The Respectable Way to Gain Twitter Followers

Photo: carrotcreative on Flickr

Photo: carrotcreative on Flickr

Recently I have noticed more and more people playing the twitter follow game: a rude, strategy-driven ploy to gain thousands of twitter followers in a matter of days.

Here’s the thing: you’re not fooling anyone.

If you have thousands of followers and only a couple hundred tweets, you’re either playing the twitter follow game or you’re REALLY interesting. If you’re that interesting, you can stop reading now. Thanks for coming out; I’m honoured.

If you’re mostly normal, it will take you some time to build up an authentic, conversational twitter community.

Here’s the respectable way to gain twitter followers:

Either a) I see something you said or found something in your bio and think you’re interesting, so I follow you. You then choose to follow me back or not, or b) you see something I said and think I’m interesting and so you follow me; I may then choose to follow you back. The more you tweet, the more likely I am to find something you say interesting; the reverse is also true.

Over time, as we both tweet interesting things, we grow the number of people who follow us and the number of people we follow.

Here’s the obnoxious follow game I’m talking about:

You follow me, usually as part of a batch follow of hundreds or even thousands of people at once with very little regard to relevance. I get an email in my inbox saying you followed so I check out your profile. You are at least slightly interesting if still a little new to Twitter (you’re not fooling anyone – we can tell by the absence of thousands of tweets) so out of politeness I follow back.

Sounds the same as above, right? WRONG! Here’s the rest of it…

I then get ANOTHER email saying you’re following me.

Photo: wiselywoven on Flickr

Photo: wiselywoven on Flickr

The thing I didn’t know when I followed you back was that after following ME, YOU then unfollowed, so I would get the email notification but you wouldn’t actually have to count me as one of the (limited) people you follow… then you auto-follow-back only those who followed you back.

It’s EXHAUSTING just thinking about it, and I’m now taking a hard stand against it. If you follow me twice I will deem you totally uninteresting and unfollow whether we have anything in common or not.

Those who want to connect with thousands of irrelevant people just to look important and justify the Social Media Guru titles they are giving themselves are the same people who send auto-responses with craptastic click-my-junk messages that aren’t worth the email they’re sent on. (Thank you Amber Naslund for coining the phrase – very relevant here).

That is not interesting; and it’s not community.

If you really want to build an authentic Twitter community:

  • Have a photo on your Twitter Profile.
  • Include a bio on your Twitter Profile that actually says something about you – what you do, hobbies, interests.
  • If you’re at all inclined with Photoshop or some other such graphic program, build yourself a Twitter background. If you’re not, upload a lifestyle-type photo as a repeating background shot so the rest of Twitter can get a sense of who you are.
  • Be yourself; if you try and be someone else it will show. Besides, the coolest thing about Twitter is the fact that the guy who works in insurance, loves dogs and model trains. Passionate about space photography can find other people who share those very same interests or attributes… or at least one or two of them.
  • Share things that are interesting to you; if they’re interesting to you, they’ll be interesting to the people who have opted to connect with you (remember you’re being yourself).
  • Be choosy about linking to your own stuff. If you must link to each blog entry, please do it without a bot i.e. introduce it to your followers with a note of interest and then for heaven’s sake, don’t tweet it out again. If it is interesting enough, people will RT it for you.
  • Reply and Re-Tweet. Please. If I look at your profile and it shows that all you’re doing is musing about life in an endless stream of deep thoughts worthy of SNL circa 1990 without ever responding to anything anyone else says or posts ever, I have zero incentive to follow you back. We all know people who are that self-involved in real life; there’s no need to look for more.
  • Grow your network authentically. Watch for good #followfriday listings that share a reason to follow someone – these will usually be from your own network and, therefore, you’ve got a good chance of sharing something in common anyway. Use tools like Twellow or Twitter Grader and find interesting people who share commonalities with you.
  • Don’t get hung up on the numbers – friendorfollow.com is evil and doesn’t even deserve a link. There will be people you’ll want to follow who just won’t want to follow you back and that’s okay. Keep following them – don’t let your pride rob you of that information they may be sharing if you want it. Alternatively, some people may want to follow you and you look at their profile and can’t find a single thing to relate to. It’s okay not to follow back. Don’t let your ego be bruised if others feel that way about you – you are most definitely an interesting and unique person and God loves you

twitter-profileI love Twitter. I use it a lot. It’s a very valuable source of information for me and I also use it from a corporate perspective (that’s another post for another day). I want to keep using it and I really do want to connect with other people who share my interests.

