Twitter is Dead…. Really!

You would be surprised at how many people tell me I don’t understand, no one is using Twitter anymore. Twitter is a dead tool; I need to move on to Facebook and/or Google Plus.

How many of you heard this from other professionals? Some person who is trying to teach you on what the trends are?

I’ll be completely honest with you guys like I always am. I really want to say to these people… “If you are having problems with using Twitter as a Social Networking tool all you have to do is ask for help, you don’t need to slam me for being able to use it properly”. That is what I would like to say, but I’m patient and listen to what they have to say. I ask them if they would like to learn how to use Twitter like I do to build my community? Do you know what happens? 98% of these people say NO they are fine. The other 2% of them say they will try it for a bit and give up because they still use the same thinking to try to build their followers but now use different tools, gimmicks…etc Be it trying to automate their posts, gorilla market by sending out numerous amounts of posts per day..etc.

Try This: If you are having problems with Twitter and really don’t understand what I am talking about I would like you to try this below and I want to know how it goes. Seriously! If you want to learn how to use Twitter properly do this task below and let me know what happens.

First I want you to write down 10 marketing comments that you feel are relevant to marketing your business through Twitter and I will give you a few examples to show you and you can make up the rest.

1)       Learn how to make an extra $1,000 this week “click here

2)      Want to have clients knocking on your front door “click here

3)      I have the top 10 Secrets to building your business “click here

…etc you can fill in the rest.

Here is what I want you to do, once you make the list of 10 comments trying to keep it to 140 characters I want you to exchange ““click here to “call me back – 111-111-1111” and put your phone number they can call you back on.

Now I want you to call someone you kind of know but not really well and do this

1)       Call them and if they answer or not just say one of the comments fully

–          “Learn how to make an extra $1,000 this week call me back – 111-111-1111”

Then hang up, don’t let them respond.

2)      If they call back don’t answer their phone call let it go to voice mail

3)      Then in 15 min have another comment ready and then call them back

–          “Want to have clients knocking on your front door call me back – 111-111-1111”

Then hang up on them again, don’t let them respond.

By now you should be getting the point, if you don’t repeat this a few more times.

Most people would be annoyed and eventually tell you to stop calling them, I know I would.  The point here is this; we think that because we only have 140 characters we have to jam a sales pitch into this small post. Which is not how we talk to people in our normal day, why would we do it because we only have 140 characters? We shouldn’t, that’s the point. There is no difference how we need to relate to people online or offline and this key fact is why people fail at using Twitter. A lot of people are joining Twitter because they understand it’s a great Social Networking tool to meet new people, but they stop talking to people and start throwing out comments hoping someone is listening. As the “Try This” home work shows above, you will find that it doesn’t connect to people and only frustrates them.

Let’s throw out some really useless stats that people think matter.  Which I will explain why I say they don’t matter.

#tweets

  • 3 years, 2 months and 1 day. The time it took from the first Tweet to the billionth Tweet.
  • 1 week. The time it now takes for users to send a billion Tweets.
  • 50 million. The average number of Tweets people sent per day, one year ago.
  • 140 million. The average number of Tweets people sent per day, in the last month.
  • 177 million. Tweets sent on March 11, 2011.
  • 456. Tweets per second (TPS) when Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009 (a record at that time).
  • 6,939. Current TPS record, set 4 seconds after midnight in Japan on New Year’s Day.


#accounts

  • 572,000. Number of new accounts created on March 12, 2011.
  • 460,000. Average number of new accounts per day over the last month.
  • 182%. Increase in number of mobile users over the past year.

All from http://blog.twitter.com/2011/03/numbers.html  which you can see for yourself.

Why these stats really don’t matter… no matter how many people are following you on Twitter or if you are in a local meeting of 15 people. If you don’t know how to build a friendship with someone it wouldn’t matter!

I know this is a little harsh but I really want to point this out because this is the difference of you working with your community and building “Business Friendships” that help each other and to be honest each of you see monetary rewards if done properly  vs. you pitching your product/service on these social networking tools and getting frustrated because no one is buying, just like your home work above. Trust me, I have been talking to Internet Marketers who are still pitching and selling, which they are feeling the crunch. I have talked to a lot of successful Internet Marketers who have changed their way of doing business and they are seeing the rewards very quickly.  This goes for any entrepreneur out there, social networking is about socializing.  The one who is getting the most business is not the one who has the best sales pitch. It’s the ones who are liked and have taken a true interest in their community.

To give you an idea of how it has helped me in this week alone.

I met Steve Huber from www.RealRadio.ca  Twitter ID is @RealRadiodotca we had a quick introduction on Twitter and exchanged contact information. We chatted on the phone the next day seeing how we could help each other out and what we’re both working on. After  a great conversation with Steve and discussing some amazing ideas, I have an interview with Steve next week and we have some plans on how to work together after the interview.  His listener base is 80,000+ and growing.

