Twitter Action Plan

March 24, 2010 By Jackie Lee 44 Comments

But I don’t want to talk about what I ate for breakfast!!

We are NOT going to talk about what we ate for breakfast. (Unless you have a food blog lol). We as marketers are going to use twitter to build a connection, a relationship with our target market. We’re going to build trust, we’re going to build friendships, we’re going to build traffic baby.

So get over whatever preconceived notions you have about twitter and rest assured you do not have to tweet about what you had for breakfast or the last time you went to the bathroom. K?

Now for those of you just getting started I’ve already written a post on twitter. It gives an overview of how we’re going to use twitter to gain traffic. It also links to some fantastic posts about setting up your account and getting started. So if you are there go read this how to twitter post.

Today I want to talk about an action plan. HOW we’re going to use twitter effectively and in as little time as possible. I will warn you now ~ twitter can be a time suck ~ but it doesn’t have to be, and it won’t be if you have an action plan and you stick to it.

Step 1. Followers

You need followers. The best way to get followers is to follow other people. Following other people lets you start connecting with them, retweeting their stuff, answering their questions, in general you get to be a cool person. They will see that and most of them will follow you back.

10 minutes a day

Go to twellow.com and go to a category that is related to your niche and follow 15 people. You can also search specific terms in the search box at the top of the page. I searched law of attraction mom ~ I’m looking to follow some people related to my other blog. Here’s what I got. 2 pages of people. You can click the follow button to follow them right from twellow. You can see how many followers they have (the more the better)

So you can see I’ve found 2 pages of people who are my target market (for that blog). I would go through and read their blurbs. If they sound interesting (and not too businessy/spammy) I’ll go ahead and follow them (just click the follow button right there on the page). Go through and do this for 15 people and call it a day. Do this every work day. If you do this 5 days a week you’ll increase the people you’re following by 75 people a week ~ that’s good, and consistent.

Step 2. Interaction

It’s not good enough to go gather people if you don’t talk to them. You talk to your twitter followers by tweeting. Now if you do this in an organized fashion it can take very little time.

Tools you will need: www.su.pr Su.pr is a FANTASTIC tool I have absolutely fallen in love with. It is fantastic in a number of ways.

1. It allows you to post things in the future.
2. It allows you to keep track of who’s clicking on your links in your tweets
3. It puts a little action toolbar at the top of your page when people click your links that encourages them to do other things for your post, like stumble it or retweet etc.

All awesome reasons to use su.pr ~ because it’s super! It’s a free tool, and it’s hooked in with stumbleupon. You’ll need to go to su.pr and create an account. You will also need a stumbleupon account if you don’t already have one.

So when you’ve got that done you’re going to need to pull the bookmarklet into your favorites bar. To do this you find the little bookmarklet (at the bottom right hand corner of the page ~ once you’re logged in)

You left click on that button and then drag it up to your toolbar. It will stay there and you can use it easily while you’re on any site.

Now there’s a couple ways we’re going to use this nifty tool.

1. Go to your latest blog post and pick out a short sentence that is interesting/informative. Highlight the sentence (it needs to be short ~ you only have 140 characters here and you need room for the url too.)

Once you have the sentence or the title highlighted click the su.pr button you just put in your toolbar. It will bring up a bar at the top of your page. That bar will have the highlighted sentence and the post url in it. Click the “just shorten” button and it will give you a short su.pr url instead of the long one. You can add anything you want at this point, a comment, an @yourusername or whatever you want.

2. You can then choose to post the message to twitter right now, or schedule it for later. If you want to do it later, just click the schedule later button, it will let you choose the day and time it will be posted click schedule and it will post it automatically for you at that time.

You can do this for past blog posts, or your current posts. Go ahead and add a couple tweets from your own site.

Here you can see the bookmarklet in action ~ and check out the cool stuff you know from using this service.

2. As you build a list of blogs that you go to comment on you will want to remember to use the su.pr button. This will easily allow you to post fantastic content to your twitter account all while you’re doing something you have to do anyway. It will also help you attract the attention of other blog owners ~ which can lead to working together, guest posts, friendships etc. Make sure you look on their site and find their twitter username so you can add the @username to the tweet created by su.pr (because it will NOT do it for you). The person will not know you’ve tweeted their site if you don’t use the @ feature. If you go through your blog commenting in the morning, you can schedule these to go out throughout the day, so your name is still active and people are seeing you throughout the day, even though you aren’t really there.

Live interaction

Su.pr is great, but there’s nothing like real live interaction. I suggest you take another 10 minutes a day (so now you’ve got 30 minutes in twitter for the day) ~ but remember this is not playing time this is work/blog promotion time ~ so don’t feel like you’re slacking because you’re on twitter, you’re working. It’s ok that it’s fun too.

Anyway ~ go into your twitter account. Read your timeline. If anyone makes an interesting comment reply to them. You reply using the @username thing. This begins a conversation. They may answer you or they may not. Either is fine. If you see something that really strikes you and you’d like to share it. Retweet it.

Check your replies section and see if anyone has talked to you while you were away from your computer. If they have ANSWER!!! They’ve started a conversation with you, continue it!

One of the best ways to interact and build relationships is the twitter party. It sounds crazy ~ yes I know. However, they are a real thing and they are one of the ways I built my twitter account and not only built my account but created such a responsive account.

If you are at all involved in a niche that has moms as your target market the best twitter party I can recommend is #gno (girls night out). It’s every Tuesday night and this is how it works. You do a search for the hashtag #gno it will bring up everyone that’s having that conversation. Whenever you tweet at a party you include the party hashtag so everyone at the party can see your tweet. It’s really simple, but it’s a great way to meet people, gather followers, and add people to your account. FYI… if you go to a twitter party you MUST participate. It does you no good to sit there reading everyone elses tweets ~ no one knows you’re there unless you get involved.

If you are tuned into your niche you’ll start seeing hashtags and you can ask about any upcoming twitter parties etc. As you build relationships you’ll find out more about the twitter community activities. I didn’t know anything about #gno for a long time ~ but it really boosted my twitter time when I started going. You also don’t have to do these things forever. You can go and be really active a few times and as long as you continue to be active on your account people will remember you ~ so it’s worth taking some time in the evenings to try it out.

I suggest you do this for at least 30 days. 30 minutes a day for 30 days and see what happens. If you hate it, it feels like the worst part of your day, you dread even thinking about it. Then quit doing it. There are other ways to build a following. But try it at least, and see what you think.

If you decide you like it after the 30 days I would suggest you get a desktop application to help you manage all of your community activities. I use tweetdeck. I can see my facebook account, my twitter account, my replies, and a few kw searches I have going ALL on the same page. It gives me a little bell sound everytime someone talks directly to me so I can go in and talk back. It’s a very handy application and helps you stay on top of twitter and other social networking sites all in one place. It’s not the only one, it’s just the one I use. You can try a few different ones until you find one that works for you. This is not a must do at the very beginning, but if you plan to make twitter a part of your marketing plan it’s a good idea.

So that’s it for the twitter action plan for the next 30 days.

Here it is in simple terms:

1. 10 minutes a day following people

2. 10 minutes a day adding tweets to go out through the day

3. 10 minutes real live time interacting with other people.

30 minutes a day and you’re good to go. If you have any questions about the action plan or using twitter to market yourself and your blog please feel free to ask in the comment section.

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Yorinda

Hi Jackie,
I am so glad I came across your blog.

What a wealth of information!

su.pr is new to me and I will check it out.

Thank you for the great twitter tips.

To Your Success
Yorinda

Twitter Action Plan

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