Start of Day Twitter Stats: Follow: 152 Followers: 137 Listed: 8
Missed yesterday? Go here to read what happened on Day 26 – December 9, 2009 (Wed): Drive Followers to Purchase Without a Special Offer
Charlie Brown snowflakes – don’t you just love them? I do.
Today’s the day I substituted for Monday. Today, instead of having fun – well, I guess this is sort of fun anyway – I try to drive followers to a blog – my blog – ChrisCarosa.com. Here’s the strategy I used: Every other tweet I tell the followers I’m tweeting the daily results of Chris Carosa’s 30-Day Plan to Dominate Twitter Experiment all day. In between, I send them a link to a different day’s update. Oh, yeah, as for the header, I used @joelcomm and #TwitterPower. Will this repetition annoy people? I’m about to find out.
This is a deliberate strategy to both reel in interested scanners and people with a genuine need to boost their followers. I know it will likely also attract some of the marketer riff raff, but they’re more than welcome to join the fun. If they stick around long enough and actually engage me in some way, I might even decide to follow them. But they better have something to offer besides the typical get-rich-quick scheme.
I’ll break down the formula for you.
I begin with this Tweet and Tweet it every other hour:
Tweeting all day: @JoelComm #TwitterPower 30-Days to Dominate Twitter Experiment http://bit.ly/8y9OHe Comments welcome.
I have a 7-fold purpose in started with and regularly repeating this tweet:
1) Honesty: I want to let followers know up front what I’m doing today. If it bugs them, they can ignore it, but I’m not going to surprise with annoying repetition without warning them. “Tweeting all day” represents just such a warning.
2) Celebrity: Some people just want to jump on the celebrity band wagon. I don’t know how big a celebrity Joel Comm is, but he’s all I’ve got with this experiment. Although I’d prefer to use her, as far as I know, this is one of the few things Britney doesn’t do on Twitter.
3) Hashtag: #TwitterPower, while not a Trending Topic, does get enough airplay to make it usable. I realize I’ll probably dominate that hashtag topic for today, but, what the heck.
4&5) Compelling Offer: “30-Days to Dominate Twitter” can turn heads. Joel Comm didn’t use that title in his book just on a whim. It packs a powerful punch in five words. “You can conquer the world and still get home in time for dinner” is it’s implied promise. Here’s the secret to this compelling offer and why is contains not one, but two purposes:
- It proposes a short enough time frame where people can visualize it. We live in a fast food society. People want things now. While six months might seem more reasonable, it’s boring compared to thirty days. And just think how many readers would jump at the opportunity to accomplish a goal in less than 24 hours. People want a free lunch, but more important, people want a free lunch without waiting for it.
- It promises a spectacular result everyone surely desires. Who wouldn’t want to be able to dominate anything? Learn a new language? Lose that excess weight? Whatever… And if I can show you how to do it in 30 days or less, well I bet you’d be more than happy to show me your credit card – if I can proof it works.
An aside: The 140 character limit on Twitter provides an excellent proving ground for aspiring copy editors looking to hone their skill at writing headlines.
6) External Link: This isn’t some innocent “what I’m eating now” tweet. This one has some heft to it. Some much, in fact, that you’ve got to go to another link to get the full bodied flavor of it. If you’re going to bother to lure them in, you’ve got to give them something worth biting on.
7) Call to Action: Since I’m not selling anything, I needed to give something tangible for readers to do. Asking them to comment seemed innocuous. Let’s see if they actually do that.
Now, here’s a sample form of what I tweeted in between each of the above tweets:
@joelcomm #twitterpower experiment update Day 25–12/8/09 (Tue): Drive Followers to Subscribe http://bit.ly/7NWsrF Like a NASCAR crash he…
As before, I start with the reference to both Joel Comm and his book Twitter Power, but then I add the words “experiment update” to remind followers what this is. After this, which appears the same in every tweet, comes the variable content: The Title, the Link and the Tease. I’m not crazy about the titles because they’re right from the Joel’s book, but they were short enough for me to get a half-way decent tease in.
At least I think they’re half-way decent. Here they are. You tell me if you think they’re effective (but remember, I was under severe (and variable) character count restraints when I drafted them). To make this easier to understand, I’ve included the title and link with the (bolded) tease.
- Day 21 – December 4, 2009 (Fri): Do Some Off-Twitter Marketing http://bit.ly/5z7qWY Or Off-World?
- Day 22–12/5/09 (Sat): Combine Your Social Media Tools http://bit.ly/5pctqF follow-through counts!
- Day 23–12/6/09 (Sun): Drive Followers to Purchase http://bit.ly/8Gwu2Y the rest of the story
- Day 24–December 7, 2009 (Mon): Drive Followers to a Blog http://bit.ly/6IolnD take a rest instead
- Day 25–12/8/09 (Tue): Drive Followers to Subscribe http://bit.ly/7NWsrF Like a NASCAR crash he…
- Day 26 – 12/9/09 (Wed): Drive Followers to Purchase w/o a Special Offer http://bit.ly/6NNJpl Stop!
You get the idea. It certainly makes sense, but does it work. For that, you’ll have to tune in tomorrow.
How many followers do you think I’ll have after 30 days? Click here to enter your guess on my Survey Monkey survey “Chris Carosa’s 30-Day Plan to Dominate Twitter Experiment.” There’s no prize, but the fan who guesses the closest correct number the earliest will “win” and I’ll mention you if you want me to.
Find out today’s results on Day 28 – December 11, 2009 (Fri): Create a Second Timeline
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