Twitter is a waste of time...not?

[FlashDriveDT]

I've been on twitter for about 2 months now and while I was quite enthusiastic in the beginning I'm starting to think that it's a waste of time. I spent many hours with it first and enjoyed making 100 followers over a weekend, genuinely (right now I have about 470). I saw a lot of opportunities but now it's like reality settled in. You can check out my profile here: twitter.com/FlashDriveDT

First of all, I don't do anything automatic because to me an important facet of twitter is interaction and personal touch. I'm put off by DMs and profiles without a single @reply (I'm sure so are 90% of all twitter users). Also, when I see someone has 20,000 followers that doesn't impress me at all. Because most likely, it was achieved through a bot. Does that mean he or she makes 20,000 dollars also? Ehh, nope. Don't think so. It's just a number sitting there looking pretty. Isn't it? Chances are the majority of these 20,000 followers don't take notice of that person's tweets at all and vice versa. But hey, buy this amazing 1 billion twitter followers in a month monster traffic machine .

Here's my beef: Every night I tweet a post of mine with hashtags, around 7 pm EST, and while I may get some visitors it rarely ever gets retweeted. Why not? So far I also didn't get conversions through this - which is what matters most (from a marketing point of view). I feel that most tweets get lost in the clutter even with the elimination of the @replies on the home page. How come? Does it boil down to how targeted your follower list is? Well, I used wefollow and started following tons of people that are associated with tech or geek. Not many followed me back though. When people go to my profile they rarely ever check out my url link, according to my blog's traffic stats. Maybe once or twice day I get a referral from my profile. Yet whenever I go and check out someone else's profile I always make it a point to visit their url. Do most people just don't have the time?

Kezz said somewhere that she got 210,000 visitors per month via twitter so obviously I'm doing something wrong. Kezz, how did you do that? By using automatic tools like tweetlater and follower bots? How often do you retweet your posts? I don't like the idea of doing anything automated and putting out my posts once every two hours or so. To me thats spammy.

Well, I would greaty appreciate what you guys think about twitter and what your own experience has been. Has it really been worth it or have you wasted too many hours with it? Waste in the sense of not having generated conversions. I realize twitter is great for building new relations and friendships but that's not what this thread shall be about.

p.s.: Sorry if I sound a little cynical, usually I'm not a cynical person at all. But I have to face it, right now I feel quite disheartened by something I (naively?) thought was going to be a great success. I really need to know what efforts can bring me the greatest results. So for now, I switched back to backlink building via ezine and blog comments.

[FlashDriveDT]

I forgot to mention another strategy I use. I go to "search" and look for tweets with the word "flash drive". When it's something I can reply to I will (mostly a suggestion or a cheer-up comment about the situation, all very non-intrusive). Most of these people don't reply back though. I'm starting to think that most don't bother checking their @replies. Or mabye they just don't care...?

[Peter Bestel]

The first thought that hits me is the number of followers you have, 479. If that was a targeted email list it would be very small, and difficult to see any meaningful results from. But you only have 479 Twitter followers - totally different ball game and worth only a fraction of the equivalent, targeted email list.

The guys that Twitter seriously and have a few thousand followers will be able to tell you their Twitter conversion rates. Although it's not his main marketing tool, I notice Kevin Riley said in another thread that less than 3% of traffic to one site was coming from Twitter and that site wasn't trying to sell anything!

I don't think you've given this a good enough go yet to even be disheartened. Build up your followers and keep the conversations flowing.

Remember also, with the new @replies system your replies to other people will only be seen by mutual followers. Try starting your tweets with, "Good point @PeterBestel, I never thought of doing that." for example. That way ALL your followers will see the tweet. In fact, just start ALL your tweets with "Good point @PeterBestel" - that works for me!

Peter

[rapidscc]

Yups less than 500 followers is small to say that it doesn't work. My account is not that big, I have more than a thousand followers but I get from around 10 to 100 clicks per tweet I post.

Increase your followers then try adding some "emotions" to your tweets, give it some kick.

Ohh last thing I was able to have the 1k plus followers in just two days..I think this lens will help you..

twitter Tools and Techniques

[Carl-Reed]

I think twitter is 99% sellers and 1% buyers.

[ShayRockhold]

I love Twitter, but I have a different perspective.

I have 2 accounts. One is my regular account. The one listed here in the WF. I have roughly 1300+ followers.

