As a marketing leader, you’ve got a lot to manage. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and other social networks can eat up huge amounts of your time; yet you may not be seeing the results you want. You need a way to keep track of who’s following you and who has quit following you. You want to know how to get more valuable followers and how to keep them interested. With whom do you need to interact in order to make more meaningful connections on social media?
If these questions run through your head frequently, check out Crowdfire. It’s a fairly new kid on the social media block, but it has already proven its worth to users like me, as well as marketing directors, small business owners and social media managers. If you’re looking for ways to build your Twitter audience more effectively, Crowdfire is a tool you should explore.
My Twitter story
I’ve been using Twitter for a long time, but mostly for marketing purposes: running organic and paid campaigns for my clients. On a personal basis, I haven’t been an avid Twitter user. For a long time, I had barely any personal Twitter presence at all. Crowdfire changed the game for me, simplifying all the following and unfollowing and the tracking of statistics. Since I began using Crowdfire with my Twitter account (just 5 months ago), I went from just 80 followers to 2,250 — and these are useful, meaningful contacts.
In fact, since my big boom on Twitter, I’ve had several companies reach out to me, asking me to do marketing consulting work for them. That’s why I’m sharing this tool with other marketing professionals — it really works!
Take the first step
Creating your Crowdfire account is easy. Just go to the Crowdfire app and sign in with your Twitter account. You’ll need to give Crowdfire permission to access your Twitter account, of course, and you’ll need to supply your email address.
If you’d like to add an Instagram account as well as your Twitter account, you can do that. Any other blogs or social media accounts beyond that will require you to upgrade to a subscription.
Watch the magic happen
Once you set up your account, Crowdfire starts working right away. With respect to your Twitter account, in particular, Crowdfire is constantly analyzing activity and collecting data. That data gets reported back to the Crowdfire tool, which it uses as it recommends Twitter actions for you to take.
Some of the recommendations Crowdfire will make include: relevant content to share, people to follow based on keywords they are tweeting about, people to follow based on accounts they are following, people to stop following because they are inactive, people to stop following because they’re not following you… and there are a lot more valuable recommendations!
One thing that I really love about Crowdfire is their user interface. Unlike Buffer and Hootsuite (both great tools, btw!), Crowdfire has a super easy-to-use chatbot-style interface. Each day they’ll ping you via a desktop notice and their chatbot will walk you through the steps you need to take. Their super easy interface makes them truly stand out as being a great tool.
Check out the crowd
With Crowdfire, you can easily see the profiles of your fans, followers and others. The mobile app provides a comfortable, user-friendly space where you can quickly view who has recently followed you, who recently unfollowed you, and much more. You can also keep track of your fans and follow them back, building a relationship of mutual benefit and interest. Following someone is easy; there’s a plus sign in a green circle that allows you to quickly complete that task.
Track follower activity
How active are your followers? Crowdfire can show you that as well. Ideally, you should maintain connections only with active users, so Crowdfire groups together all users who have been inactive for a month, 3 months, or 6 months. This way, you can quickly unfollow an entire group of useless contacts.
Create a blacklist and whitelist
Crowdfire helps you see the people who aren’t following you so you can kick them out of your list, freeing up space for more valuable contacts. But the app enables you to do these tasks ultra fast! What if you accidentally unfollow people that you want to keep, even if they don’t follow you back?
If you want to avoid accidentally unfollowing certain people, add them to your whitelist so you can stay connected. People on your whitelist may include close friends, celebrity connections, family members, or important clients or colleagues. If there are people that you never want to follow, people you don’t even want Crowdfire to suggest, add them to the blacklist so they don’t become part of your Twitter network.
Preview and publish posts
Are you ready to produce some amazing content? The Crowdfire app has a little rocket icon that you can tap to open your “compose” screen. After crafting your content, you can preview it, publish it right away, or schedule it to be published later.
Find followers of other accounts
To succeed with social media, you need a network of like-minded followers who are interested in you, your content and your business. The trick is finding those people in the vast sea of social media users. Without a tool like Crowdfire, you’ll be wasting time, grabbing followers at random and hoping for the best. Here’s one of the best Crowdfire tricks of the trade — you can copy someone else’s followers.
Let’s say that you’re in the business of producing top-of-the-line survival gear and outdoor equipment. Just find another Twitter feed that focuses on that niche market, and “copy followers.” Suddenly, you’ll be following a whole new group of people who are interested in the type of products you provide. If you produce great content and they notice it, they just might follow you back! Crowdfire helps you target an audience that already has an interest in what you do.
Target with keywords
Crowdfire also has an extremely valuable “keyword follow” feature. Again, assuming that you produce outdoor gear, you could use keywords like “survival gear” or “outdoor equipment” or “camping.” Find out which phrases and hashtags are commonly used by fans of your niche, and use those words through Crowdfire to target the right kind of followers.
Use more features
Crowdfire is packed with useful features for busy social media marketers. Will you be in meetings or out of the office for a while? Schedule automated Tweets ahead of time. Would you like to receive your Twitter statistics by email daily or weekly?
Choose your preference in Crowdfire. Check on future scheduled posts or review archived posts anytime.
If you’ve been wishing for more hours in the day, or for an extra pair of hands, Crowdfire might be the solution. It’s a smart, powerful tool, one that acts like a very capable marketing assistant. Try it out, and watch your Twitter audience improve and increase!
