2010 will no doubt be another banner year for Twitter. Millions more people will become ‘tweeple’ over the next 12 months. While our goal is to help everyone leverage Twitter to meet their personal and professional goals, we have a special message for the 2010 hatchlings. Twitter is not a cash register! That’s not to say that you can’t make money using twitter. It simply means that having a twitter account set on auto pilot isn’t a sure fire path to riches.
As someone new to Twitter you will undoubtedly have many questions. You’ve heard of the wonderful things people have achieved with Twitter marketing and you want a slice of the pie. And you deserve yours, you do.
But – whatever you do, no matter how much you might be tempted, don’t take the easy way out. Don’t be tempted by the promises of Twitter millions that too many 3rd party Twitter software companies will promise you. In short, a twitter account on auto pilot will not make you rich or popular. What it will make you is irrelevant and other people will either unfollow you or simply tune you out.
WARNING: Any of the following words should send you screaming in the other direction:
- Auto Pilot
- Set and Forget
- Make Millions
- Auto Follow
- Auto Tweet
The bottom line is your success in marketing on Twitter will be predicated on your commitment to showing up, as a genuine and engaged individual or company. When we wrote Twitter Marketing Requires Trust last year, we weren’t kidding. Read our other posts or search the internet and you’ll find that it is the prevailing opinion of how to succeed on Twitter.
If an illustration helps, take a look at the Twitter stream of @jtmartin who is cited on the home page of one of the offending Twitter software companies TweetElitePro.
This is truly an automated Twitter stream. All me, me, me. Sure, JT has some 35k followers – but how many of them do you think he’s ever actually exchanged a tweet with? They’ve been gathered electronically by a robot! We scanned hundreds of his tweets and while he appears to send a tweet from TweetDeck with his own hands every now and again, we found not one single interaction.
So, all you newly hatched twitterers let JT be an introductory lesson – his type of profile is the kind of thing the true Twitter Elite shun and mock.
Welcome to Twitter. Show up, be real, take your time and other tweeps will find and follow you too. It’ll take a little time and effort, but in the end it will be well worth it.