The other is strictly a Star Trek role playing account. I don't advertise it. I don't promote it. My real name is nowhere on it. I never send a non-RP tweet from it. It is only for fun. I have about 140 followers on that account.

I have gotten business from both, but guess which one brings in more business? Yep, you're right - the STRP one.

Why? Because the fun account is all about building relationships. It is tweeting and DMing for the role, but "behind the scenes" we are emailing and DMing back and forth setting up plots and such. (Yes, it is totally geeky. I freely admit it.)

During the course of this, we get to know each other and learn about each other. When my son was sick (he and I have both been sick - that's why I have been so quiet lately), the STRPers were asking me how things were and how he was doing. When another RPer had exams, we were checking and and asking how that was going.

I can tell you who has a doctor's checkup for her son next week, who just got accepted to college and when he leaves to move into the dorm, whose car needs new brakes, who is working overtime next week, and a whole lot of other details - because we are doing more than just blasting out tweets. We are building relationships.

Inevitably, everyone asks - what do you do for a living? And we tell each other. It's no biggie. It's usually when you are trying to figure out when to RP ("What's your work schedule look like next week?"), and there is no sales pitch. Ever.

I know I'll get flak for this, but this is just my opinion:

I'd rather have a list of 150 followers that I am getting to really know, than have a list of thousands that I can't possibly keep straight.

[mojojuju]

Originally Posted by Carl-Reed

I think twitter is 99% sellers and 1% buyers.

Ha ha. Just about everybody on twitter is some kind of self described 'expert'. Lot's of "social networking specialists", "new media experts", "Web 2.0 strategists", and my favorite is the abundance of "personal life coaches". Nothing wrong with those things. Just a reminder that there's plenty of 'experts' on twitter.

[ltdraper]

Why would anyone expect marketing through Twitter to be different than any other marketing medium? Would you build up a very small, personalized list of email addresses, postal addresses, phone numbers, etc and expect to be able to make a large number of sales?

Sales is all about your funnel. The bigger the mouth of the funnel, the more people you can engage with down at the skinny end. Limiting the size of the mouth of your funnel because you want "higher quality" at the other end is self defeating. Do your qualification once you get them into a conversation. You should be trying to move people out of Twitter (which is neutral ground) onto your own turf in the form of your blog, sales letters, opt-in lists, etc.

The fact is that while some people are looking to "play small" on twitter, the people doing well are engaged in an arms race. 10K followers used to make you a very big player on Twitter. Now it won't even get you into the top 1,000.

I've got around 24K followers right now. If I tweet a good link at the right time of day I'll bring in around 300 hits. That ratio was the same when I was at 1,000, 5,000, 10,000, and 20,000 followers. The only thing that changed was the amount of traffic coming in.

If a hit is worth five cents and you can tweet once a day, then 10K followers at 1.5% CTR is worth $7.50/day, or $225/month. Play with those numbers as much as you want, but how many hours would you have to put in to get 10K working small and manually? You'll be competing with people using autofollow services. They simply have many more hours a month available to them because they're not stuck on the idea of doing everything manually.

[Dan C. Rinnert]

I don't use any automated Twitter tools at all. I guess I'm old-fashioned or something in that I don't trust any third-party having my Twitter password.

I think you need to break past the 2000 barrier. Things seems to get easier after that. But, the most important thing is to have targeted followers.

Originally Posted by steadfast

I have same problem with Flash also. My followers keep tweeting their own business. I ask some questions and nobody answers me. I have nearly 500 followers now. I feel like these 500 followers, nobody is really sincere to make friend, all just want to make business

Then your followers perhaps aren't targeted.

It can vary by the day too. Somedays, I can tweet and get a whole boatload of responses; other days, I'll tweet and only get a scant few.

[Kezz]

I'm my experience so far Twitter isn't about directly making sales. It's about getting people to your site, and you make the sales once they get there.

We've never used any bots or anything of that nature. We've essentially just gone out to find the people we think are genuinely interested in the content of our site, which is Sci Fi & Fantasy entertainment news. The tweets we put out are always of our news articles. We never tweet affiliate links or anything like that. As soon as people think you're a spammer, you become invisible to them.

It's the banner advertisements on our page that make us money, and the writeups we do on specific products like collectibles. If you do a writeup on a product, and make it a real post, you can get away with tweeting it only if it really is of strong enough interest to your followers. You have to be careful. You can only tweet something with a price tag attached if it's really really cool. Only tweet the good stuff.

