Twitter Gems – An Introduction

Posted by TeamCharlie on January 25, 2009 under Gabe's Twitter Gems, Twitter, Twitter for Beginners | Be the First to Comment

This is the first in a series of posts that will include my take on how to best leverage the use of Twitter.  In the interest of full disclosure, I have three Twitter “identities” so far.  One is @TeamCharlie, which is my outlet for all things related to Wags for Hope, dogs, and anything else I would like to tweet about.  My second personality is @KidsAreHeroes, which I usually post all things related to the Kids Are Heroes web site.  The Kids Are Heroes identity is also trying to raise funds for MaryMargaret’s Music for Life program, so it was suggested to create a separate ID for that which is @mmsmusicforlife.

Now among all three identities as of this writing I have a total following of 249 followers, some of which admittedly are duplicates. So with that relatively small number of followers why should I be considered an expert on the subject?  I probably shouldn’t.  I have seen my KidsAreHeroes identity almost double from 82 to 154 in just the last few days, however.  (I will discuss how that happened in a later gem.)  I have discovered in my relatively short but intense relationship with Twitter that there are many people with lots more followers than I that claim to be experts but they are not either.  If you search the web you will find thousands of tips about Twitter and how to get more followers.  What I have also figured out is there are no definitive answers. You need to decide on your own what is the best course of action when planning your Twitter Empire, based on the experiences and ideas of others AND your own.

Twitter Gem #1 – Don’t Get “False” Followers

I listened to a gentleman speak about how he got over 1000 new followers to a new account in just two days.  His solution was rather simple – follow as many people as you can.  Twitter has an upward bound of 2000 followers – you apparently cannot follow more than 2000 people above the amount that are following you.  This is their effort to prevent “Twitter Spammers”.  So his way was to simply follow as many people as he could in hopes that they would follow him back automatically.  Although this effort was successful for the gentleman who did it, I will not use that advice.  When I see a distinct difference in followers to “followees” with the heavy part being on either side I do not follow them.  The first scenario is when someone has many more followers than those he is following.  Here is a guy who thinks he cannot benefit from the ideas of others.  I don’t follow him because he is someone who obviously likes hearing himself talk.  Then there is the opposite case – a person who has way more people that he follows than those that follow him.  This is a person who is looking to beef up his following without making the relationships first.  I don’t follow them either, because I call the people that would follow this person back “false followers”.  Just because someone follows you doesn’t mean they care about what you have to say.  I would rather have one person follow me who is listening that a thousand who aren’t.  I like to get followers by building relationships.  These people (usually) care what I have to say.  If they care enough they will “retweet” or even suggest to their followers that they follow me which has happened to me a few times already.  The people I follow usually have a reasonable ratio of followers to followees, regardless if the number is 25 or 25,000.  These are the people that engage with others. I look at their profile first.  If I see that we have any interests in common, or if they seem interesting I will follow them.

Twitter Gem #2 – Don’t Follow Everyone Who Follows You

I have read blogs that say just the opposite – that it is courteous and/or fruitful to follow everyone who follows you.  The argument was something along the lines of  “Hey – they think you are cool enough to be followed, so why not follow them back?”  When someone follows me I look at their profile.  I use the same logic I just spoke of if their following ratio is not relatively even.  If I see that they engage with others then I will follow them if I think they are interesting.  This turns out to be most of the people that follow me, but not all of them.  If I see that they have very few updates and are following a lot more people then that really raises a red flag.  Their few updates usually relate to the item they are trying to hawk.  Sorry, not interested.

(To be continued…)

Ok that’s my two cents.  What’s yours?