Does anyone hear it? During my four months away, the number of times I tweeted something to my 2700 followers was less than a couple dozen and those were 99% fired off at politicians who annoy me and don’t follow me.
However, despite not tweeting and not reading one single tweet for four months, my number of followers kept going up almost every day. It might have been every day but I wasn’t keeping track. I just could not understand why at least 100 strangers decided to follow me. But, after reading the emails I get when someone follows, I realized that while lots of people are tweeting almost nobody is listening. Everyone is too busy telling us why they are the greatest and how we need to follow them and get their free “thing.” Not a single person who signed on to follow me during the last four months asked me anything – here it comes – not a single one of them asked me anything about me. It was all about them.
Selling is still 80% listening. If you’re spending all your social media time talking about yourself or your company, you can’t be listening. If you’re going to use Twitter then use it to ask questions and to follow what others are saying about you which will give you a chance to enter the discussion.
Show that you’re interested in the person who you’re following and not just in feathering your own nest.
Ask them questions.
Then shut up and listen.