The most important thing with Twitter is that what you say is interesting, and that you only follow the kind of people who have reason to find what you say interesting. Numbers don't count so much in the beginning, because a core of targeted followers will grow into a large number of targeted followers once they begin to spread the word amongst themselves.

If you keep your followers targeted and your tweets interesting, it will go exponential and you won't have to follow anyone again. They'll come to you in droves. When people know that everything you tweet is interesting, and that you never spam or post affiliate links, word will spread. We get retweets all the time, and we're frequently recommended on follow friday. This is because we keep our tweets clean, and relevant.

In a nutshell, don't tweet what you wish your followers would look at, tweet what you know your followers want to see. Once you get them to your site they'll look around, and if you have great offers strategically positioned, they'll find them for themselves. Never ever dilute the quality of your tweets. If you think maybe your followers might not be keen to see something, don't tweet it. Tweet something that will get them to your site, and keep your sales and advertising material on your site.

Another awesome thing we've discovered from Twitter, is it is incredible for making contacts you otherwise wouldn't get. We've had interviews with prominent actors, directors, special effects guys and so on just fall into our lap, and it's because publicists and companies have found us via Twitter. Our CPM ad network also came to us, having found us via Twitter. We didn't have to grovel to get accepted. They wanted us. None of it would have happened if not for Twitter, so you can see why I feel it is so powerful if used correctly.

The other thing we've done is to create a twitter background so that it's really clear what our web address is. If you want to see the Twitter account I'm talking about, it's at Darren (SciFiScoop) on Twitter

[Alice Seba]

I still haven't figured out why people think networking is about making SALES? I use networking for learning, finding partners, hiring qualified people, etc. Oh for fun too.

In other words, I connect with likeminded people WITH whom I can build business...instead of focusing my time trying get business FROM them.

And those amazing benefits can't directly be measured, but when you're getting them...you just know. :-)

Alice

[Andyhenry]

This is getting the same attention and focus as everything that gets IM'd.

Twitter is a great system for finding new interesting people, keeping in contact and up to date with friends, and also sharing your thoughts with people you never would have met otherwise.

You can get a lot of benefits from those things and yes, even financial - but I see the revenue as a side-effect of effectively communicating on Twitter.

I've sold about $80k of products and services directly from new customers via twitter, but the reason I like it best is because of the interesting people I keep finding. It's a great way to find friends of friends.

I know you can do stuff like this with Facebook and other social sites so I'm not saying it's only on twitter, but twitter is such a focused system that it's effective at what it does.

I don't push out any sales pitches, just normal tweets, conversational tweets and it gets fed from my personal blog - no sales messages, affiliate links etc.. That's why I think I end up doing ok from it, precisely because I'm not selling anything directly.

Andy

[FlashDriveDT]

Thanks to everyone who responded. To boil it down again, I simply want to get more website traffic via twitter, whether its through a tweet or through my profile. That's just what I'm focused on. I recognize that twitter can be used for other purposes and more effectively so but what can I say - at this point it's not a priority of mine. So back to business...

Even if I can build up my list to 20,000 followers the work associated with that - whether manually or using a bot - doesn't appear worth it to me if the typical rate remains 3% or ~50 clicks per 1000 followers. After all, they still would have to convert. I just think that other methods would be more effective in generating website traffic and conversions, at least in the newbie stage that I'm still in. Maybe later down the road I can and should invest more time in twitter?

@ltdraper How can you determine if a tweet is worth a certain money amount? I understand that the point with business twittering is simply a huge amount of followers. But I'm skeptical about the viability of such an account because I've noticed that many in my follower list with lots of followers turn up with a suspended account. You know, "mosey along now, there's nothing to see".

@Peter Bestel Yeah, I've seen other twitter users write "Dear @Peter" or things to that effect. Actually this new system is a good idea now that I think about it - depending on if you want to share that tweet live to the whole world or not, you can use a word before the @ or not.

@rapidscc There's a spelling mistake on your squidoo, twice - "To be fallowed you must first learn to follow". Great, just what I needed to hear.

@ShayRockhold Thanks for your perspective but that's kinda confirming to me that Twitter can't be used that well for driving/generating business.

@Kezz Thank you. Pretty much along the same line as Shay.

@Michael Lee Thanks for posting about cli.gs in another thread: Short URLs with analytics, social media monitoring, and geotargeting - Cligs. That's definitely useful to track if your twitter account yields results or not. Is anybody here seriously analyzing their twitter traffic/conversions?

