To add to that my twitter account eventually got banned and I had to start all over again. Before I get into the rest of the concepts in this post, I want to recommend that you read Malcom Gladwell’s book, The Tipping Point.

Quality trumps Quantity: The idea that 150 followers is all you need probably sounds crazy to people, especially if you are just starting out. In an interview I conducted with Scott Stratten (this year’s keynote speaker for Blogworld), he mentioned that he tweeted over 10,000 times before he shared any of his own content. 75% of those were not even retweets, but @replies. He was engaged in real conversations with real people. So I decided to experiment with the concept for a month. The byproduct was incredible. The traffic I got from twitter increased exponentially. To top it off I met a bunch of new, really interesting people. Before long I found them on my blog commenting and sharing my posts with their followers.

The Rule of 150: In The Tipping Point, Malcom Gladwell talks about a concept called Dunbar’s number, named for anthropologist Robin Dunbar. After studying numerous groups the number 150 kept coming up over and over again. The conclusion that Robin Dunbar came to was that the maximum number of social relationships a person can effectively manage is 150. Gladwell went on to say that 150 people is what you need to make an idea spread. What’s even more interesting to is that after you get past 150 something happens that makes it harder for an idea to spread. Hopefully you see where I’m going with this concept. I want to share one concrete example from my own twitter presence. On my @skooloflife account I have 2000 followers. I get an average of 10 tweets per post. On my @blogcastfm account (the one for the podcast I host), I have about 500 followers and most interviews I get close to 20 tweets. There’s no way you are realistically going to engage with effectively with thousands of followers unless you absolutely have no life. Think about the power of 150 people who love you and everything you do when compared to the thousands of people where you are just trying to stand out from the noise.

Creating Your 150
Creating your 150 is actually quite easy and if you follow the steps below you’ll have discovered your 150 in no time. I’ve written my process out below of how I do this using tweetdeck.

• Track Mentions: The major thing you should be tracking is mentions of your twitter name. Anytime somebody mentions your name, it’s an opportunity to start a conversation and acquire a new high quality follower.
• Track Retweets: You should also pay close attention to the people who are retweeting the posts you have written. It’s obvious that they like your content, otherwise they wouldn’t be sharing it.
• Create a List: I have a list called my inner circle. Anytime somebody mentions me or retweets me, I make a point to to add them to that list. If they are a spammer, they get blocked.
• Engage with the People on that List: Simply creating the list is not going to be enough. Once you have created your inner circle list, you need to start engaging with them.
  • Daily Conversations: I talk to the people on my inner circle list almost daily. I don’t talk to all 150 of them every single day. But I talk to at least a few of them and that’s all that you really need to do to start getting true value out of twitter.
  • Retweet their Stuff: I make a point to promote the stuff of the people in my inner circle, especially if they are newer than I am to the blogosphere. It’s much easier to form relationships with people who are at your same level or slightly below. People have a tendency to only try to form relationships with people who are more established. Don’t discredit the value of your peer group because they won’t be small forever.

Where to Start When You Are at Zero: If you are starting at zero, some of the above might seem more challenging, but it’s not. Just start with bloggers who you have been reading. This is why it’s important to read more than just the a-list blogs. Find people you think are interesting and just reach out to them. They’ll be happy to hear from you. That will be the start of creating your 150.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Why 150 Followers Is All You Really Need

• There’s no specific, agreed etiquette;
• One user’s potion is another user’s poison;
• Your tweeting technique WON’T be liked by everyone, no matter what you do.

This causes difficulty, since there’s no standard to work from. Do you send out hundreds of updates every day? Should you schedule your tweets and pump out content even as you sleep? Will it upset someone if you state an opinion? Will it bore someone if you don’t?

For all the difficult questions millions of users pose every day they use Twitter, the twitterverse is a relatively friendly place. If someone doesn’t like the way you tweet, you won’t find much more than an unfollow coming your way. People get followed and unfollowed all the time, so you won’t have time to take it personally. That’s if you notice at all.

There are many opinions on how to tweet effectively. Most sound sensible and work fine if you follow them. That doesn’t stop the opinions from being controversial. Here are 10 tweeting issues that are subject to the biggest arguments:

1. Update frequency

How often should you tweet? Do you wake from the dead only when you have big news or do you try to maintain a regular heart-tweet? Many people suggest regular (but not too regular) tweeting. However, I don’t tweet at specific times and I sometimes skip an entire day. Nobody has complained yet.

