We live in an age of instant gratification where size can be confused with influence.
At Snowflake Media one of the most popular questions we get around Social Media Marketing is “How can I build an instant following and be a success on Twitter”
Good News & Bad News
Well good news and bad news I’m afraid. The Good news is that it is categorically 100% possible to get hundreds of thousands of people following you on Twitter almost instantly, in fact here are four.
1) Do something incredibly stupid:
For those in the UK, you’ll probably remember the young breastfeeding woman who was labelled a “Tramp” and the story was picked up by the Daily Mail. The victim here used it to forward the case for Breastfeeding (great), the perpetrator got slammed….Yes got lots more Twitter followers overnight, but do you really want to emulate that? Here’s the story for those that missed it! http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2578151/I-got-called-TRAMP-breastfeeding-baby-public-Mothers-fury-photo-feeding-daughter-shopping-trip-uploaded-Facebook-stranger.html
Effectiveness? Poor, usually
Easiness? Well that depends on just how daft you are!
2) Buy Followers:
If you’ve been on Twitter for a while you’ll have seen the adverts offering 10,000 followers for £5 or $5. You can probably buy 1 million followers for £500. Well folks, apart from that warm feeling of 1 million people hanging off your every word (if they were real followers that is) the warm feeling will last about 5 minutes. You see Twitter is a “Conversational platform”. Not only can you not have a conversation with that many people, but if you don’t have the wit of @Stephen Fry or the business acumen of @richard Branson Then you aren’t going to see any benefit. In fact the opposite may happen to your desired outcome to be an overnight success on Twitter. If you talk drivel, have a crazy amount of followers then casual observers will know you bought them and all your credibility is blown. Unless of course you are a celebrity…See point 3
Effectiveness? Very poor,
Easiness? Simple (like the tactic)
3) Get on TV or Radio’s most popular shows
OK, so let’s assume you have a great idea, philosophy or something that benefits those you wish to impress and amass in great numbers. This is where the mass media such as Newspapers, Magazines, TV Stations and Radio stations can come in to play. However….. and this is a big however. Notice you have to have something valuable to say and that needs to go beyond your own perception. The value or message has to be profound enough to get on Television, then be sure to make sure that you drive people towards your Social media accounts, but be sure that Value is the key objective here. Money & fame will follow, but readers come first!
Effectiveness? Excellent
Easiness? Very Hard
4) Create a Cause:
Less than 1 in a 1000 causes and campaign that someone tries to start actually leads to an overnight success on Twitter. The most recent success was taking a “selfie” with no make up for Cancer Awareness. Their Facebook page generated almost 263,000 likes and was a great viral success. https://www.facebook.com/OfficialNMUSFCA However, despite having such great numbers, when they tried to launch an anti-bullying campaign, the first 2 days only yielded 230 likes in its first 48 hours. They may well have a similar success, but numbers alone don’t guarantee it (neither does the topic of the campaign)
Effectiveness? Hard,
Easiness? Very Hard
The truth about being an overnight Success on Twitter
The truth about Social Media Marketing is that it is actually quite simple, but can’t typically be done overnight. All you need is the 3 C’s
Content x Credibility x Consistency
Content
Once you decide what you want to Tweet about, be the best creator and/or curator you can be. Take time to plan.
– What will people find interesting?
– What problems do people want solving?
– What is your commentary on the story?
Credibility
If you pick the right content, have a great perspective on it and are the go-to person for the topic then your Twitter followers will grow as you receive a stream of Retweets, Comments, replies and favorites.
You also want to ensure that you are engaging with other Twitter users, commenting, sharing and asking questions. Make sure you respond to all and every retweet, comment and question. I’ve followed @MarshaCollier for the past 6 months and she is amazing at responding to people… This despite the fact she has 83,000+ followers
So no excuses, you will never be that busy not to respond
Consistency
Ok, so you really wanted to be an overnight success on Twitter, but failing that you need to be present to interact and also to build up your recorded library of expertise. If you wait for everything to be perfect you’ll never get started.
Here’s what I’ve found. In the non-celebrity world, those people that have 100,000 or more real twitter followers all have a prolific amount of tweets. Usually 10,000+ over a number of years. This takes time! Take a look at the table below. For example with 10 tweets a day, you’d reach 10,000 tweets in around 3 years.
So it’s a long game and you’ll have some wins and losses along the way, but if you do the right thing, long enough consistently one day you’ll wake up and see you have thousands of tweets, followers and hopefully friends around the world too!
As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts!
You can comment here on the blog and find me on @leekenny for personal musings as well as @SocialSnowflake for business and SME Social marketing tweets
Until next time
Written by:
Lee Kenny
CEO: Snowflake Media
How to be an overnight success on Twitter