A True Twitter Following

Signing up with Twitter is easy… it is what you need to do afterwards that sometimes becomes tricky. My job is to explain Twitter in an easy way… because, actually, Twitter is really easy once you’ve learnt it.

In this piece I want to tell you about FOLLOWERS… more importantly, about TRUE FOLLOWERS.

IT’S ALL RELATIVE
You have heard all these great things about how powerful Twitter can be. With that you have probably picked up on the large emphasis put on the amount of FOLLOWERS that you need. Well there is no actual figure. A Twitter following is relative to what your business is. A hotel that has people travelling from all parts of the World, will almost definitely have a greater following than a local laundry service.  A hotel can easily have a large amount of TRUE FOLLOWERS – these can range from suppliers, guests and fans, all with a good reason to have an interest with the hotel and all adding value to the business in terms of future business or branding. A small laundry service could never attract thousands of TRUE FOLLOWERS as their target area is so much smaller.  For a local laundry service, one hundred TRUE FOLLOWERS would be great. These could be other local businesses, potential clients, existing clients… again all sharing an interest in a small business. QUALITY beats QUANTITY every single time!

LESS CAN BE MORE
A TRUE FOLLOWER is a follower who has followed you because they have some relation to you… they like your product, they are a customer, they live or do business in your field or in your local area. And having 15 TRUE FOLLOWERS is better than having 1500 followers who just followed you so you would follow back or, even worse, a fake follower or one that was paid to follow you!! 

FAKE ISN’T REAL
I often hear about so-called Social Media “Experts” offering their clients PAID FOLLOWERS or offering them "ready-made" Twitter accounts which, apparently, have followers with an interest in their business. I would urge people never to accept these "scam" offers. A FAKE FOLLOWER isn’t real and will offer your business absolutely nothing! Someone who follows you just so you will follow them back (and add to THEIR follower number!!) will never interact with you, will never going to buy from your business and will most certainly never  recommend you to anybody else. These followers have NO value whatsoever!

REAL WORTH
Twitter IS an incredible tool… it’s FREE and it’s FUN and it is right there for ANYONE to use! But it does require a bit of TIME and EFFORT to work. The effort must be put in to building an organic and true Twitter following and this can take a little time but never get disheartened if you only have  40 followers… as long as they are TRUE FOLLOWERS, then they have a TRUE VALUE and that’s worth something very real!

BUT HOW??
So HOW do you build up your TRUE FOLLOWING then? Easy… Tweet photographs that relate to your business, join in conversations and discussions, take part in local #Hours – we have #CotswoldsHour which is for any kind of business in The Cotswolds, but there will also be an #Hour out there that matches your field or area of expertise. You will soon be noticed. If people like your product they will follow you. These are your TRUE TWITTER FOLLOWERS.