That is just the “Business Friend” I made this week. This happens all the time on Twitter because I am not using it as a selling forum. I am using the Twitter tool for what it was intended for, to be able to meet people all over the world. From there we chat as friends, get to know each other. If there is something we can help each other out with in our respective business then we will chat and see. If they need a service that I might know someone I will refer them to that contact of mine. Just like I would do with any of my friends.

I think of Twitter as my big community of friends, just because they are on Twitter it makes no difference to me. When I meet new people I ask them questions I would ask a person I would meet at a wedding or other non business social gathering. I get to know them and see how the friendship grows from there.

This is how my community on Twitter has grown so fast and I have been lucky enough to meet some amazing people who I have been blessed to now work with.

This doesn’t happen overnight and trust me it has to be a core value of yours to get to know people instead of trying to work an angle to make money.  My core value is to meet people, build up a friendship and then see where it goes from there.

Here is exactly what I do so you can do it for yourself

When I connect with someone I initially do some research on them if they have a blog, website, facebook page…etc whatever link they have put up on their Twitter bio. This way I can learn more about them. If they don’t I just ask them if they could tell me a little bit about themselves.

Then I ask them about what they are up too, what their plans are for the week/weekend depending where we are in the week. If they want to talk about their website or even their business if that is what they are promoting on Twitter I ask them questions about that. Then I continue the conversation in whatever direction they would like. If they want to talk about their business, what they are up to, a vacation they just took…etc. I listen and am very intrigued because to be honest it is awesome to meet new people and learn from them. Be it great places to stay when vacationing in different parts of the world to amazing business tips they have.

I take the time to learn and be present with the people I meet. If I can provide some insight or golden nuggets I will, but at the end of the day it is about building that friendship.

In my opinion Twitter is not dead; if you know how to use it as a Social Networking tool you will meet some amazing people. I know I do.

Love & Chi

Brandon Krieger

www.BrandonKrieger.com 

4 Comments

  1. kambabe

    Nail hit firmly on the head

    Reply
  2. Joel Cheuoua

    Nice job and great post Brandon. At some point I thought this will be yet another cookbook of tactics and techniques to get more followers. But not at all it’s a lot more than that, and I commend you for sharing these great tips. I even went to your twitter account (I will follow you soon … my account is @metysj) and saw how you were handling things there, and I can vouch for you that you seem to walk the talk. You respond, and you keep it real. Really refreshing. Kudos and respect.

    However, you see I’m not so sure about the fact that simply showing the way, as you do it, will stop people from having very short term sights, therefore completely miss the point, and therefore effectively and ultimately killing twitter.

    In retrospect, I’m sure you’ll agree with me that the very shallow nature of twitter (140 character) is what attracted the same people who complain in the first place: it was a quick way to get the word out there and have people react to it. And it was very convenient because it didn’t require them to spend too much time thinking. Most people nowadays don’t take the time to reply or socialize the way you do. Not because they’re bad or dumb people, not because they don’t know, but simply because they don’t care enough. They just want to “promote the damn thing” and get back to playing angry birds :-). I’m caricaturing of course but it’s not too far from the truth.

    And now Twitter is that weird bloated beast filled up with a lot of the same people doing the same kind of things. So the bar to get noticed is higher. All of a sudden, there’s a NEED to be richer in expressivity, to show their difference and value in other ways.

    All of a sudden, it’s becoming complicated. Not because the tool is complicated, but because the expected outcome of using twitter has become complicated. This is where I think it’s indeed dangerous ground for Twitter. When people said they love Twitter because it’s “easy”, it has never been about Twitter functionality, or UI or something else. It has always been about how easy it was to reach their goal: being heard without too much effort. That was the value.

    That value has been lost for quite some time now! The reason why people are still hanging around is that it has been replaced with another one: the size of the audience. That new value, and encouraging users for a sane, civil and more social approach in their networking, like you do, might be the only think that will save Twitter, but they might indeed have to turn into something closer to Google+ or Facebook to encourage this more social behavior.

    Reply
  3. Strompreise berechnen

    Have you ever considered about adding a little bit more than just your articles? I mean, what you say is fundamental and everything. Nevertheless just imagine if you added some great graphics or videos to give your posts more, “pop”! Your content is excellent but with images and videos, this blog could certainly be one of the very best in its field. Good blog!

    Reply
    • Brandon Krieger

      Thank you for the advice, I was wondering did you post your comment on my blog by mistake? I do have images or video’s on each post.

      Thanks again for your comment I do appreciate it.

      Love & Chi,
      Brandon Krieger
      http://www.BrandonKrieger.com

      Reply

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