Tweet Your Way to an Opt-in List?
Twitter is remarkable. It is a (nearly) new social networking site with many uses.
Amongst others – chatting to friends, asking questions, reporting news events…
Because Twitter involves answering (or ignoring!) the question “What are you doing?”
And you may be wondering what has this got to do with list-building?
Here’s what…
- Image via CrunchBase
When you join Twitter you look and see who you know is already there. Twitter like other social networking sites allows you – in fact almost compels you to invite friends via their email address.
Most people operate a kind of reciprocity – you do them a favour and they will be open to doing something for you
In twitter this works to build your list by invitation. Many people on twitter will automatically follow you if you follow them.
Simply by joining twitter and “following” a boat load of people you can build up lots of “followers”.
Are these people the same as those who subscribe to your ezine?
They may be. They could be people who simply respond to your email saying follow me on twitter.
In that case the purpose
- Image via Wikipedia
of the “follow” is to build the relationship you already have with them.
Others may be totally uninterested in your marketing but may just follow you as a person
Yeah really!
So you can build a list on Twitter but twitter is so new it’s not clear to anyone yet how that can be used in a marketing context.
Feel free to follow us anyhow! As we work more things out we’ll blog about them here and we’ll tweet too!
http://twitter.com/AlexNewell
http://twitter.com/KathyBaker
P.S. If you want a simple guide to Twitter before you try it then just download this PDF : twitter
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Filed under twitter by on Feb 10th, 2009. Comment. 
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Comments on Tweet Your Way to an Opt-in List?
Hi Alex and Kathy,
I’m new to Twitter and so far I just follow a bunch of people. I understand the reciprocity thing, but I don’t really get what to do after that. I am more interested in networking and business ventures. Wondering if you could shed some light on Twitter-ology. Thanks!
Lisa
Sure thing Lisa.
Twitter like most Social Networking sites is great for building relationships. You can share some of your ideas and values – let people know where you are going and suggest they attend such and such a place where you can network further. You might focus your online activities at Ryze or linkdin or FaceBook and use Twitter in a minor way.
It’s new and there are no rules here.
For your murals business – you can ask your twitter followers whether they like this mountain scene or that one? That will get some of ‘em to click though and see what you mean. Each new product you add – tweet about it. If you think that something is not selling and you think it should- tweet about it.
Ask questions – you’ll find some very smart people are following and can and will solve the problem.
You have a valuable little opinion poll available to you to do your market research!
I have a cartoonist following me – he is following other cartoonists. There is a goldmine of info and contacts if you just play with it a bit
I was just looking for a twitter guide I came across recently – O Lordy I have some great guides but not the rights to give then away! Anyhow try this http://www.howtospoter.com/web-20/wordpress/wordpress-and-twitter-integration-guide it may help. It’s another Alex – Alex Sysoef!
Alex is a top blogger and Twitter can be thought of as a mini or micro blog.
Final thought for now – think of Twitter as a mini forum. You know how helpful Lynn is to her forum members at http://www.selfstartersweeklytips.com/forum/ well you can be the helpful person to your followers.