As many of you will know by now, I have been in the IM game for some time.I have played with lots of affiliate schemes, earning my crust there. I have worked with three of the best know product launch guys out there, developing the branding, images, websites and natural SEO campaigns for them. I am now developing my own products to help businesses achieve more through Internet Marketing… it is not reserved for the stay at home bum that wants to earn a living sitting on his couch eating his way through a box of crispy creams. Internet marketing is a serious tool that can be used by the ‘traditional’ business and something that cannot be ignored any longer.One of the tactics that many Internet marketers and, I am afraid to say, some of the other social media fraternity working with businesses like yours too, is that of total follower automation on Twitter. For those in the Internet Marketing game it is all about getting a huge list and blasting sales messages to them. For some it works as they can get many lists, get tiny amounts of ROI out of each and added together they create their wealth. Add this to the traditional business who only wants one Twitter account. Get the same automated following and then the tiny amount of ROI out of it… it isn’t worth it!Internet Marketers and these Social Media Managers who don’t understand what they are doing need to understand what happens when you automate things fully.
What do I mean by Total Follower Automation on Twitter?
There are many programs and systems out there that you can buy a following on twitter from, automate a follow/unfollow relationship and even set rules up for retweets, thanks you’s, scheduled tweets and try to build an audience that believe you are tweeting all the time.I totally believe in scheduling tweets. If you have content of value that your followers will want to see and you don’t want to spend every day writing and tweeting, you can write a bulk load of content, schedule it on your blog and schedule tweets to it. You still need to engage, but scheduling content is the biggest time saver you can implement into your social media strategy.What I think is a bit off is the automated ‘Thanks for the RT today @….’ and the ‘Great, I work in London too… let’s hook up’ tweets, set up by systems that look at the information on accounts that just followed you the send this kind of a tweet.Real content of value and real engagement will get you true following that will stay engaged, retweet your messages and buy from you. Automate everything and you will sound like a robot!
So How Important Is Twitter for Internet Marketers?
Hugely Important!Follow some of the ways to engage properly as I said above and you will be in the right track.The one thing I would say though, Twitter is a bit hit and miss is you are looking for clicks, sign ups and purchases – instantly. People don;t go into social media to be sold to. They are looking for answers.The mass audiences you can generate with automation software might help you to get the return you are looking for, but you will need a big following doing it all that way. I say this because I have tried both ways.I have two test Twitter accounts that I have been running for just over 8 months now.Twitter account A) with over 20,000 followersTwitter account B) with just over 560 followersBoth of these accounts have been promoting the same Internet marketing PLR download affiliate scheme and website, I totally automate Twitter account A and run B manually.Which one do you think, in the last six months has given me more of a return?Twitter account A = $72.35 in 8 months.Twitter account B = $976.12 in 8 months.Can you see the difference? I know it is not much to some people for 8 months worth of work, but the only thing I use for lead generation on this test is Twitter. Nothing else.Although account A has the huge following and more people that I follow too, it is not engaging enough to get me what I want from it. There are hardly any click throughs, no RT’s and very few mentions.Account B however syndicates content of value that I get RT’d, I engage and say thank you to individuals, I don’t follow everyone back (in fact I only follow 15 people on this account), I get 10 or 11 #FF follow friday recommendation tweets and use a blog to point people back to get the content.Automating your following and hoping that something will happen when you get a mass audience is rubbish. Most of these automated followers are robots (bots), systems or spammy accounts – they wont and don’t buy.All those in the Internet marketing industry have known for years that it is all about valuable content and engagement (nurturing the list)… but now that Google have seen this and finally released the algorithm to include regular content and social networking into the mix. It is now more important for anyone to be involved… either just for SEO purposes or getting a response from followers.See yesterdays blog post on my company blog regarding this new Google update.Stop the automation of your following TODAY and look to engage people on a real level. If you can’t find the time – outsource it! Over at HodgesNet we can help any Internet Marketer with content writing and social media engagement. winrar free version . Check outwww.hodgesnet.co.uk/socialmedia.Hopefully you will see that real engagement is worth it… it is all about your time.Do you think you will stop, or not even start, automating your Twitter following now? Please comment below.
Share this with others: