I’ve been using Twitter for forty-two months, have around 10,000 followers, and have tweeted in the region of 3,000 times.
For the first forty-one months I received a total of 560 visitors, almost all of whom spent an average time of 1-2 seconds on our website. Low quality is an understatement.
During the forty-second month of Tweeting I received 16 visitors, who spent an average time of one minute and 11 seconds. The figure is too neat to be made-up.
Two of the sixteen visitors turned into sales leads (two more than the previous forty-one months combined); one has now turned into a client.
Here’s how I worked out how to use Twitter.
The wrong way – allow a minimum of three years if you want to follow in my footsteps:
(1) I used Twitter as a megaphone to shout at anyone and everyone.
(2) I saw Twitter as something that should be done – more or less for the sake of it.
(3) I kept meaning to get round to working out how to use Twitter, but got precisely nowhere for the first forty-one months. (Note: apparently buying a couple of books but not reading them doesn’t work. So much for information osmosis).
The right way:
(1) I listened to Sarah Hatter of CoSupport at Microconf. (I still haven’t sent her the Amazon Voucher but I will.)
(2) I started to tweet about things that were not only relevant to what I do, but also of interest to some of the people following me.
(3) I started trying to make my tweets more eye catching. For instance instead of “”12 Things You *Must* do After Writing a New Blog Post“” using “”12 Things You *Must* do After Writing a New Blog Post” – I count six that are really bad ideas. You?” I won’t win any awards, but it is winning business.
(4) I started to track what I do with my usual obsession. Tracking is easy but paying attention to what works (see the next point) is vital.
(5) I have three goals with my tweets. To share items of interest, to share my personality (sorry), and to remind/convince  Google that I’m someone who knows these things.
(6) I added my Twitter account into my email sig. I send a lot of emails each day, and this works. I now have new (targeted) people following me every single day – people who are interested in what I write about.
I track everything that we do with a slightly demented fervour, and as this one is suddenly proving to be productive, will watch it closely as I experiment further. And I’ll report on my findings in due course.
The nutshell explanation: it’s all about relevance – with a hint of marketing and personality (the two are not opposing).
