Have you read articles like the following one, “Twitter has a big problem with fake accounts” It can be very disturbing if you are just getting started on Twitter. About two years ago, I too, fell for these scams and I purchased a program that would go out and find people to follow based on some key words. Oh yes, my twitter numbers were rising and rising fast. Also, each night I would go in and clean out some of the junk accounts and make sure the people I followed at least had their own profile picture and had tweeted for awhile. Then, the software improved and the quality of people who I followed went up too. My numbers grew to over 20,000. I thought I was pretty cool. People wondered how I became so popular and I told them about this certain software package and some of them signed on as well.
That was two years ago. After looking at the list of people who I was following and those that were following me back, I quickly realized that 40-50% of these people were hardly using twitter at all and were really not the kind of people who were going to purchase my company’s products and services or had any type of knowledge worth following.
I made the decision to basically start over.
I decided I actually wanted to connect with people and have a better experience on Twitter.
Anyone can follow numbers going up and down, but actually making a difference from a branding standpoint takes more than just adding followers through an automated process. By the way, you can tell which people use this type of service using Tweetdeck/Twitter. Check out this Post, “Are you following quality Twitter People”
Today, I don’t worry about the follow/follower counts. With that being said, I do think each person should try to break the 1,000 barrier of people who follow you. As far as me following other people, it is a process I go through each year. I like to give “great” people a chance and I add 1-2 new people a day. During the course of a year, I will review this list and determine what type of connecting potential there is.
Some tips that I have learned in 2012 when trying to decide if you should follow someone or not, check out the following:
- Mare sure they have tweeted at least 100 times and tweet regularly each business day. (Cut them some weekend time)
- Check out the type of people they follow. Do you fit in with these people? If not, why waste your time
- Check out the type of tweets that are posted. Some red flags for me are 1) all tweets are scheduled -not conducive to connecting, 2) all tweets are personal happenings: coffee, good morning, blah, blah, blah
- Check out the type of links that this person shares. Is this information pertinent to you and your company.
Make sure you carry yourself with integrity, have fun and pay close attention to who you are following.
Ask yourself, “Do I really see myself hanging out with these types of people?” If not, don’t waste your time following them in the first place.
photo credit: Brett Jordan via photo pin cc
It definitely takes some work. Thanks for sharing.
Sounds like good advice. Need to do some housekeeping now myself – so many interests, my counts are a bit unbalanced. Pinning and sharing for others to try as well