Do you ever wonder how to market yourself as a musician by using a site like twitter? Because I wondered for a very long time.
So here’s how to use Twitter to your advantage.
Twitter is great for a couple reasons:
1. Everything you tweet (a tweet is basically like a little status update) is searchable. That means that Google will find your tweets if you include keywords in them (see the earlier post about using keywords if you don’t know what they are!).
2. Twitter is a constant gigantic conversation. If you look in the right places, you can meet lots of interesting people who could really help you down the road. (That being said, if you don’t look in the right places, you’ll find a lot of spam and people who really don’t care about what you’re doing.)
Some extra basics for new twitter users:
A tweet can be many things.
Everyone can see any of your tweets.
If you click reply, then you communicate with someone else by mentioning them in your tweet so that they see it. This doesn’t stop anyone else from seeing it.
When you click retweet (two overlapping arrows under a tweet), this basically just repeats what someone else tweeted as your own tweet.
The basic point of twitter is to gain followers and interact with them. You have to be constantly sending out tweets and “replying” to other people’s tweets. If you like someone else’s tweet, then you can “retweet” it out to the twitter world form you account.
How do you get followers? Well, there are lots of ways to get followers. Like all social media, what it comes down to is making sure you direct people to and from your twitter account. So, for example, if you have an email newsletter, make sure you have a link to your twitter account in the letter. If you have a website, make sure you have a link to your website on your twitter profile.
The only other sure way of gaining followers is by following people in the first place. There are some tricks to doing this effectively, however. I would highly discourage you from going out on twitter and following tons of random people for no reason.
Here’s a step by step. We’ll use the fictional example of jazz pianist John Sailor, who lives in New York, NY:
1. Make sure your profile description is concise and to the point. John’s will say: “Jazz pianist from New York, NY.”
2. Search for people with whom you have a common interest. John will search for keywords like “jazz pianist,” “new york jazz musician.” When you’re sorting through people, click on people’s names to make sure they use twitter frequently and aren’t spammers. Follow them.
3. Make sure to engage with anyone who tweets to you by replying to them and retweeting their tweets.
4. After a few days, you will need to unfollow the people who didn’t follow him back. Go to tweepi.com and sign in using the free version. You will click “flush.” This will allow you to unfollow people.
5. Follow back any people who follow you, after you make sure they’re not spammers, that is.
5. Repeat steps 1-5 and make sure you continue to tweet regularly!
Important extra tips:
If you sign up for a Hootsuite account, you can schedule lots of tweets in advance so that you don’t have to be on twitter quite as much.
Try changing your profile description every once in a while. This might help you attract new followers. For example, maybe John grew up in New Haven, Connecticut. He should put this in his description before he goes onto twitter and follows people from New Haven.
If you enjoyed reading this post, please go to the top right of the home page and click “follow.” Much more to come!