We knew it would happen. It always happens. Not long after Twitter\’s popularity hit the stratosphere, the spammers began swarming. Now direct messages boxes are packed with Mafia invitations, follower lists have been infiltrated by pornbots, and I had to put up with dozens of impostors trading on my name before my verified account was able to show who\’s really me.
Whenever something gets big and successful on the Internet, you can bet that there will soon be people looking to make a quick and unscrupulous buck out of it.
But I have to admit, on Twitter it looks sillier than ever.
Twitter isn\’t the kind of service that will deliver a regular monthly check. It\’s not a website supported by AdSense or an ebook that\’s being distributed on affiliate sites. I\’m making some nice incremental income from SponsoredTweets, which lets me choose the companies I advertise, but that\’s not why I\’m on Twitter.
The real value of Twitter lies in its ability to build communities, to create trust and cement relationships. It\’s about laying the groundwork for the most important ingredient in a successful business: the goodwill that people feel towards you.
When people know you, like you and trust you, they do business with you. Twitter gives you a tool to build those relationships with thousands of people without ever leaving your keyboard.
There are lots of different ingredients that go into those relationships. I\’ve described all of the most common types of tweets that you might want to include in a timeline, and in Twitter Power, I suggested strategies that can help you drum up interest in product launches and websites. But there is an underlying principle that always forms the bedrock of any successful Twitter presence.
You have to be honest, and you have to be you.
The people that you meet on Twitter want to be friends with you. From that friendship will blossom a business opportunity, but it can\’t happen if your followers think that you\’re not being completely straight with them. So tweet freely. Talk about yourself, say what\’s on your mind and reveal who you are. Don\’t try to push your products or your business on Twitter but let the relationships you create generate enough curiosity for people to want to find out about you for themselves.
When success on Twitter means doing nothing more complex than being yourself, it\’s really hard to see why spammers would want to do it the hard way.