5 Types of Twitter Users – Which Are You?

There are still a lot of folks out there who don’t “get” Twitter . Twitter is where people go to find out what’s going on right now. It’s where people get information. Twitter users have varying reasons for being on Twitter.

The Difference between the 5 Main Twitter Users…

It’s based on the follower-to-following ratio –- how many people are following them compared to how many people they are following.

The Newsmakers

These Twitter users have way more followers than the number of people they follow. They are organizations like news media, magazines, TV shows, celebrities, and influencers. They make the news and people follow them to get the news.

Information Gatherers

These folks are following more people than they have followers, they post very few original posts. These could be researchers or reporters. If they’ve been on Twitter for while, they aren’t Newbies.

Relationship Builders

These are on Twitter to make friends. They have a fairly even number of followers and following. They tweet often and people follow them because they like what they are tweeting about. These folks also care about their followers – thanking them for retweeting and mentioning them.

Newbies

Everyone has to start somewhere! To grow a following you need to tweet good content and follow the people you want following you. Take a look at who’s following your competition or related businesses and follow them. When you follow someone, they are notified and they can then choose if they want to follow you back or not. Your first benchmark goal is 100 followers in 30 days. Once you pass the 100 mark, people will see that you’re credible and tweeting regularly and your following will grow as long as you keep feeding them what they want.

To grow your following, your profile page has to be set up correctly with:

• Good, quality graphics – it’s your online image – make it look good.
• Your logo in 400 x 400 pixels – a square – do not upload a rectangular logo into the square – it will get cut off!
• Your cover graphic – 1500 x 500 pixels. Create a graphic that size. Do not take a smaller graphic and resize it to fit. It will look fuzzy.
• A complete, keyword-centric bio. You have 160 characters to describe what you do – take advantage of this. It gives you credibility. Use hashtags on the major keywords.
• Your website link – this helps with SEO (search engine optimization)
• Your name or your company name – however you wish to be known.
• Set up your Analytics — Once your profile is set up, in the left menu, click on More, then Creator Studio, and under that, Analytics, and turn on Analytics. You need to have at least 100 followers before you start getting data on them, so that should be your first goal.?

Eventually, a Newbie will become a Relationship Builder and may eventually graduate to a Newsmaker.

Spammers, Jerks, Trolls, and Fake Accounts

Unfortunately, like in every community, there are nasty, stupid people. Twitter tries hard to eliminate these, but it’s up to the real users to police them, report them as spammers, and/or block them.

How can you tell if it’s a fake account? Look at the follower-to-following ratio as compared to the number of tweets. Is it off? Another way is their username/handle – it’s a bunch of random letters, numbers, or words that make no sense. If you see a name followed by a bunch of numbers, that’s probably a robot-generated account and a fake one. These folks are cunning. They’ll put a person’s picture and fill out a nice, friendly-sounding bio to gain followers. What they post is automated.

Spammers will follow you to get noticed and to get you to buy something — or even SCAM you. Some try to sell you the “magic pill” that will grow your following into the thousands. Hint: those are fake followers and are NOT your target market !

The way to build a following is organically. It takes time and sweat equity, but it’s worth it.

So which Twitter user are you? Tweet me your response or comment below…

If you’re still confused about being on Twitter or any of the other social media networks, click here to schedule a free 15-minute Zoom consult and I’ll review your current website and marketing efforts.?