Network Marketing by Design

A lot of people are getting on Twitter without a clue of what they are doing. In fact, Hubspot just published their June 2009 State of the Twittersphere Report using a range of stats collected from the approximately 4.5 million Twitter profiles on Twitter Grader that shows just how many are not effectively interacting.

Even though Twitter is attracting up to 10,000 new users a day, many of those people are neither tweeting nor following, and I’ve had friends and followers who express frustration in not really understanding how to use this microblogging platform. A recent study by Harvard Business showed 90% of tweets came from 10% of Twitter users. With the heavy promotion by Oprah, CNN, and Ashton Kutcher, many people, especially the millennials, joined to follow their favorite celebrities.

Hubspot reports the average user tweets 0.97 times per day and according to them “many of the accounts on Twitter aren't actually using it all that much”. (Shown by these results)

• 79.79% failed to provide a homepage URL
• 75.86% of users have not entered a bio in their profile
• 68.68% have not specified a location
• 55.50% are not following anyone
• 54.88% have never tweeted
• 52.71% have no followers

To help you get the best start, here are some Twitter basics that will help you attract more attention.

1. Include your homepage url in your profile. Getting traffic to your site should be one of your key objectives, so why not make it easy to find. It also eliminates the need to constantly tweet your link, which appears as spamming and self promoting.
2. Create a bio that tells people who you are and what you do. Use key words that will attract people to your niche and show up on Twitter searches so people with a common interest can find you. Also post a picture or avatar, if that’s what best defines you. Many people will not follow new people who have no picture or bio.
3. Include a location that will allow people in your part of the world to find you easier. With local tweet-ups becoming more popular, this allows you to connect with Twitter users nearby for socializing and networking. The more specific, city vs state, the more targeted your following.
4. Start following relevant people with similar interests. On Twitter, following others is the way to be followed, and 55% of people are not following, so is it any surprise that nearly 53% have no followers? Don’t expect a following to come without some action on your part.
5. Tweet! Just start. You’ll get the hang of it as you start following others and see what people are tweeting about.

There are some key guidelines for creating relevant and value based content in 140 character or less that attracts without spam, but I’ll clue you in with another post. For now, just be ahead of the 80%-90% not doing much with Twitter and get involved!