[ShayRockhold]

Originally Posted by FlashDriveDT

@ShayRockhold Thanks for your perspective but that's kinda confirming to me that Twitter can't be used that well for driving/generating business.

I'm not saying it can't be. I am just giving my own personal experience and opinion. It could be that my niche is unique, so it isn't the norm for Twitter.

[Sully Chaudry]

For people who are looking to spam twitter, yes it's a waste of time. For people with real businesses to promote, then it's like any other social networking site and it's certainly worth it.

[ltdraper]

Originally Posted by FlashDriveDT

@ltdraper How can you determine if a tweet is worth a certain money amount?

I used the $0.05/click number because that's the minimum you'll generally pay for clicks through other advertising. I'm just comparing $X spent on Twitter marketing to $Y on something like adsense. No, it's not apples vs apples, but it's a useful way to visualize the problem. How much a click is worth to you depends upon conversion rates and your profit on a sale.

Originally Posted by FlashDriveDT

I understand that the point with business twittering is simply a huge amount of followers. But I'm skeptical about the viability of such an account because I've noticed that many in my follower list with lots of followers turn up with a suspended account. You know, "mosey along now, there's nothing to see".

Nobody other than Twitter knows for sure what will get an account banned, but from experience we can see a few behaviors that lead to that: 1) Following a lot of people without being followed back The person that hits the 2K follow limit with 200 followers will probably attract attention. 2) Getting blocked by a large number of users. If you use a twitter account to spam people they'll block you and thus you'll get flagged. 3) Tweeting nothing but links to the same site. I've no proof of that but it's logical that this would be an easy to spot behavior. 4) @reply or DM spam will definitely draw their ire.

If you're going to use a bot to do your following, you need to be careful that you don't fall into those traps. Our service is different because we make sure that users follow people that are likely to follow them back and we calculate a reasonable number of follows per day.

But you shouldn't put all your eggs in one basket. You should have a couple of accounts, possibly several per niche, so that if one gets banned it doesn't set you back. It only takes a month or so to get to 10K followers if you're doing it right, so building up a stable of accounts and experimenting is a good practice.

All of that said, it appears you've got to be pretty abusive in order to get banned. This guy put together a Twitter pyramid scheme with all of his followers retweeting the scheme like crazy and he hasn't been banned. Just look at all the tweets for the Twitter Cash Machine.

More than anything right now, Twitter needs active users. The fall off in usage after all the publicity on Oprah has to have them concerned. Frankly, I'm doubtful they'll go after people just for being aggressive about gaining followers as long as they don't break the rules. But even so, don't take risks with something you can't afford to lose. Buy a bunch of baskets.

[BrianMc]

Great topic FlashDriveDT and thanks for including that Cligs link (@Michael Lee cant post the URL yet)

Right now I am learning how to optimize Twitter (Twitter Optimization..Twitter Optimizer can that be a buzz word) !

Even though I do get a lot of "updates" from networkers who I do check out occasionally, I am grateful that I can DM my friends! Still need the social interaction!

[Diane S]

Originally Posted by Kezz

Only tweet the good stuff.

Ah, that sounds a sweet title for an eBook on what you have learned with twitter marketing so far.

Kezz thanks for all the good info. I wish you well with your site and hope a lot of your twitter followers become customers!

[Kezz]

Haha not a bad idea!

I'm setting out to replicate the same success with another blog. This time, I'll be aiming to sell my own products. If I can generate the same amount in revenue that the other site generates in sales (we get commission) I'll be extremely happy indeed! Then I think I'd definitely have something to write about and share in future.

[John Ritz]

I agree that Twitter is great for networking and meeting new and interesting people. I've gotten JVs from Twitter. And oh yeah, plenty of targeted traffic and sales.

But I rarely (if ever) do any blatant hard pitches. It's much better to send them to an informative article to your blog, and while they're there, they may poke around and want more of what you have to offer.

And while we're on the subject, you should tweet about other people's articles, news, etc. even more than your own. Basically I try to aim between a 4:1 and 10:1, with the average usually being about a 7:1 ratio of other people's stuff to my own.

And by other people's stuff, I don't mean affiliate links. I get nothing out of it other than providing value and meeting new like-minded folks.

But if you really want to cut through the clutter with your tweets, here's an interesting site that deals with the psychology of it (Kenneth Yu's site, no affiliate link or anything):

The Dark Side of Twitter

I disagree with some folks that you need more followers. Yes, more is always better, PROVIDED that they are targeted and interested in what you have to say.

