their prob­lem, and
3. How are they talk­ing about it?

Know­ing the first one is cru­cial. A lot of peo­ple do mar­ket research only to gauge demand, with­out ever know­ing who their client really is, much less how they per­ceive, talk about, and seek out solu­tions for, their problem.

The third ques­tion in par­tic­u­lar is the kicker!

Peo­ple look­ing for your ser­vices may be typ­ing some­thing com­pletely dif­fer­ent in the search engines, and if you ignore this you’re going to miss out on a ton of traffic.

Back to my point. The keen thing about this inter­ac­tion was, a cou­ple of other peo­ple got involved in the con­ver­sa­tion. It was awe­some. It also gave me a chance to help oth­ers who were on the side­lines, lurk­ing and learn­ing what was being said.

I know, because a lot of peo­ple either replied or direct-​​messaged me to thank me. Plus, at the end it gave me an oppor­tu­nity to talk about our own key­word research course, which resulted in a few sales let alone a few extra followers.

And that was when I had a brain burp.

What hap­pened was a pow­er­ful exam­ple of how to effec­tively mar­ket on Twit­ter, even with­out mar­ket­ing directly on it at all. Plus, the con­ver­sa­tion indi­rectly lead to a few epipha­nies. So I decided to tweet some tips in light of what had just occurred.

How­ever, before I tell them to you, let me share some­thing else that hap­pened. Some­thing, well, not as pos­i­tive. (There is a method to my mad­ness, so bear with me.)

Dur­ing the con­ver­sa­tion, some­one replied to me, com­plain­ing that I was “clog­ging up their tweet­sream” and told me, in essence, to shut up.

I found that dis­turb­ing and fas­ci­nat­ing at the same time.

The rea­son is, if a per­son feels I’m clog­ging up their tweet stream, then why are they fol­low­ing me? What­ever his pur­pose in fol­low­ing me was, it cer­tainly wasn’t because he found what I tweeted was of any value. In other words, he wasn’t “qualified.”

So I decided to block him.

And block­ing is such an unused fea­ture on Twit­ter, but it’s one I highly rec­om­mend. It’s really easy. Go to a person’s pro­file, and on the right there’s a link that says “block” under­neath their bio. By block­ing some­one, they can’t fol­low you or see your tweets.

Block­ing is not just for whin­ers and stalk­ers, either. Use it to block spam­mers, spam­bots, and peo­ple who use scripts — scripts are not real peo­ple but soft­ware that seek out fol­low­ers for the pur­pose of build­ing their own list.

(Alice Seba wrote an inter­est­ing arti­cle on the sub­ject, by the way, in which she com­pared “fol­low­bots” to those infa­mous spam­mers’ safe­lists. And I agree.)

Now, don’t worry. I don’t block aut­o­fol­low­ers out­right — peo­ple who auto­mat­i­cally fol­low those who fol­low them. But I do try to block those that aut­o­fol­low then auto-​​unfollow when the script real­izes you don’t fol­low back. These are mostly spam­bots, not real people.

Nev­er­the­less, here’s the series of tips I gleaned from these exchanges.

Want to spread your social authority?

Search Twit­ter for ques­tions peo­ple in your niche are ask­ing, and respond using a reply. Even try to engage them in a con­ver­sa­tion. You don’t need to fol­low them. Just be help­ful. Use the “@reply” to intro­duce your­self and answer their question.

Be care­ful, how­ever. I don’t mean to say you should do this as a way to get clients or sales, much less fol­low­ers. Your goal is not to seek out peo­ple you can eas­ily spam to.

It’s about increas­ing your vis­i­bil­ity about you and your exper­tise, which will inevitably increase your Twit­ter fol­low­ers. Gen­uine fol­low­ers. Real peo­ple with real prob­lems or con­cerns, who lis­ten and care, and value what you say.

This will sub­se­quently increase your leads and your sales, too.

That’s what being social is all about. But being social doesn’t mean just being among oth­ers, it also means doing among oth­ers. That is, engag­ing, con­vers­ing, inter­act­ing. Answer­ing ques­tions, offer­ing advice, tweet­ing brief tips, etc.

It’s amaz­ing how many peo­ple ask ques­tions on Twitter.

Do a Twit­ter search for the kinds of ques­tions peo­ple ask, or using key­words in your niche peo­ple typ­i­cally use when they have a need or a prob­lem, and you’ll be amazed by the results. Twit­ter is filled with poten­tial prospects. Peo­ple you can serve, not sell to.

Also, don’t for­get peo­ple use Twit­ter search, too. If they have a ques­tion, a chal­lenge, or an idea, they some­times search for answers on Twit­ter as well. Not just the search engines. So you want to be in front of them, too.

