Small Businesses accused of overusing Social Media!

Thanks for that OLBNow, I think that's a very quick but defined way of how to get a Twitter account to be effective. Build up credibility and trust with useful and personal tweets and only then do you broadcast.

This is the bit I don't understand, and is the route I went. You follow everyman and his dog in the hope they follow you back, but is this a genuine audience? It's just reciprocal linking for the sake of numbers as opposed to people connecting because they have a genuine interest?

Or am I missing the point?

Plus, (unless its changed) you will end up following 2000 people, and a percentage will follow you back, say 20% for example. What do you do with the remaining 80%? Manually remove them? I went through this pain and it was very slow and very laborious - which then has a cost. (again maybe there is now a quick and easy way to do this?)

Now I just let twitter followers grow naturally. As a spin off from growing linked in numbers, new linked in contacts seem keen to contact via FB, Google and twitter. Maybe not particularly targeted, twitter wise, but its natural and doesn't take any time therefore has no cost. Which is good because other than a bit of promotion/branding I've yet to see any real commercial benefits or significance with twitter.

Just my findings, and very keen to learn from someone who has mastered twitter. I know a lot of people claim to generate xyz sales from twitter, but real world case studies are a bit thin on the ground when it comes to small businesses other than things like pubs and restaurants.

The problem any new business or website has is that they don't have that traffic from their website or other social profiles to get the followers in the first place. Sure you can invite your friends and family but that is only going to get you so far. I have found Twitter is by far the best social network for getting that initial traffic

If you are following people that are following a person in a similar field then they do have an interest, yes it is reciprocal but you are gaining a targetted follower.

Regarding unfollowing, you could use something like JustUnfollow - Find and unfollow twitter users who unfollowed me but you have to be careful not to unfollow masses of people all of the time, I would recommend 50 a day maximum.

Hope that clears everything up!