The key to working Twitter effectively is to focus on quality over quantity. Don’t be fooled by folks that have 50,000+ followers. They may be famous, they could be “just that good”, or most likely they stayed up to the wee hours of the morning, mass following people with an expectation of getting at least 75% automated reciprocal follows (lame). That means that they have at least 40,000K followers (probably way more) who don’t know them and don’t really care to either. What’s the value? You “look” popular (which granted, is kinda cool) but it doesn’t grow your business.

Here’s what you need to do to build a targeted following. It takes some time, but the payoff is huge.

Get paper. Draw a line down the middle of a page and write on one side “customers” and on the other “influencers”. Now create a list of keywords that describe your customer, which may appear in their bio. Whether you sell to pug lovers (that’s in my bio), yoga fanatics or small biz folks, you’ll want to create a list of identifiers that will seek these folks out.

Your influencers are people that engage with your customers in a non-competitive way. They could be bloggers or journalists, but could also be folks providing complimentary products or services to your target market. For example, I’m in small biz marketing, so I should be “giving the love” to small business coaches. I would add services like accountants and trademark attorneys to the list, but personally I would rather shoot myself than follow my accountant on Twitter and I know I’m not alone in that idea. Now create a list of keywords that describe your influencers (that are remotely interesting enough that potential customers will actually follow them).

Find your Peeps. Now that you’ve got a list of keywords that describe your customers and your influencers, go seek them out using search tools like Twellow (its like the yellow pages for Twitter) and search.twitter.com and follow them. Start interacting with your customers. Don’t sell – just support. If they have questions, answer them. If they need advice, give it freely. If they list a blog or website, give it a read. You’re here to network and be of service. If you start with a cheesy sales pitch (which I know you never would) then you’ll never get follows, interest or respect. By giving, supporting and offering guidance, you begin to build your leadership muscle.

With influencers, build rapport by supporting their content. Provide links to their work, retweet their messages and engage in conversation with them. As you build trust with your influencers you’ll experience reciprocal support. Once they start to tweet about your content to their followers (your target market), you’ll be basking in the glow of awesome third party endorsements, which will encourage these folks to follow you directly. Bingo – opt in followers who actually care what you think!

This little strategy does take some time, but I never said building an empire and taking over your corner of the universe was easy. I recommend making a goal to connect with at least 3 new customers and 2 new influencers every day (or whatever you can handle). The key is to become a personality to your market. Once you do that, you’ve created brand equity that will develop new promotional opportunities… oh, and sales – without ever pulling out the cheesy pitch. Gotta love that!

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