In fact, peo­ple are con­stantly look­ing for wor­thy peo­ple to fol­low. One great way is to look at peo­ple you are fol­low­ing, and see who they are fol­low­ing. It’s a great start. Check out their pro­files. Check out their tweetstreams.

And many of them are also look­ing for wor­thy peo­ple to fol­low by con­duct­ing searches on Twit­ter. They tend to search for key­words in their niche. (For exam­ple, I often con­duct searches using the terms “copy­writ­ing,” “mar­ket­ing,” and “blogging.”)

So ensure to include those key­words in your tweets.

In fact, here’s a great tip:

Just like the eas­i­est SEO strat­egy is to pub­lish a lot of fresh con­tent, because by doing so you nat­u­rally increase the num­ber of indexed pages on the search engines as well as the num­ber of key­words and key­word com­bi­na­tions, the eas­i­est “TEO” (or “Twit­ter Engine Opti­miza­tion”) is tweet­ing a lot of keyword-​​rich tweets.

How­ever, in your TEO efforts, don’t for­get spam­bots. There are just as many spam­mers con­duct­ing searches — often, for nefar­i­ous rea­sons — as there are legit­i­mate people.

So don’t be afraid to block, block, block!

Nev­er­the­less, every­thing you tweet is both per­ma­nent and search­able. So by post­ing a lot of keyword-​​rich tweets will cause you and your mes­sages to come up a lot in the Twit­ter search engine results. But what you want to show up are follow-​​worthy tweets.

Specif­i­cally, don’t just tweet for the sake of pum­mel­ing the data­base with your updates. Be help­ful, not spammy. Above all, be nice. Remem­ber, and it’s worth repeat­ing: every­thing you tweet is both per­ma­nent and search­able. Every­thing.

If you want to be more strate­gic about it, look for peo­ple with large, authen­tic fol­low­ings in your niche whose opin­ions their fol­low­ers value. And try to inter­act with them.

They will con­verse with you. Their peo­ple will fol­low you not because your name is men­tioned on the con­ver­sa­tions, but because your opin­ions mat­ter to them, too.

After all, you are like them.

And peo­ple like peo­ple who are like them.

It’s all about affin­ity.

If a gen­uine rela­tion­ship devel­ops as a result, believe me, they will talk about you. They will men­tion you as a per­son wor­thy of being fol­lowed on those famous “fol­low Fri­day” tweets. They will link to your blog. They will retweet your tweets. They will endorse you.

So be sin­cere. Be help­ful. And be generous.

Don’t just look for peo­ple with large fol­low­ings, either. Inter­act­ing with peo­ple with a large num­ber of fol­low­ers only because they are pop­u­lar, with the hope you will access their “list,” won’t score you any brownie points.

Look for peo­ple with whom you have an affin­ity and whose opin­ions their fol­low­ers value.

Often known as “thought lead­ers,” they have large fol­low­ings for a rea­son. Unless they’re a celebrity with a huge fan­base, these thought lead­ers often tend to tweet valu­able infor­ma­tion, help­ful advice, and inter­est­ing tweets. So why not do the same?

So don’t just fol­low oth­ers. Be a leader and build your own following.

Edu­cate. Encour­age. Engage.

Your authen­tic­ity will shine through. Equally, any insin­cer­ity will shine through just as well. The worst thing that can hap­pen is, if you’re only look­ing for fol­low­ers, they will see through it and speak out against you — or sim­ply ignore you altogether.

My point is, don’t go trawl­ing for followers.

Look for peo­ple you can serve.

Look at it this way: in mar­ket­ing, they say you want to be in front of qual­i­fied eye­balls. But just try­ing to be in front of qual­i­fied peo­ple doesn’t mean you deserve their atten­tion and respect, much less their fol­low. Qual­ity is some­thing you attract, not extract.

So post qual­ity tweets, espe­cially keyword-​​rich tweets — i.e., be help­ful, gen­uine, and real. And you will attract qual­ity fol­low­ers, almost as a nat­ural byproduct.

And don’t be afraid to praise peo­ple on Twit­ter. Gen­uinely and gen­er­ously. Peo­ple want to know you care. And peo­ple want to know what and who you care about, too.

They say “praise pub­licly, but crit­i­cize pri­vately.” Right? Sim­i­larly, praise oth­ers on Twit­ter. Praise often. But if you have a beef with some­one, don’t do what the com­plainer did ear­lier, when he told me to shut up. Send them a direct mes­sage instead.

Above all, don’t be afraid to…

… Tweet fear­lessly and block ruthlessly.

About the Author

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