If you have been following me on Twitter for over a month you have probably noticed that I have been retweeting a lot more. A lot more. And I’m going to try and explain why.
The short answer: I”m building a fan base. The long answer: See below.
When I first started on Twitter three years ago, I would check it once every couple of weeks. I would say, “I’m doing a show in Gananoque – come on out!” Because I barely did any research on this, I didn’t realize that I was tweeting this to two people. Way to market Brian! So I caught on after a bit that I needed followers.
I remember getting my first retweet – it was for a random joke I wrote on there. That retweet got me about 10 followers. I was in business. I then had 12. Anyway, this would continue over a couple of years.
I originally aimed to keep my following count low. That’s the cool thing to do – have a million people follow you and you are following 10 people. It makes you look like a star. Well guess what? I’m not a star so that is much more difficult. So that wasn’t really an option for me. Last April, I was following 100 people and had 400 followers. I wanted more so I looked at other Twitter people to see what they were doing.
Rob Delaney (@robdelaney) is an example of someone who is successful comedian because of his tweets. He has over 700,000 followers, sells out a lot of his shows just by his marketing online. Free marketing. So I started to take his approach. Just write jokes – no need to pour out any sort of useless information. Just write jokes. They could be stupid, clever, punny, over-the-top, sick – just write them. Put them out there and see what happens.
Now, I started writing jokes. The only thing that I didn’t like is that I would write a joke, it may get retweeted or “starred” (similar to the “Like” option on Facebook) but then they would disappear. My joke would be gone and never seen again. I thought it was funny and I wanted people to see it, so what could I do?
So what I started doing was going through my own tweets, taking the ones I liked best, and made it into a book. I call it a coffee table book but it’s mainly a bathroom reader. I sell them after fundraising shows and I mainly just give them away at a comedy club. I also give them away to any follower that would like on on Twitter. I’ll pay my own postage and send it off – it’s a write-off at the end of the year anyway. Those worked out pretty well and I was up to 580 followers on June 24th – I remember this because I was sitting with Darryl Purvis at the Absolute condo in Toronto going, “Woohoo – 580 followers!” I then told him my plan of having 800 by December. Well, I didn’t really have a plan, I was just doing weird math in my head.
Then, I learned about retweeting…I wrote a tweet…saying I was approaching 1,000 followers…So it took a couple of years to reach the 1,000 marker and three weeks to reach 2,000.
If you are a comedian that is looking to get followers, here is what I have started to do. I’m not saying I’ll be doing this forever mind you – but it’s helped out greatly.
What I’ve Learned:
1. Go on to www.favstar.fm and sign up.
I pay for the additional bonus features ($30 for six months) which allows you to give trophies to people – one per day. I had no clue what this was until a few weeks ago. Mainly what happens is that you give a trophy to someone and they’ll retweet you quite a few times back as a thank you for the trophy. It sounds silly, but that’s what happens. Sometimes people don’t – it’s at their own discretion of what they do, but you can see how they handle getting trophies from other people and if they retweet a person a lot, they’ll probably do the same to you. If I receive a trophy? Damn right I’m retweeting them back. It’s actually fun.
What FavStar mainly does is store your “Best Of” and your most recent tweets. Here is mine: http://favstar.fm/users/Brianhopecomedy
So if you want to see what the person has written before, you can go in there and take a look.
2. Don’t use hashtags on every single joke.
It’s not really needed. Obviously, if you want a trend going then it’s okay, but if you write a good joke and use a hashtag then some people don’t retweet it. I don’t know why – it’s just frowned upon.
3. Don’t just promote shows.
If you are on Twitter just promoting shows it’s kind of counterproductive. Your tweets are you promotion. I try and keep it as an online comedy show. And yes, some tweets bomb.
I’ve had people from all over Canada and the US asking me where I’m playing next. It’s humbling in that respect – I’m not bragging, it’s just actually happening. So I know that if I have a show in Toronto, I can send out a tweet and it’ll most likely draw in people. Hell, it was when I had 500 followers.
4. Don’t be afraid to retweet people and to follow some people back.
I received a tweet after a show in Toronto from Michelle Kogan (@politicophile) saying something like, “Saw Brian Hope’s show and he is my new favourite comedian” (I probably paraphrased this for the better). Seriously, that doesn’t happen too often. How could you not follow after that? Why would you not? And she’s got a funny timeline as well so that’s a good bonus.
I do bulk retweeting for the most part and I’ve found that helps out other people. What I mean by this – is that instead of just retweeting one of their jokes, I’ll retweet four or five at a time. What it does is it gives a good sample of what the person is like and whether you’d want to follow them or not. People did it to me, so I am paying it forward.
I have lost a few followers because of doing that, but it’s helped other people get followers so it kind of works out in a weird way. I’ve had a few comedians unfollow me, which before I would have been going, “Why?” but everyone uses Twitter a different way so I understand now. Plus, other comedians aren’t really the demographic I’m aiming for – I want people following me that will come out and see my show eventually.
Oh, and I’ve learned that there is an option in Settings to turn off seeing someone’s retweets. (Many people pointed this out to me.)
Anyway, I’m not saying you should do this. Everyone does it their own way. But this is what I’m doing. GO SENS GO.
