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How do you look to Twitter?

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Every now and then, I run an application called TwitCleaner to thin out the number of people I am following on Twitter. This is a rather vain attempt at reducing the volume of noise in my Twitter feed. It helps, but not that much.

Twit Cleaner looks at everyone I am following on Twitter and analyzes what kind of user they are based on what they Tweet. Then it makes recommendations of who I should unfollow.

My favorite par of the analysis comes at the end when I can ask it to analyze my Tweets and let me see how I look. So far, it’s been nothing but compliments and “atta boys”.

What I find really interesting is how some some people appear to Twit Cleaner. Famous people. People who should know better. And, sad to say, some of you.

How Twit Cleaner sees the Twitter crowd

People are lumped into categories based on less than desirable behavior. Not icky behavior. Just not friendly or useful.

Potentially Dodgy Behavior – Nothing but links

No replies. No retweets. No engagement with the community. Just a constant stream of “Look at what I wrote.” A couple of these are the Twitter feeds for magazines, so I expect them to be nothing but links. But when it is an individual or, worse, a social media ‘expert’ who’s been flagged like this? Yep, unfollowed.

Repeating the same URLS – Duplicating the same link more than 25% of the time

It’s like deja vu all over again.

Posting Identical Tweets – posts the same tweet too many times

We heard you the first 20 times.

App Spam – more than 50% application spam from paper.li, foursquare, IFTT, etc

Surprising that IFTT, which is being pushed right now as a productivity improver is in the list of app spam. IFTT is short for “If this, then that”. In case you were wondering.

BOTS – more than 90% pumped out from an RSS feed.

Letting your RSS feed do all the work is probably not a winning strategy.

And there are more, but those are the biggies.

You shouldn’t be automating all of your Tweets

Most of the people that TwitCleaner flagged are probably using Hootsuite, RSS, and IFTT to automate all of their tweets. Those are incredibly useful tools and I encourage you to get to know Hootsuite, if nothing else, but when your Twitter feed is nothing but pre-written tweets you’ve scheduled ages in advance, there’s not a lot of value for your followers. You’ve just moved your interruption marketing to Twitter. And that’s the wrong outlet for interruption marketing.

You should engage with your followers

The other big flag were people who either don’t follow back, only retweet, or only post links. Twitter is a big water cooler environment. You need to talk to people. Otherwise you’re nothing more than the bulletin board at the water cooler. No one will pay you any attention.

I’m not a Twitter power user, by any means, but I do try to strike a balance between announcements, retweets, and conversation.

Give TwitCleaner a try and make sure you look at how the service sees you. Are you on any of their lists?

 

How to write an elevator pitch

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As a small business owner, you are probably a member of a business networking group or the local chamber. All of the networking you do is to try to make connections, get referrals, and drum up business.

Every week, I get up and tell the group, in less than 60 seconds, all about my business and how they can help me with referrals. It took me a while to figure out how to craft a 60 second commercial, but I’ve found it very helpful.

Now I’m never at a loss when someone asks me what I do.

My networking group has monthly training days and a few weeks ago, it was my turn. The group wanted a refresher course on crafting their 60 second sales pitch and we wanted to give our newest member the training, as well. I got so much positive feedback on the training, I thought I would make it available to anyone who feels a need for this information. So, I spent some extra time and made the 4 page step by step guide into a full fledged 14 page workbook.

Then I thought, I’ll offer it free! Why? Well, it’s not enough to have a great website, you need to be able to tell people about that fantastic product or service. And to do that, you need to have an effective elevator pitch.

A step-by-step guide to crafting your elevator pitch.

In fact, this is actually 2 pitches:

  1. One for use in your networking group
  2. Another for use when you meet someone who asks “So, what do you do?”

How can you get your copy? Easy, just head over to the Cool Stuff page and fill in the form. You’ll get an email with a link to download the file (it’s a pdf file, so it’s virus and malware free).Writing an Elevator Pitch that Kills

I’d really like to encourage you to check it out and give me your feedback on how helpful you found it. I’d also appreciate any suggestions for improvements. If you find it useful, forward the link to your friends or tweet this post.

This is a great workbook, and it will walk you through the process of writing a killer elevator pitch for your business. But it won’t help you unless you print it out and do the exercises.

Is this kind of thing helpful? Would you like more tools to help your business? Let me know in the comments.