Why Nobody Follows You On Twitter (And What To Do About It)

The biggest problem with the Internet, as I find it, is that it seems to give people the impression that everything they post on it is interesting. If Twitter and Facebook can be blamed for anything, it’s for encouraging masses of people to dispense witty banter about current events and other topics with machine gun speed. It also didn’t help that someone in Hollywood noticed a particular Twitter account recording $#!T, says someone’s father. Now everyone wants in on the action, when the truth is, maybe no one cares to read what your dad, mom, nosy neighbor, bartender, or you have to say.

If you use Twitter to promote your business and services, that notion is even more depressing. A Twitter account with a trickle of followers is pretty much the equivalent of yelling fire at an empty theater, so if your intent is to use this powerful social network to attract new customers, it’s important to first determine why no one is following your feeds. , then find out how to fix that.

The challenge in becoming a success on Twitter lies in figuring out how to get your profile out there among the millions of other users who fill the Internet with their own noise every day. It would be nice if the news media could pick up the whiff when the average businessman lays a shingle, as they did with Conan O’Brien, but we must make do with our prior marketing experience and willingness to adapt to new media.

Take a look at your account now. Are followers counted in double digits? If so, and that’s not your intention, it’s sad. You may be wondering what it is about other accounts that attract readers, and why the same tactics you try aren’t working for you. However, the key to success with social media is not in copying another profile to replicate your success, but in creating your own unique niche that inspires that viral spark you need to drive traffic. Yes, you can spend money and time creating an amazing background image for your Twitter.com page, complete with phone numbers and icons and custom blue birds fluttering around your logo, but since a good percentage of users access Twitter from cell phones and dashboard widgets, you must wonder who you really are going to your page to read your feed?

Why is no one following you on Twitter? Consider these possibilities.

You have nothing new to share. There is an old adage in advertising that a consumer usually has to see a brand 7-10 times before deciding to buy it. The same goes for the internet: how often do you browse a site, leave, and then come back multiple times before adding to cart? With Twitter, if you constantly bombard your feed with the same message over and over again (especially if you have a service or product to sell), people will wonder why they should follow a broken record. Broken discs are annoying and take up space in a feed that could belong to Conan O’Brien.

You have too much to share. It’s a conundrum: you can turn off followers with repetition, and if you’re too talkative, you could annoy people who A) don’t follow too many users and B) are tired of seeing your posts take up a full screen. Especially if your “wits” pick up speed, you can end up sounding like that guy at a party whose voice rises above the din and just. I will not do it. To be calm.

You’re not online. Perhaps, thinking that interaction between social profiles leads to clutter, you decided not to link Twitter to your Facebook or MySpace, or whatever else you’ve set up. One school of thought may defend this position, but on the other hand, keeping your Twitter presence invisible may do more harm than good.

What can you do to change? There are a number of possibilities.

touch a nerve See what’s hot on Twitter: People actually use the site’s search feature, and it’s not uncommon for site users to set up search widgets to select particular keywords and hashtags. Come up with a clever way to integrate a hot topic on Twitter into your daily monologue. This increases the possibility of capturing interested readers.

Connect everything. Tell your Facebook friends, your email subscription list, your YouTube subscribers that you tweet. Enter the URL in your email signature and print your username on business cards. Mouth where “word of mouth” is the operative term, use your own.

Search and answer. Set up a desktop feed reader on your site to pick up established search feeds from Twitter. As you receive posts in real time, you can review them and respond accordingly to Twitter users. You don’t have to advertise your account directly, but taking the helpful approach can inspire people to see what you have to offer.

Twitter is an engagement tool, and unless you use it in that sense, you’ll just keep tweeting against the wind. Don’t turn your feed into a file, do it breathe.