To Sell Or Not To Sell On Twitter: That Is The Question

I got a GREAT question the other day from one of my Twitter friends named Michael.

Okay, so is there a way to monetize twitter without offending the audience?

That is a question that I believe 95% of Twitter users fail to ask themselves, or ignore more than likely. It’s no wonder people are not seeing good results with their marketing efforts on Twitter, or anywhere else for that matter if they don’t at least consider this question.

So, are there people actually monetizing their Twitter use? Absolutely! Are they pissing a few people off along the way? Probably, but that’s life. You can’t please all the people all the time!

However, if you are on Twitter exclusively for self promotion, selling affiliate products, etc. and that’s all you spend your time doing, then you are probably not very happy with the results. Twitter is not some mountain that you climb to the peak of with a megaphone and announce your fabulous widget to the world. If life were just that easy… (Actually, I’m glad it’s not!)

Here is one of my favorite quotes by Albert Eistein that I tweet about all the time:

“Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.”

This tweet gets “retweeted” more than anything else I talk about on Twitter. It’s such a great philosophy to follow and believe it or not, MUCH more effective than self promotion alone.

If you spend 90% of your time on Twitter being a trusted resource, and 10% of your time promoting yourself, the results you achieve will far exceed 100% self promotion efforts! Plus, it will give you that warm fuzzy feeling knowing you helped people.

So, here are my TOP 5 suggestions on how to achieve this:

1. Reply to EVERY personal message you get from other people on Twitter. I’m not talking about canned DM’s or generic responses. Just the messages that an actual human took the time to write to you specifically.
2. RT (retweet) good stuff that people you follow tweet about. This is a great way to build relationships with the people you follow. They will definitely appreciate it. Don’t RT just to RT though. Make sure it’s worthy of the re-distribution. If people RT your tweet, make sure you send them a thanks for doing so.
3. Participate as much as possible with the Twitter culture. Spend time doing #followfriday #musicmonday, etc. *IMPORTANT* When doing #followfriday, don’t group a bunch of people together generically and tell people to follow them Take the time to create a #ff for each person you recommend and explain WHY people should follow them. You will get MUCH better results, and those you recommend will be much more appreciative and willing to do the same for you.
4. Tweet quotes that have special meaning for you (such as my Einstein example). People LOVE good quotes and quotes get retweeted more than just about anything else. Quotes catch my eye immediately and I retweet them all the time.
5. Stop promoting products that teach people “how to get 16,000 new followers in 90 days” when you only have 200 followers yourself! It’s garbage, total garbage! People are sick of it. Don’t do it!

Bonus Tip: If you are using an auto reply for new followers, STOP promoting yourself in your DM!!!! Don’t send people to your website, don’t send them to your facebook page, don’t send them to the latest greatest widget, DON’T SEND THEM ANYWHERE! If you do use the auto reply, (it’s risky) try to say something that engages them, something that invites converstion and response. Be funny, ask questions about THEM. Don’t talk about you at all! This is where your j.v.’s are established…

The moral of the story: “give and you shall receive”

Please leave your comments below and feel free to share any other suggestions you have about this topic.

If you got value from this post, please hit the retweet button!