You Can Buy Brand Love on Twitter?

March 25th, 2010 by Search Influence Alumni

Need Twitter Followers for Your Client’s Brand? Buy Quality Twitter Followers Now!

If this statement appealed to you, you want to read what I have to say. If you read this statement and wondering what’s Twitter, stop reading right now. I’m serious – Go! This post isn’t for you. This post if for the Twitter marketing elite – the Twitterati.

This post will reveal the TRUTH about buying Twitter followers. The TRUTH is…

Surgeon General Warns, 'Tweeting is Highly Addictive'

it’s a waste of money for social media marketers to buy Twitter followers.

“Followers” Ain’t Nothing But A Number

Twitter should be about organic growth. At face value, buying followers seems like a good idea – more people seeing your promotion, more potential leads. However when you are buying sexy Russian spambots, you won’t achieve this effect. Purchased followers just don’t care about whatever you are trying to peddle to them in 140 characters or less. At the end of the day, you are just buying a large number. I guess if you are a size queen and the size of your number is something you like bragging about – fine. Give your money away to some anonymous Eastern European but just don’t expect sales or even @ replies. I’d rather have 100 followers who are retweeting and replying than 10,000 who are just ignoring me. Seriously who pays to be ignored by their followers?

No Ring, No Engagement

Any competent social media marketer knows that Twitter is about engaging the users who are invested in your brand. It’s important because instead of being numerically obsessed, you can focus on strengthening your bonds with existing followers. The more actively engaged you are to these followers, the more aware they will be to your tweets.  It surprises me that so many people think they can just tweet into the Twitter-verse and get replies and new followers. If you want engaged followers, you need engage them, not buy them.

Here’s my formula for Twitter Engagement:

1. Tweet
2. Search
3. Reply
4. Add Follower
5. Retweet
6. Repeat

They may not know you anymore than they do the chairman at General Mill’s but now that you are conversing with them, your brand has a voice and voices are best heard when actual people are listening – sorry sexy Russian spambots you just never listen to me :(.

Fail Whale Snags Some Follwers

Love The Ones You Tweet

Brand aware followers are easiest to convert. They are the followers who visit your site once or twice a month, opted into your Twitter feed, and want to know what you have to offer them.  These Twitter followers will throw their money at you with the right tweet – they want the pitch! For most online businesses, these followers are return business and range from anywhere from 60 – 90% of your annual business. These are the people you want following and replying to your tweets.

If you are struggling to get more followers on Twitter for your brand don’t waste marketing funds on buying followers. They won’t convert into new leads. Sure you’ll get a few people who visit your links, or even reply, but for the cost, you are better off investing in a pay-per-click campaign or better optimizing your pages for organic search. You just can’t buy love, especially on Twitter.

How could I write an entry on Twitter and not plug New Orleans’ search marketing sweetheart? Follow Search Influence‘s Owner Will Scott on Twitter. #selfpromotion

Shout out to carrotcreative, mfilej, and Shovelling Son for the imagery – this post would not have been nearly as entertaining without it.