Will An Automated Twitter Account Do More Damage Than Good? (Part One)
Accounts that automate Twitter might be a bad plan, if overdone any way. People that are legitimately only hanging out and socializing with their buddies will not likely come across this problem, but if we are attempting to apply Twitter as a marketing platform it can only bring frustration should you over do it.
Accounts which automate Twitter might be a harmful idea,
if overdone that is. People who are legitimately just hanging out and mingling with his or her good friends won't run into this problem, but if we are trying to use Twitter for a marketing and advertising platform it could possibly only bring frustration should you over do it. Automation might work with some other aspects of internet marketing like, article submission or social bookmarking. Social marketing is just that – sociable, while bookmarking is more like merely letting people know that you're available willing to link up.
Like I said, a little Twitter automation is usually okay and sometimes vital provided that it is not over done. For example, the whole idea of marketing with Twitter is to get a significant follower base – but what benefit would it be to have a huge number of followers if they're college students and single parents when you're promoting relationship counseling? 600 targeted followers is far better the 50,000 untargeted followers. Consequently, mass following or blasting tools would be a bad idea. Certainly they can add thousands to your account, but 1 / 2 of them usually are not interested in you and the other half have long disappeared and not been on Twitter in many months or years. There are lots of paid services that will allow you to enter keywords and then they'll go locate targeted followers on your behalf and add them. On that note, twollo (dot) com will let you add a couple of keywords free of charge. More then 2, you have to pay.
The manual alternative for the paid websites are sites like ‘whoshouldifollow’ ‘twellow’ and ‘justtweetit’. Manually plug in a search phrase and get tons of possibilities. Certainly not automated, but a bit of elbow grease can get you a sizable TARGETED follower base.
The second most tedious factor of a Twitter account is keeping track of the new followers, following back, posting welcome messages, catching the ones that un-follow and keeping a balance between followers and follow’ies. In other words – account maintenance.
This is one of those ‘must have’ automated Best twitter tools. One extremely popular program is SocialOomph (dot) com. One time known as ‘TweetLater’ this site allows you auto follow and auto un-follow individuals. This on it's own is a enormous time saver. At the same time it will let you instantly send out a direct message to the new followers. This brings us another judgment issue..
What ought to be the very first tweet I send my new buddies?
Think about this. In true life, would you walk up to a new possible client and start showing them all the awesome things you want to sell? Yeh, you could, but probably not still have a job as a salesman very long. Direct Message etiquette will go something like this:
• Never: ‘Thanks for the follow, now go check out my $hit @ . . . ‘
• Maybe: Offer a free gift by pointing them to your squeeze page
• Better: Offer a free gift with no optin form – let the e-book direct them to you websites should they be interested.
• If all else fails: Don’t send out a message at all! Like my mama used to say.. ‘If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.’
Personally I’m in favor of the last two options.
