A couple of months ago I started watching Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn as potential sources of new traffic and earnings. Frankly, I’m the skeptical type. I have to see that something works before I jump in with two feet.
Any of you who have read my blog posts here or on my other blog know that I tend to be practical with my time, I don’t go for pie in the sky and I don’t believe it’s possible to make a million dollars sitting on your rear end and doing nothing. So let me introduce you to Twitter and share my thoughts/reflections with you.
I was really curious (and to some degree I still am) about why people follow you. Here are some of the thoughts I have regarding how you attract followers:
- Your subject matter – Depending on what you are “tweeting” about people are going to follow you. Most of them are really trying to “sell” you that their affiliate marketing package is the next best thing to sliced bread. What’s very comical is when you get the same affiliate message from several people in one day. There’s a good chance they are all part of the same affiliate program – in this case it’s a matter of who can “convert” you first!
- Common Interest – For these purposes I’ll use a genuine group of folks I know about – Helium Writers. It benefits all of us to ‘tweet’ our own articles (I’ll explain more later) and if we “re-tweet” fellow writers articles our followers get those tweets. That adds up to pennies earned. These are the most loyal of your followers
- Similar Interests – I am following (and am being followed by) writers from sites that are other than Helium. These folks are here for the same reason – to promote their own articles. They gain if I re-tweet their articles and I gain if they retweet mine. That’s a “you wash my back I’ll wash yours” effect. These are the next most loyal group of followers.
- Corporate Followers – These followers are interesting. Let’s say that you have written many articles about Health topics and when you post your tweets you include #health. These followers are likely to “find” your tweets and begin following. The jury is out right now as to if these users are actually retweeting so it’s impossible to know if they are adding to your income.
- The “Auto-follower” – In my opinion these are the most annoying followers of all. They contribute nothing at all to Twitter. They auto-message the same message multiple times in a day all the same message. They nearly always are full of “ALL CAPS” and they almost always have a typo. These followers are best to just ignore and hope they go away!
Can you make money with Twitter? Absolutely. Watch for my next installment on effectively using Twitter.
About Doreen Martel
Well-rounded freelance writer who contributes to various blogs, paid to write sites and revenue sharing sites. Doreen is legally blind and has worked at home for more than 10 years. She uses the lessons learned from this experience to enhance her writing and share information with others.
Contently Portfolio
Good post there. Don’t forget, that your favicon can actually be used to brand yourself in Tweets!
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Doreen
Thanks for starting to follow and/or tweet/re-tweet me (as you might have guessed, I am very new to the Twitter game and not quite sure what is happening yet, only that I agree with you – some of it is worthwhile, some of it? Not so much…)I will be watching for you stuff on Helium now too. As you say, we are each other’s most loyal readers and Twitter works nicely into that scheme. Thanks again.
Sharon Ingraham
I think you will find with some of the automated tools that Twitter works well. It is a matter of balance. Once I found tools that worked well for me, I found that it had a significant impact on my page hits. I think this is a positive thing. One of the challenges is weeding out the spam! But – there’s a tool for that! This tool: TwitCleaner will help eleminiate spammy followers!
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