Ever since I joined Twitter, I wanted a lot of followers. I wanted to be a guy who gets a lot of @replies from people all over, and get retweets left and right. You know, the common dream for a Twitter user.
If you haven’t noticed from the sidebar, my Twitter account is @AlexFraiser. Basically, I tweet about any web development/WordPress stuff, I tweet/retweet links, chat with people I follow, and talk a bit about what I’m doing.
I like to connect the most with people in my age group, but I will follow anyone who interests me in general. That sounds like a common Twitter user right?
WRONG! I don’t believe that many Twitter users nowadays use the service so much to find information, but to spread it. I’m not saying that Twitter isn’t a great information portal — because it is. What I am saying is Twitter seems to have become more of a service where you share information instead of finding it most of the time.
One of the reasons that this thought even popped into my head is all of these “How to Get XXX,XXX Twitter Followers” articles that are constantly published on blogs today. If you’ve ever read those articles, nowhere in any of them does it talk about “building an account that can easily reach information,” but how to create a Twitter account where you can “share information to a vast audience.”
I just feel like a lot of people are really missing out on a lot of knowledge because of one of the methods that is used to draw so many followers to your account.
What Method Is That?
The method I am talking about that is used to draw in so many followers is the simple: I Follow You, You Follow Back *Hopefully*. Basically, you mass follow any amount of people a day, and wait for a little while for them to follow back. If they don’t follow back, you unfollow them and repeat the process.
This is common, and I think the large majority of Twitter folk have tried it before on their account.
Doing this method completely conflicts with my idea of using Twitter to get information rather than share it all of the time. Think about it, if you follow a bunch of people you don’t know just to get them to follow you back, you’re going to have a feed of tweets from people you don’t give a crap about! Is this the Twitter we really want to use?
Do Tons of Followers Outweigh Relevant Information?
This is a question I think we should all ask ourselves. If you follow the people you are only interested in, then you will learn so much more and come to value Twitter so much more. With all of these irrelevant tweets coming through on your Twitter home page, what’s the point of even visiting Twitter?
Even if you want to promote a product of yours or something like that, does mass following work even then? Unless you do a lot of research and target potential people who would be interested in following you, mass following random people will not help you. Most people fail to do this research, and they think that because they have thousands of followers, all of those people will actually listen to their tweets.
What I Did
So with all of these thoughts in my head, the thing that gave me the idea to what I did next basically changed the way I use Twitter now and forever. Hopefully by me sharing this article with you, you think about the way you use Twitter and if that’s the way you really want to use it.
I stumbled upon this article from a fellow youg blogger, Joel Drapper titled “Why I Unfollowed Everyone on Twitter and Why You Should Too” where he raised some extremely valid points about the way we use Twitter, and I basically agreed with everything he said in his article.
After I read that article, I made the choice that one night I would apply what he said into my own Twitter account and watch my account change. And it changed, it changed quite a bit!
How My Account Has Changed
So my account did change in quite a few ways. I think by unfollowing these people has really opened my eyes to how Twitter works, and I feel like I really understand the Twitter community after doing this.
My New Twitter Stats
- I now get tweets from people I only care about (people I talk to, or who tweet about stuff I am interested in)
- I went from following 982 people to 353
- I went from 1,036 followers to 898
You can even look at Joel’s Twitter account. He had 13,000 followers, then he started to unfollow, and now has 9,200 followers. Is it worth it to drop all of these followers for you?
So I pretty much got rid of whoever tweeted information I couldn’t give two craps about. I discovered I had followed people who were into pet grooming. Was that the kind of information I wanted to read about? Information I’m not even remotely interested in? Forget that!
What I Discovered
So besides seeing changes in my Twitter account, I leaned some things about the small community of people who I used to have connection to until I unfollowed most of them.
I mentioned above that I had 1,000 followers, and I dropped to about 900 followers after I did the unfollowings. That means that 10% of the people who followed me didn’t care what I had to say either, which means that they were pointless followers; followers I gained by mass following people and getting them to follow back.
What Is Your Opinion?
Alright, so i think this kind of topic can bring up quite a bit of controversy and discussion. At Joel’s blog, it sure as hell did. As a matter of fact, he wrote a followup because there was quite a bit of confusion.
I don’t regret doing what I did at all, I can now find all of this great information any time I log onto my Twitter account because I follow only people I care about what they have to say. I urge you to consider your Twitter usage and see if you’re doing what benefits you the most!
