@MichaelHyatt is a Twitter-growth monster (in addition to being an avid and successful blogger at MichaelHyatt.com).
In the last month alone he’s been able to average nearly 300 new followers a day.
Just take a look at the chart plot:
But it obviously hasn’t been “all gravy” all the time, and you can see that there’s been a recent stimulated growth if you look at the 3-month plot:
But something happened.
So I decided to reach out to Michael myself and ask him, from his perspective, what has really contributed to his monsterous-growth pattern.
Here’s what he had to say:
1. Who Are You (in 140 Chars or Less)?
I am the CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, an avid blogger, husband of one wife and father of five daughters.
2. Why Do You Twitter?
Two reasons: First, I am very interested in leadership. Leadership is influence. Twitter allows me to use my influence to effect thousands of people. Second, I am interested in building my personal brand, so that I can leverage that on behalf of my company. As I build my brand, I build trust. When people trust you, you have more influence. It all works together.
3. What Do You Think has Contributed to Your Growth Success?
I think by adding value to people’s lives.
I try to point people to articles and posts that I believe will enrich their lives in some way. The more generous you are with Twitter, the more followers you will attract. It’s like making a deposit in their bank account.
Conversely, “using” your followers to pimp your own products or services is like a withdrawal. You can do it, but you must be very careful that your deposits exceed your withdrawals.
4. What Strategies Would You Give for a Twitter User Who’s Not “New” But Who’s Been Around and is Looking to Take It to the “Next Level”?
- Make sure that you are tweeting great content. Again, be generous. Give more than you ask.
- Re-tweet great content from others. This builds equity with the people you are re-tweeting, so they are more likely to re-tweeting you.
- Twitter frequently, but not too frequently. I think 8-12 tweets a day is about right. More than that will wear people out.
- Don’t reply publicly to private questions. This is what direct messages are for. If potential followers can’t follow your conversations, they won’t follow you-or worse, they may unfollow you. Only post public tweets that are relevant to ALL (or at least most) of your followers.
- Create a custom landing page. When people consider following you, the first thing they do is click on your Web link on your Twitter profile page. That should go to a special landing page on your blog or Web site.
- Blog about Twitter. I wrote “The Beginner’s Guide to Twitter” and it is the most popular page on my blog. I have also written several other posts about Twitter. They get lots of traffic.
- Auto-follow everyone who follows you. I use TweetLater.com to do this. I’m not sure I can explain why this works but it does. When I started doing this, my follower growth sky-rocketed. I use TweetDeck to manage such a large number of followers by segmenting followers into groups.
Thanks John,
Michael is an awesome guy, got to meet him at re:create. Love to see how he uses his influence. The special landing page is a special idea I'd not considered.
The one thing that I get frustrated is this:
"Don’t reply publicly to private questions. This is what direct messages are for." …
That's tough when the people you wish to reply to don't follow you. You @reply someone (as your only means to get them to see you're trying to talk to them), and then they DM you back … and you have no means to send a DM back.
I'd suggest that if you ever send a DM to someone in a "conversational" mindset, you should always make sure you're following them so they can DM you back.
For me, I was using the same auto-follow strategy with tweetlater, but just recently turned it out – I was finding very questionable content in my public timeline from people I'd "auto-followed" that was of a nature I didn't want to be associated with.
Since then, I'm manually following those who follow me – and I'm finding that about 1 out of 5 are people I'd normally follow, the rest are SEO/Twitter optimization specialists, etc that I know have no concern about me at all, nor any desire to network and build community.
Your thoughts? I noticed today you'd reverted to the "follow everyone" strategy – hopefully a blog is forthcoming sharing that reason?
Thanks for all you do –
Fred
hey fred,
thanks for your thoughts here.
i’ve got a small post over on Human3rror.com … but i think i’ll expound on it some more here in a bit.
lots of reasons actuall….!
it’s usually the case, right?
Love it. I think there is also an element of a Tipping Point in play here too with Michael's Twitter following growth. Like most things there is an aspect of compounded / exponential growth. As one gets a larger following, it tends to replicate at even faster rates. Usually much harder to get the first 5000 followers than it is the get the next 5000, and so on. Michael has great content but for others who are seeking to implement similar strategies and gain similar growth, it takes time and commitment as well. Also doesn't hurt that, as CEO of a major publishing house, Michael has the benefit of that platform playing into his personal brand and exposure.
I think there is also something to be said about using Twitter authentically. Michael is genuine. He will reply or DM if you ask him something (in most cases). Many others are just jumping on the Twitter bandwagon and creating one sided conversations about themselves. That doesn't work and won't lead to sustainable growth.
BTW… love the custom URL landing page idea. I had not even thought of that. Will impliment that myself soon!
@DanielDecker
thanks for your thoughts here daniel!
Those are some good thoughts
I was rather surprised when Michael started following me a few days ago. A lot to learn right there in terms of humility for me, and it says a lot in terms of authenticity for him.
I think tweetlater.com just died.
yeah.
Great post. I really like Michael, he is really down to earth and has great content. Definitely worth following his blog and twitter. I use your Ipseity theme as my Twitter landing page.
that’s brilliant… never even thought of that!
Fred,
Great thoughts here. I'm thinking i'll probably need to post an answer to my craziness.
i hear you on the auto-follow thing… it can be "dangerous"…
great post, can't get enough of mr. hyatt.
I was a little surprised to find Mr. Hyatt following me the other day, considering that I am currently working with his company on a marketing project for my class. Once I found out that he had 10,000+ other followers, I figured it was pure coincidence, and it lost its luster pretty quickly. But I sent him a message and I was pleasantly surprised to get a direct message back from him.
Some good points there… especially the Twitter landing page. Although, tweeting 8-12 times a day seems a little excessive. I guess its all opinion though.
If you find 8-12 times a day excessive, then apparently you don't follow me…!
I follow you now, but I think we'll keep the device updates off for now