About the Author: Cory Schop is a designer, social media enthusiast, and serial
web entrepreneur who makes a living from Facebook, SEO and his Affordable
Logo Designer services among other things. You can follow him on Twitter @coryschop and
Facebook.
The Experiment
The other day I got the bright idea that I wanted to spend an entire 8-hour day interacting on Twitter and measure the results accordingly. I had been using Twitter for a while but didn’t feel I was leveraging it’s true power and potential, which is what I really wanted.
I started my experiment by asking people how I could help them; I am a knowledgeable person when it comes to the internet and I do love to see others prosper. This gauged a few questions of which replies brought with them more people into the conversation. Next I simply read through my timeline and replied to the people I was following as much as I could with detailed tweets that often asked a question.
By lunch, things had slowed down, so I spent the next couple hours seeking out additional quality people to follow and interacting with them right away. I used a few tools for this: JustTweetIt, Twubble and Twitter Search.
My Results
- 83 new followerswithin a 24-hour period, going from 512 to 595. (59 in the initial 8 hours). To compare, according to TwitterCounter yesterday Kevin Rose, the account with the second most followers on Twitter, had 63 within 24 hours.
- I created 123 tweets / @’s.
- 87 @ replies came back from 45 different people.
- 12 direct messages incurred from 8 different people, 5 of them were new followers.
- 11 tweets were created by other people about me, 3 of which were re-tweets.
- I was contacted in regards to an icon design gig and a Logo Design project.
- I connected with a number of great new people including @dhollings the lead marketer behind “The Secret”. He was really keen on a Twitter application I am releasing next week.
At the end of the day, I really felt I had made a difference by offering up some great advice for which people repeatedly thanked me.
My Takeaways
- Engage in the conversations and reply to people, this is so important. Not only does this get people talking to you, it creates exposure for you on their Twitter profile and with their followers (depending on their settings).
- Seek out new and interesting people that share similar interests with you. You can connect with some key people pretty easily when you are genuinely interested in what they are all about.
- Offer up tips and help to further gauge conversation and add true value.
- Re-tweet tweets that you find to be valuable. Chances are they are just as valuable to others, and this adds to your credibility.
- Lastly, just be yourself. Don’t try to fake it; people are smart and will see right through that.
There is no quick and easy way to get quality followers, it does take time and effort like most any other social media platform.
I believe @unmarketing said it best: “The amount I get out of Twitter is directly proportional to the amount I give.”
I’m curious: what strategies are other people using to achieve growth on Twitter?