I want to connect with corporate marketers (not self-proclaimed social media gurus), moms, adventurous women, snowboarders, runners, Christians, musicians, people living with hemophilia or any combination thereof – the more the better… all these things are in my twitter profile.

If you really have no interest in any of those things, please don’t follow me – that’s what I tweet about.

Lastly, if you are reading this and you haven’t yet joined twitter… try it. Here are some things to consider when selecting a twitter username.

I [heart] Fridays: Fun Finds

saital on Flickr

Photo: saital on Flickr

Well, this crazy Friday saw me out directing lineups of people, answering questions about lessons, rentals, prices, snow conditions, etc., and directing traffic in the parking lot. At least I didn’t have to feel bad about it; I was right next to our Corporate VP, General Manager, Communications Director etc. We all took to the operational side of things to get through what will likely be the busiest day on the mountain this season. All this is to say I am posting this late as I forgot to do it this morning.

So, here are this week’s fun finds. I hope you’re not easily offended. Some are in poor taste.

Try as I might for a different outcome, this post from Kimli about the Duggar family had me laughing. God bless them for continuing to “go forth and multiply” but WOWZA! It’s actually the stream of comments I find funnier than the photo caption, well… until they start really getting into argument. Anyway, that’s my first fun find of the week.

My friend Chaddo set this up on Facebook for me: 11 more drunk photos you don’t want to be in. Some are decidedly not funny, but #4… SO funny. I can’t imagine.

So on Monday, Chris Brogan posted about the use of Twitter auto-DM’s. As of Monday night there were over 200 comments. An awesome Monday night laugh came from comment #106 from the lovely Amber Naslund. I guess if you don’t use twitter you won’t get it. But I just love Amber’s way with words.

Here’s a totally random and yet funny tweet from @benjaminluk about his cat in heat. Not sure why I find it funny, but then that just makes it even funnier.

Web Conversation Etiquette and Direct Messages

David Boyle on Flickr

Photo: David Boyle on Flickr

It seems that Robert Scoble aka @scobleizer decided to post a message this morning reiterating that he hates direct messages in twitter (DMs). This is not news; somehow it’s a well-known internet fact. A new post ensued: Ten Reasons Why Twitter Direct Messages Suck (And so do Facebook’s).

Side note about the power of social media: Immediately following the twitter exchange, “DMs” and “DM’s” made it to #3 and #6 on Twitter Search

This got me thinking about general web conversation etiquette.

I’ve read a number of blogs about twitter etiquette – including ones that seem to have missed the mark, perhaps (judging by the comment backlash) – the twitter 10 commandments (though I disagree with #9 – please take your “thank you new followers” tweets to a DM!), blog etiquette, and spent copius amounts of time following people like Chris Brogan and Gary Vaynerchuk who are serious advocates for returning every email, @message, blog comment, DM and the like. I completely understand the value in ensuring that comments people put out there are encouraged and continue to carry the conversation.

I have, at times, felt like the person who ends the conversation… it was like this when I was a teen, too (there’s likely some kind of deep issue here; I’ll be sure to bring it up in therapy some day). I would say something and everyone would stop talking. Awkward silence.

So the point of responding to emails, DM’s, Facebook messages and blog comments (especially when you’re a new blogger only getting a handful fo comments anyway) is clear: don’t leave an awkward silence in your online conversation. Thank people for their insight, or even just for visiting your blog. Someone has taken the time to say something to you – would you just simply look at them and receive that message then walk away in real life?

I sure hope not. Even those important enough to be jerks would do well to curb that instinct.

Sometimes I do have a giggle while wondering where to stop? If you’re not careful, you could go back and forth with people spouting random pleasantries just so you can say you’ve answered every one – sort of like a few conversations I’ve had at conventions or trade shows (you know the ones).

Sometimes I find I just don’t have anything interesting to say. What do you do then? The funniest response I saw to this question came from Marc Meyer’s comment on Chris Brogan’s Be Sexier In Person:

When I have nothing else to say, I just say, “that’s all I got”. And the conversation ends right there, no harm no foul.. and we’re all satisfied, and we walk away.

And on that note… that’s all I got.