I followed Guy Kawasaki on twitter after I created my twitter account. I knew him because I searched "people to follow on twitter" via Google. One web page caught my attention:
Ten People All Twitter Beginners Should be Following
Guy Kawasaki is No. 1 in that list who had 21,000 followers within 9 months. Plus, he has a very special name. So I followed him and I never regretted doing so. Guy Kawasaki posts interesting or helpful tweets about everything all the time. He updates fast and all his tweets look fun.
After watching Dr. Waters' lecture, I wonder how on earth did he became so well-known on twitter? I happened to watch this interview video talking about his 'tricks' of getting famous on twitter. (The lady in the video cut Guy off a few times, which is super annoying. But the content is good.)
So, Guy summarized three main reasons for his popularity.
- fame and fortune don't happen overnight. "It took me 25 years to get famous," Guy said in the video.
- one should tweet often. One will hardly get popular if he simply uses Twitter to promote himself.
- answer your emails. "I answer my emails, all my directs and replies," he said. "That's the cost."
I personally think of his second point as a good reason to explain why I followed him. It is hard to decide who is the person that "adds value", yet it is easy to say "oh, this guy is interesting, and I want to see what he will say next time". It is the fun and interest that brought people together to follow someone like Guy Kawasaki.
This golden rule applies perfectly to organizations. If you think all you have on twitter and other social sites are "hard information" about your products or services, you are SO wrong. You need to please your stakeholders/followers, and give them what they want to hear, and what they want to hear next time.
9 comments:
Thanks for the tip on this guy Jing, I am now following him on Twitter. I think you make some really good points about having more content to talk about then just products. Dr. Waters always talks about "bringing a gift", give them helpful advice or share other interesting insights. If orgs. do not make their social media sites stand out, they will not survive for long.
You may also find this post from Guy interesting, in particular the last sentence. http://holykaw.alltop.com/why-nobodies-are-the-new-somebodies
I met Guy on Twitter, and since then he has changed my life. :)
@ zjackson Good to know you are following him now. He constantly has interesting posts/tweets.
@ NEENZ: Thanks for sharing the article with me. I wonder how Guy changed your life. He is definitely a role model!
Great post Jing!
It's great that Guy takes the time to respond to all his direct messages and replies. When you've got thousands of followers, I imagine this is really time-consuming, but so valuable.
Nice post Jing - I will now start following Guy Kawasaki on Twitter. He is an excellent example of someone who makes time to reply to his followers and build relationships - something all PR practitioners must do.
Thanks, Rachel and Neha. Good to hear you girls are following him too. I might need to charge Guy Kawasaki for bring him new great followers! :-)
Looks like you are doing some PR for Guy with this post, look how many followers you have provided him :)
His suggestions seem quite doable!
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I found the 3rd point the most interesting in Kawasaki's tips. Responding to every comment and e-mail could be a full time job. (If he is sending personal responses and not manufactured ones) I think that organizations should keep this is mind when hiring someone for social media purposes. I think they should realize and keep in mind how much work goes into keeping up social networking accounts. When you are really popular keeping up with responses is extremely time consuming.
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