Are You Follow Worthy on Twitter?

Every where you go for current marketing information you’re told to join Twitter and tweet your way to riches. But like many other forms of social networking too many people don’t understand or purposefully misuse the service much to the annoyance of everyone else. And if you annoy people they won’t do business with you.

So how do you make yourself follow worthy?

1) Realize that social networking is SOCIAL. You can’t use traditional one-way communication and be successful on Twitter. Being social means that communication goes two-ways (or in this case thousands of ways). That means that you can’t be ego-centric and post only about you.

2) Don’t only post stuff that will make you money. While there’s debate on whether or not people want to know what you had for breakfast, most people want to hang out with people that have more to say than “I made millions. Click here”. Think of social networking as being at a party. You wouldn’t say just one thing at a party would you? No, you’d join the conversation.

3) Comment on other people’s posts. There is much to be said for social networking. I have found great resources, inspirational quotes, unbelievable stories, and funny jokes from Twitter.  Be supportive (and social) by letting other Twitterers know what you think of their comments or posts. By doing so they are more likely to return the favor.

The key to social networking success is to remember that you are in a virtual room of people and need to act accordingly. You need to have conversations, answer questions, make referrals, take suggestions, provide support, and all the thing you would normally do if you were in a room of people. If people visit your Twitter profile and only see tweets from you that are all about you and only you, they may not want to follow you. But if they see a range of Tweets and responses to Tweets, they’ll know that your goal is to be social, not a spammer.