For example, I could get thousands of Britney Spears' followers, but would they give a hoot about my tweets? Most of them will not.

But a few hundred followers who are really passionate about what you like to discuss...ah, now that's something special.

Cheers,

John

[Troy_Phillips]

Twitter has been great for me . I haven't followed anyone that has not followed me first . I do have a few people follow me and as soon as I follow back they unfollow but take care of that about once a week.

I have about 6500 followers and get from 40 to 100 clicks to my links whenever I send them. How I word the links decides how many respond . I have had over 1000 respond but it is not typical.

[Rachel Goodchild]

I only have 700 followers- but they areall organic growth in the last few months.
I am focussing on relationship building and not sellig- and it's working
social networking is about long term investment not quick fixes.
most people don't get that...
it's about being real
In the last day I've had two big celebs twitter back- one adding me to people he is following...(he is following 14 and I'm one of them) That gives me huge elverage that I am buidling on- not taking advantage of.
slow steps. big pay offs...

[JeffMitchell]

Well, Twitter is awesome, more awesome than 99% of all the social networks that are on the board today. I myself have made a few hundred bucks off of Twitter and I have sponsored 3 people into my business from Twitter.

But here is what most people dont't know about Twitter. Twitter is like a party, there are tons of people who are gathered around to "hang out", that is it. You make friends (automated or not) you take those friends and you let them know what you are doing outside of the twitter universe. (aticles, blog, newsletter...etc...) Use Twitter as a medium to funnel people to your other social networks.

You need to keep you own personal website link in your profile, the more valuable content that you provide to the Twitter network the better off you are.

My CTR is about 1 per 100....it is not what I would truly like to have for the community but it will only grow.

That means: right now I have about 3500 followers, for every link to my capture page I get 30-40 clicks.....which in turn is about 3-5 leads per link....

Not too bad...

Don't take advantage of Twitter...it is incredily powerful.

Jeff Mitchell

[curiousguy]

All people on twitter invite you to buy and buy then buy ,When everyone Is a seller , then who are the buyers?

[NemoTheOne]

Twitter is a very amazing tool. Like so many have mentioned here, if you are expecting to make a quick or immediate buck, then look elsewhere.

But if you're looking to build a brand, or heck, even trying to SELL something and are willing to put some time, thought and some extra interaction into it, then it's the way to go.

While I have fully embraced Twitter I still am new to it. I have 5 accounts.
One account has, 3,200 followers, another 1500, another 1,400 followers, another with 900, and another with about 500.

I incorporated some SEO techniques and noticed that my second account created months after my first account has caught up to the amount of followers in less than half that time. of course, that's what happens after a few months of learning.

Anyway, as I demonstrated it all takes time and is a bit more work than say writing an article.

[JaniG]

If you want people to click on a link to your site,

you better make sure that you have built credibility on Twitter
first...

you need to let people know that you are not only on Twitter to get people to your websites. thats the thing people dont get.

Don't make your main purpose on Twitter to just get traffic to your site..

if you build yourself as an authority and expert in your niche first by sharing valuable information on Twitter, then people are going to start to trust you and be more likley to buy your stuff...

If you want to get almost ALL of the 400+ followers you have, to click on a link, then start sending out tweets with links to things that are not going to make you money...

This will condition your followers, and then once in a while you can send a link to an offer.. and you'll have a flood of traffic going to your site from Twitter...

How do i know?

because i do this myself.

[gmr324]

I view Twitter as a virtual cocktail party and I get to chose which conversations I want to chime in on. I have had great luck getting backlinks from the same blog owners and webmasters who never responded to my email requests. However, the same as a cocktail party, I build up to my request and get engaged in some off-topic conversation with them first.

Just my 2 Cents

[traffictipsnow]

send people to your blog and not your sales page; ;build relationships; target a group audience; I have close to 6k followers in a month. it's not hard. take a look at my blog to look at all the free information about the latest twitter methods and tools

traffictipsnow.com

[traffictipsnow]

Traffic Tips Now

[Kezz]

By the way, the other thing I forgot to say is that if you really want to use Twitter properly, you must get a desktop app like TweetDeck. It's impossible to really keep track of Twitter and get the most out of it without something like this. These things are free, and well worth the download and install.

[Wayne A]

Twitter's a pretty fun site. Reminds a lot of chat rooms, the biggest difference it seems most people don't respond to replies( I'm probably not using it correctly). I like the conversations in chat rooms, so it would be nice to build those type of relationships.