Guest commentary by Caron Golden

Caron Golden is a freelance writer with clients in the homebuilding industry. She is passionate about social media training and helping businesses implement social media strategies. She can be reached at caron@goldenwriting.com, as well as on Facebook and Linkedin. You can follow her on Twitter @carondg.

I’ve recently taken on the launch and management of a Twitter account for a large condominium project in San Diego. My goal in using social media for this client is to help move their brand into more positive terrain, position them as a lifestyle icon in their part of the city, and connect with brokers. By creating a high profile, good buzz, a reputation as a local resource for what’s happening in town, and even some fodder for reporters to work with, I hope to create strong viral marketing that helps sell homes.

You’ll notice I didn’t mention that I want to collect a record number of followers.

Once people overcome their resistance to Twitter and try to figure out ways to make it work for them, that follower question—as in how do I get a lot of them—invariably pops up. It’s actually the wrong question, of course. The right questions are: how do I create good content that others will want to read? How do I engage with people so they’ll want to connect with me? Because engagement is what Twitter is all about, not how many followers you have.

But, I’ll put that aside for the moment because even the best communicator isn’t communicating when she’s only talking to herself. Step one, then, is to find interesting people and organizations to follow.

Who Do I Follow and How Do I Find Them?

Once you’ve launched your new account (and, of course, put up an avatar, bio, and well-designed background page), you can follow friends and colleagues for starters, as well as news organizations/journalists, political groups, celebrities, destinations, and restaurants. I’ve found that the best way to get started is to do a Twitter search of people and organizations you already know are on Twitter, and follow them. Take a look at who they’re following and who is following them, and if you find some interesting people or organizations, follow them, too. As you start to follow these new people, watch who they’re interacting with and follow them if they’re appealing – and so on, down the line. You’ll soon develop a large network. You can also do Twitter searches of areas of interest to see what pops up: local politics, gardening, American Idol, sustainability. You’ll find all sorts of potentially interesting folks to follow and interact with. Once you start following people, much of the quest for getting followers will fall into place.

How Do I Get Followers?

1. Follow others; most will likely follow you back. If someone follows you, see who else they’re following or who is following them to find more potential people to interact with.
2. Post interesting tweets. Interact with others.
3. Retweet useful messages, link to interesting articles and add a comment showing your subject expertise or opinion.
4. Make sure that you include your Twitter handle on your web site and blog, email signature, your business cards, on your Facebook and Linkedin profiles and fan pages, and anywhere else you leave a trail.
5. Do not protect your tweets (on the settings page). It’s like you’re telling people to go away.
6. Observe #followfriday. A tradition has developed in which on Fridays people make suggestions of others to follow. My experience has been that the more generous you are with this (“showing Twitter love”), the more people reciprocate and then their followers will become aware of you and follow you. How does it work? You send out a tweet that looks something like this:

For great real estate info: @MyRealtyToday @firsthomeguy @MortgageNewsUSA @Lennar @newhomesmatch @jeffreydouglass #followfriday

And how do you keep these new followers? By being interesting, being a resource and an expert, by asking and answering questions. In short, by being a social being, not a boor. It’s no different than how your ideal self would behave at a great cocktail party.

Interaction

There has to be a balance between using Twitter to broadcast achievements and promote yourself, and getting personal. If all you do is make announcements, you’re basically spamming people and they’ll drop you. Twitter and all social media is about engagement. You don’t have to get too personal but you do need to “give good Twitter,” be friendly and interested in others, offer information, ask questions and let people get to know you—as you would even in a professional setting.

I basically have a 70/30 rule—70 percent of the time, more or less, I am engaging with others both personally and professionally. The balance I use to promote stories I’ve published, new blog posts, radio appearances, etc. For my clients, I take that 70 percent into the realm of interaction, questions, and providing resources. So, I research websites that may have good home design, new buyer and moving tips, and provide a link to them. In addition, I follow restaurants, cultural institutions, news organizations and other interesting people or groups, and retweet items I think would be of interest. The balance of the time I work to directly promote the client with news items, announcements, links to the weekly blog, and fun ideas for how to live an enjoyable life in the community by bringing up its amenities.

Many professionals and certainly many businesses pay no attention to this. They see Twitter strictly as a medium for self-promotion. But, if much of their Twitter activity is spamming, well, unfollowing someone is as easy as a click of the mouse.