Dealer Dan, pictured here with WWE Superstar Mick Foley, has been in internet marketing since 1996. He likes hugs, long walks on the beach, and making money while wearing his jammy jams. For more information, you can read all 
If you run a business or a website and want to use Twitter for marketing, there is one basic method that I really hope you know: “Follow” your Target Market.
Identify who your target market is. Then start following them. If you run an NBA Tips website for example – at the very least you’d be looking for people who like the NBA. Of course you might want to go deeper than that – find people who not only like and watch the NBA, but discuss their NBA bets. Even further – you might want to aim to target just Americans, and thus go for Americans who like to bet on the NBA.
The problem is – as basic as this is – so many people do it wrong. Oh they get the following part down pat – how could they not – but they don’t seem to understand the whole conversion part I have various dummy Twitter accounts I use. Whenever someone follows them, I get an e-mail in my inbox.
The e-mail is very simple. It states:
- You have a new follower on Twitter.
- Provides their profile picture and twitter account name, plus a link to their Twitter page.
- Provides their twitter profile description.
- Provides follower stats.
- Provides an easy “Follow” link.
In this article, I’m going to be talking about #3: Provides their twitter profile description.
Because that’s where so many people do it wrong.
What Do You Want?
When you follow someone – what exactly are you going for? You want them to follow you. It’s that simple. You want this person to receive this e-mail, and immediately click that “Follow” button.
Generally, the user has 3 options:
- Delete the e-mail.
- Click through to your profile page.
- Clck “Follow”.
1 is complete junk, 2 is okay depending on your follow-up. 3 is what you want.
And that’s where the description comes in.
A Good Description:
Here is an example of a description that I really like:
I’m big into fantasy sports. I love them. And Fantasy Sports are a nice combination of both skill and luck. So much like poker, you want to obviously get the skill edge up as much as possible. However it’s tough to do so.
So then Roto Rants follow me above. Look at their description. Right off the bat they state that they provide fantasy sports advice and analysis. I LOVE both those words. “Advice” is great because it makes me think I can ask these guys questions. Analysis is money too because if you are a stats geek, you’ll love to pour over their thoughts. So they’ve managed to hook practically every fantasy sports fan with just their first sentence.
The next sentence talks about an algorithm created to help you out. Again that’s great. People don’t like to trust others opinions anymore on things like this – but an actual algorithm? Computers are doing it? Boom, great great hook.
The last sentence “We call them our Premium Plays” is weak, but honestly the first two sentences are great enough that this description is money. And that Premium Plays line actually ties in with what you see when you go there. There’s a pinned tweet stating you can try their premium plays that day for free. So it’s nice to see a tie-in like that, and smart to see a business using pinned tweets effectively. As soon as I clicked through to their site, I was bookmarking it.
An OK Description:
Sticking with fantasy sports, here’s another follow I received:
What really stands out for me here is it is intriguing. The first sentence is money – a fantasy sports game where you win cash by picking losers. What? What the hell is that? That’s something where I want to click through and find out more.
Personally I would have just went with that. It’s nice and mysterious, will intrigue the user and is going to get people clicking to read more. Then you follow it up with a nice pinned tweet inviting people to read more about it on their site.
Bad Descriptions:
I get a lot of followers from local businesses in my area. That’s pretty standard and smart – why wouldn’t you follow people in your area?
Here are two bad descriptions though from small or local businesses:
This one is absolutely horrendous. The description offers nothing about their business. It provides no information about whether or not they are a local business or not, or where they serve. Yeah you do crepes – I get that from your account name. 
Even worse – they use the description field to try and get you to follow them via another social networking service. Seriously? Who the hell came up with that idea?
Then you go there and it’s a bunch of random tweets, meaning for me to find out where they are located I need to do a lot of legwork. No thanks. This is a franchise with multiple locations over Canada and they haven’t spent one second thinking about how to market to new followers, yet they are randomly following people.
Another one:
This is a local hot dog vendor in my city. Yet you wouldn’t know that, because their description doesn’t mention anything about the city at all. With so many random businesses following me – this one doesn’t stick out at all. If I click through then yeah the location says my city – but if you’re recieving this in e-mail, it’s likely you’ll not follow.
Furthermore – what’s the actual POINT of following these guys? Is there a reason other than them being a local business?
This is one that is going to fall into #2 – clicking through to their profile.
When I go there there is no special offer – no incentive to follow. It’s just them retweeting a bunch of other tweets for the most part. How about retweeting one of their promotional tweets and getting 50 cents off your hot dog? Anything! Even if they DID have a good description there’s zero follow-up. No reason at all to follow.
Let’s Look At Some Gambling Sites:
I’ve covered business here to give you a general idea but as most of you are gambling affiliates, and most of you are thinking “Well I need to get on Twitter even though I have no idea what to do” we’ll look at some gambling twitter accounts and see what they say.
I’m just going to pick a few completely at random by searching key phrases in Twitter:
That one’s pretty good. It’s telling you what to do – to FOLLOW THEM. Reaffirming the fact that you should do it. And why? For exclusive bonuses. Not bad. Also note the amount of followers they have – 17,000. Sure it’s possible they just bought all of those or just followed a zillion people who randomly follow back – but either way, it adds legitimacy to them. When you see that many followers you think “Hey these guys are worth following”.
Ugh – really? First sentence is fine – they’re offering free tips, and they’re tweeted daily. Easy enough. Then it gets weak by IMMEDIATELY telling you they sell tips. That’s not good. Get people in the door first FFS. And provide more information – what sports do you cover? What is so special about you?
This is an interesting one. From the looks of it they don’t do free tips. That’s fine. First of all it’s informative – they tell you what tips they provide. Then they provide a price which is super cheap. So that might get people curious. People might want to follow them just to see if it’s worth paying that, and pay attention. AND people are impulsive. So if someone follows them they will most likely check back the next day to see how they did or just look at their history for the last few days. If they won – they might jump on it and pay the cash.
Then the hook of “£10 Into £10,959 in just 17 Bets”. Now that’s an interesting one. I know that’s possible – I’ve seen it happen before. But it also sounds speculative and “too good to be true”. That’s where they need to back that up – with a pinned tweet showing exactly how they did that, and when. Because I went to their website and I don’t see anything about it – and if that is true, it’s something they should be broadcasting as a massive selling point.
Summary:
When you’re setting up any sort of social networking profile, you need to sit back and think about these things. The very first thing people are going to see when you follow them is your description.
Look at your Twitter accounts for your websites and ask one question: would YOU follow that account?
If not, work on figuring out what would make you change your mind and slam that follow button.
This article was written on May 30, 2014 however all articles are looked at on a monthly basis and updated to keep them relevant.
If you need to contact Graeme, please see his Contact Page. If you are an affiliate manager wanting promoted please see this page.
