Twitter Blueprint

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

When you start out, your Twitter Blueprint should be small and narrowly focused.  As you build your profile, you can start to scale up your activity.

Starting out on Twitter, you won’t have any followers, or be following anybody.  The first step inside this social media platform is to set up your profile.

Your profile is your introduction.  You don’t want it looking like a billboard for your business.  That’s just going to drive people away rather than bring them in.

Personalize your profile with details which will spark a conversation.  Read this article about your Twitter profile.  Include a link to either your main hub, or an outpost.

Twitter Blueprint: Who To Follow

You’ll need people to follow starting out.  Search for the leaders in your industry/niche.  Start out following 20-30 people per day.  Following too many people on Twitter at once, and Twitter may temporarily lock you out.

Look at their tweets, and join the conversation.  Offer an opinion, or explain how an idea helped.  Give people additional resources.

As you start offering more and more value, you’ll start to gain followers.

Twitter Blueprint: Followers

People are starting to flock towards you.

This is when you need to decide what you’re going to do with your followers.

You’ve earned their trust, and you don’t want to lose it.  Now you start offering links to items related to your own niche.

Mixed into those links full of value, provide links to your own business and affiliates.  These can be blog posts, reviews you’ve written, or anything else directly related to building your list, and making you money.

An ideal mix would be 80% value links, and 20% profit-making links.

Tracking Your Efforts

If you don’t know what’s giving you results, you can’t adjust your strategy.  When providing a link, shorten it using bit.ly.  Make sure that you’re logged in so that you can access the analytics.  Once a week, go through and see what has been generating responses.

Study when links are clicked on, and adjust your tweet schedule to include more of your popular tweets when they’re being clicked.

Should You Automate Twitter?

Twitter automation tools should be used sparingly.  Followers on Twitter should feel like they’re interacting with a real person.  The only task you should be automating is the welcome message when someone follows you.

Reply to direct messages and mentions in a timely fashion, so you don’t give the impression of being a robot.

Do You Have Your Twitter Blueprint?

Any social media platform is going to take time to grow.  The illusion of instantaneous growth and sales is a myth.

You need to work at it every day.  Push yourself through the doubts that it isn’t working.

At first, Twitter might seem intimidating, but if you take it one piece at a time, and implement your plan in smaller chunks, you’ll soon find yourself a master of your Twitter Blueprint.

Growing on Twitter shouldn’t happen too fast.  You want to be able to connect with those who are following you.  Build solid connections early on, so that your list is full of “cheerleaders” who enjoy spending time and money with you.  From there, expand your efforts, and build a business that will sustain you for years.

To Your Online Success,
Tom Thiessen

PS – Need more info on designing your Twitter Blueprint?  Visit Twitter Template Tips and Twitter Automation.