{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }
Good stuff! First off- glad to see I wasn’t dropped in your Twitter purge haha.
Secondly, I totally agree. Although my twitter follow account is almost twice my following account (I think that’s just I suck), I try to stick within the active design/thesis/media world of follows.
One thing I get sick of is people complaining about “Twitter going downhill” or “Oprah” this and “Miley Cyrus” that, but Twitter is really what YOU make it.
Don’t follow people you shouldn’t, and drop people that you should. I’ve basically dropped my RSS feeds in place of Twitter, and have no gripes then or now.
Haha, anyone who even utters Thesis will be followed by me. :p
Twitter is going downhill a little, it freakin’ takes like 5 minutes to load the page!
In all seriousness though, I agree. It is what you make it, and if you want to follow a bunch of people who don’t care about you, or want to b*tch about Oprah, then that’s what you want your Twitter experience to be.
I like how you think Matt, hope to see you around here again soon.
I totally agree, Alex! In fact, when I’m deciding to follow or not to follow someone, the first thing I do is look at their following/follower counts. If they are following more people than are following them, I will assume that they’re forced to ‘bribe’ (mass follow) to get followers and must not offer much to the community.
If you’re Twitter account has up-to-date relevant information, you will get followers! And those followers will be truly interested in the content you publish. It all goes back to the basic argument: Quantity or Quality?
I hate when people misuse “your/you’re,” and I just did! Oops!
**If your Twitter account….**
That’s a smart technique Matt, I get a lot of people following me who follow hundreds more people than follow them. Not all of those people have useless tweets, but the majority do.
It’s best to have 50 followers who actually read your tweets and interact with you, than having 1,000 people who don’t know you’re there or even read your tweets.
I recently created a new Twitter account for my new domain, and followed only those that proved to be valuable twitteres to me. So, in a way, I also cleaned up my twitter account
I think it’s interesting how you created a new account instead of just changing the username. How is it working for you?
Cool article Alex, I retweeted it
I do agree with the points you’re making, but at the same time I’m trying to think of it another way… think of all the new people you could meet from having masses of followers? OK, I’ll be honest, most the people who you ‘follow back’ will just post links to their site, but surely if you can connect and become friends with one or two of them then it’s worthwhile.
Recently I saw a link I liked on Twitter… I took a greater interest in the guy and the guy’s site and he now comments on my site a lot, as well as doing a guest post recently
I mean, surely the masses of tweets you receive are worth it for the one or two quality people you’ll meet? And surely by unfollowing a load of people, you’re reducing the chance of more people following you, thus reducing the amount of these quality people you’ll meet.
Like I say, in general I agree with you, but I can also understand the different reasons that people will try to build up a massive followship. Infact, let’s be honest, a lot of people are on Twitter for marketing only, which is (as quality Twitter users will know) a massive waste of time.
You’re right, if you follow people then you always have the chance of meeting some. So by not following many people, you probably have less chance of meeting new people.
But you have some pretty nice logic in that comment, it’s a great argument for this topic.
Yeah, but in my opinion it’s all about hindsight, which, lets face it, pretty much no one has (I know I don’t). What do I mean?
Well, you only really want to follow quality people, as these are the ones you’re most likely to connect with, so, ideally, you need to know whether they’re a good Twitter user before you follow them. Whilst you can go on their profile and take a look at their tweets, this can be very time consuming, especially when you get loads of new people following you everyday. I’ll get between 10 and 20 people follow me everyday, so if I looked at all of their profiles to judge if they were quality, I’d have a lot less time on my hands
To play devil’s advocate, there is something legitimate about having an enormous following. When I visit someone’s account and they have 10,000+ followers I tend to think highly of them or their business. Also, the more followers you have, the more likely people will be able to find you (i.e. you show up higher on the Twitter directory lists). So there are definitely advantages to mass following people in the hopes that they’ll follow you in return.
Personally, I agree with about 95% of this post. Twitter is intended to help you find information and build relationships. As a website owner, Twitter is an incredible place to find relevant posts and interesting sites to learn from and comment on.
I remember finding you and Blogussion through Twitter and reading your site has since become an almost daily ritual. If my only goal was to increase my following, then I wouldn’t have clicked on your link.
Additionally, what good is traffic to your website if it doesn’t turn into a conversion (a subscriber/buyer). Considering your site as a business, you have a much better shot of selling to a “customer” if you have some sort of relationship with that customer.
