Listen Before You Lead

Photo inspired by a favorite movie clip of mine.

Recently, I went searching for a Twitter application that would allow me to see how many of my followers were also following any given account.  Luckily for me, my search was short as the ever-resourceful Shaun Chapman pointed me toward Overlapr.com.  After using Overlapr to meet my needs, I realized that an application which gives me exact user names would be even more valuable, but that’s besides the point of this post.

Listening to the interests of your followers is beneficial for many reasons.  I’ve included a few of these reasons below, as well as a quick real life example for each.

Monitoring Current Campaigns:

Are you promoting a new website, a favorite artist, or just telling everyone you know that your cousin is new to Twitter?  Why not check to see how many of your followers actually decided to follow that website, artist, or Twitter newbie?  If you look at the numbers, you may find out that your current promotions are failing and decide to re-work your tweet strategy.

Make A Product Your Consumer Enjoys:

If a musician is trying to narrow down a list of possible collaborations, he or she can quickly see which artists on the list have the biggest support from his or her existing Twitter following.  While this may not necessarily produce the best song, it should help the musician find a collaboration with great Retweet value!

Catering Tweets To Your Audience:

Have you ever wondered why people don’t click your funny links?  Maybe they don’t find your sense of humor amusing!  By figuring out which comedians your followers are engaging with on Twitter, you can learn to better tune your jokes.

Choose The Right Endorsements:

If the delicious Rita’s Italian Ice finds out that a majority of their Twitter followers are also avid fans of Taylor Swift, they can engage more with Taylor on Twitter to pique fan interest.  Rita’s may even want to explore an online marketing campaign involving the country music star.

In the end, knowing who your Twitter audience is and making a conscious effort to communicate specifically with those followers will lead to better engagement.

“I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.” – Bill Cosby