Nuvota

It has been about three months since I began testing whether Twitter is powerful enough to build a business around it (PART I, PART II, PART III). In this post I would like to give you my third progress report (Mar 2st – Apr 22nd, 2010):

1. Administration:

• Automatically followed approximately 50 people who had the word ‘mom’ or ‘mother’ in their profile, a few times a week using TweetAdder
• Stopped following (un-followed) people after three days if they did not reciprocate and followed me back (only a couple of times a week)

2. Content:

• Sent six unique tweets throughout the day, several times a week. The tweets are comical and still don’t include any links.
• Used Hootsuiteto schedule these tweets in the morning.

3. Tactics:

• Re-tweeted (forwarded) messages from my followers (people that receive my tweets) a couple of times a week.
• Replied to tweets, directly commenting on the content, a couple of times a week.

So what are my results for this month? As of this morning,

• I am following 1,020 people (compared to 480 on Mar 1^st) => Increase of 125%
• 703 people are following me (compared to 412 on Mar 1^st) => Increase of 70%
• I was listed 20 times (compared to 12 times on Mar 1^st) =>  Increase of 67%

You may notice that I increased the number people that I follow significantly. The reason for this high number is that I actually did not un-follow people as quickly as I did last time. I wanted to give people more time to follow me back.

The number of people following me increased by 70%. So my Following to Follower ratio is now 1.41:1 which is higher than last time (1.17:1). It is still ok but should definitely not exceed 1.50:1 in order to not decrease my perceived popularity (the bigger the gap, the less popular people perceive you. It can even go so far as being classified as a spammer).

The number of people following me increased by 70%, which is a solid increase but less than in February (150%). One reason is that I decreased the number of times per week that I follow/unfollow people (from every day to a couple of times per week).

I continue getting listed by people. I am now listed 20 times versus 12 times in February. I mainly get categorized under topics such as “moms” or “fun stuff”. This is in line with my Twitter persona.

As it relates to my tweets and engagement with my followers,

• Two (2) people re-tweeted (forwarded) something I posted.
• Two (2) people thanked me for re-tweeting one of their messages
• Two (2) people answered a question I posted
• In addition, one (1) person told me that she really enjoyed my tweets (via DM – Direct Message – which only I can see)

Engagement with my followers is still relatively low. The engagement curve definitely tends to be steeper when using Twitter as an additional marketing channel for products and services. However, the only thing I am testing here is whether it is possible to create a business only using twitter and affiliate links – no other online/offline channel is used.

During the next and final month, I will finish this experience by starting to send out affiliate links in order to monetize my Twitter persona.

So stay tuned for the final post of this series and the revelation of my twitter persona.