I’ll admit, I’ve been guilty of mass following and following my new followers without looking at their page. But this post has really opened my eyes and I think you’re on to something. You’re wise beyond your years, Alex. Keep up the good work. And sorry for the ramblings…
There are some great advantages to mass following, and it does seem like that the more followers someone has the more respectable they are. But there are of course the ones who just mass follow to get follows back, and do end up with thousands of followers. But, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are very respectable. It’s kind of hard to decide whether or not to follow someone just based on a few of their latest tweets and their stats, but we all get by somehow.
Business is all about relationships. While I don’t exactly consider any of my blogs a business, I am still using my blog and Twitter to start up relationships for when I finally do start up my business. The more you focus on creating relationships with people you can relate to over the ones you follow in hopes of a few clicks, the better you can sell your product and website to your viewers.
I did the same to build my personal Twitter account, and even the same for my Blogussion Twitter account. My personal and blogging account are different; one of them I want to learn from, the other I want to market on.
I hope this idea does get recognized by someone, I mean it’s just the old idea of Twitter being brought back up!
Once you start twittering, its really hard to resist when you see people with soaring high stats. I’m happy that I’m able to contain myself. Well, I feel, following people who write stuff which is of your interest is still worth even if you don’t really indulge with them in any kinda conversation.
I turned 16 few days ago!!
btw, It’s nice to see people of my age taking interest in blogging!
You’re right, when I first started using Twitter I just wanted to, like I said, get really popular on it. I think every Twitter user does. When you see people with thousands of followers, you can get envious and want the same. So, you sacrifice one of the great perks of Twitter – learning from it.
I always like to see other young bloggers as well, thanks for stopping by!
Now that was an Awesome, informative Post. Some very true points written there.. I just loved it Alex. Very well written !
A suggestion (though ur a better blogger than me). Add some spice to your posts, with images or something. when one scrolls down the post.. Its all text all over the screen. People may become bore or lazy thinking that they have to read that all. (atleast I). :$
Thanks for the comment.
I try to add images wherever I feel like they should be added, but I didn’t feel like this post needed anything else. But thanks for the feedback.
I admit, I haven’t ventured far into the world of Twitter, but I did find something that helps: Outside networking. For example, I have a few other microblogging accounts like Facebook and Plurk, along with many other social accounts like Digg, Mixx, StumbleUpon and so forth. I used the same username on all these accounts, but not the same content. On some I would post funny snippets, quotes, and interesting articles. On another I would host discussions, talk with readers of my websites and have a “no holds bar” on whatever I wanted to put on there.
From this, I gained many friends from bloggers, to soccer moms, to techies and friends countries away. So when I implemented my Twitter account (with the same username) I found out a whole base of my online friends that already used it. We followed each other.
The trend I see now is that when I have conversations online on any of my accounts, my friends friends see what I posted and they are starting to add me as well. It might be a roundabout way to add Twitter friends, but at least they don’t unfriend you and they are genuinely interested in what is going on.
For marketers Twitter is a great way to spread information. However you have to find the balance between trying to get people to buy/click/submit and actually providing useful and relevant information.
.-= Buy PSP Go´s last blog ..Sony Considered Second Analog Stick for PSP Go =-.
I did the same thing recently. It was amazing to find that I was following so many people who are not even in the same niche(s) as me. I unfollowed them — feels good to have cleaned up my Twitter account!
Alex:
A very, very astute blog post for such a young man.
I have clients in the legal, CPA and consulting professions who haven’t figured out how Twitter and Facebook work.
I’ve just finished up a blog post which echoes a lot of your thinking (but in a little blunter more “old guy” type way.)
http://www.rainmakerbestpractices.com/twitter-is-for-dummies-the-non-dummy-guide-to-networking/
I think you’ve got a very good business future in front of you!
Best of luck in your endeavors.
Patrick McEvoy
President
Rainmaker Best Practices
.-= Patrick McEvoy´s last blog ..Twitter Is For Dummies. The “Non-Dummy Guide to Networking” =-.
so everybody some researches to get a conclusion like you did
.-= Jage´s last blog ..i-Mobile TV630, Handphone With TV Tuner =-.
Haven’t jumped on the Twitter bandwagon yet. Am still on the fence with this one.
.-= PSP Go´s last blog ..Buy Sony PSP Go – Quick Buying Q&A =-.
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