2. Linking to your own blog

Personal promotion is frowned upon in one corner and expected in another. Should you broadcast your own links? If so, how often? Is this self-promotion like spam or is it simply a way of letting followers know when you’ve posted something new that should be of interest to them? Not everybody will subscribe to your site via RSS feeds, so I happily link out to my new blog posts. I tend to promote no more than once or twice and have no specific method.

3. Thanking for retweets

Do people expect to be thanked? Would they rather you didn’t bother thanking them? At what point does your following get too much to send out personal thanks each time someone retweets you? I thank those who retweet my own posts and links. I try to thank in other ways too.

4. Expecting to be followed back

If they don’t follow you, what’s the point in following them? If you value their content, does it matter if they don’t follow you? Are you looking for great content, personal communication, or both? New followers boost the ego, but you have to realize that not everyone will want to follow back. Reasons for not following don’t have to be personal or concerning, but it easily plays on the mind.

5. Using retweets

Where you should put the ‘RT’ in a tweet? Should you edit the retweet? Is it awful to you the official Twitter ReTweet button? Should you use ‘RT’, ‘rt’, ‘r/t’, ‘via’, ‘HT’ or something else? As Twitter has evolved, users have developed their own ways of communicating content. Even the simple retweet doesn’t have a clear right and wrong.

6. Too much of a single thing in your feed

Perhaps you only provide links, only copy quotations, only promote your own content, talk to yourself and not to others, say the same thing over and over again, and so on. Some users enjoy the reliable flow of the single element you bring to the table. Other users would prefer some variation. Do what feels comfortable to you. By all means surprise or change your game occasionally; just don’t surprise too often!

7. Gaps in tweeting

Should you spread out your tweets, or send them all at once when you’re on? Are automated tweets impersonal? Do people get upset if you don’t tweet at the weekend, or you miss out particular days? As with update frequency, nobody is going to complain of inconsistency.

8. Injecting personality

Should you talk about your personal life or should you provide value (unless you’re a celeb and can do both at the same time)? Should your personal life stay personal? For some, Twitter is a mere communication tool, not a lifestyle decision. For others, anything lacking a ‘human’ feel is too distant.

9. Going off topic

Will people unfollow you in droves if you suddenly write about something outside your field? If you mention a cause that you feel strongly about, is it asking for trouble? For some professional users, some care is necessary. For most, a bit of off topic banter is unlikely to shake someone’s confidence in following you.

10. Tweeting at particular times in the day

Is it best to tweet at peak times, all day long, during working hours, or whenever you like? Are you missing out on the best times for your followers? I tweet mainly to students and academics in higher education. I try not to tweet a study tips link at 3am, because most students will either be sleeping or partying. The link is more likely to be missed at that time. For greatest exposure, understand what hours best suit you. 3am may be wasted for me, but it’s perfect for someone tweeting sleep tips to insomniacs.
What next?

The use of Twitter brings up more questions than answers. There is no single way of using the service effectively.

The one piece of advice I’d give is this: Don’t panic about each unfollow you get. For every user who doesn’t appreciate your content, there are loads of users who will be happy with your output. Focus on developing a unique presence, not a concoction of what one or two users demanded. Your job is to listen and respond, not to roll over and obey.

You’ll never know exactly what everyone wants. Enjoy creating tweets that work for you. Eventually, you should enthuse, engage and inform others in the process. Genuine output is not only accepted, but also the most likely way to get you loyal, engaging followers.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



10 Controversial Twitter ‘How To’ Issues

I have been using Twitter since it launched a few years ago, but have participated more actively within the past 12 months. For much of that time I have tweeted at the username @printedproof. This user name was a mirror to my printing resources website at the time. Originally, the only reason I joined Twitter was to promote my articles and make some money from affiliate programs. This all changed as soon as I begun to witness the true power of this popular social networking tool.

As many of you know, Twitter is much more than simply a place to plug your posts, market for money, or blog for business. Twitter is a networking, connecting, and interacting online powerhouse. Don’t get me wrong, it’s OK to promote your projects on Twitter, I would say it’s even required for online success. However, if you truly plan on sharing everything about your personal life as well as run your blog or business on Twitter, I recommend having multiple Twitter accounts.

Let’s go back to my personal example: @printedproof has transformed from a targeted business execution to a place for me to just, well… be me. Since taking twitter flight years ago I have built hundreds if not thousands of mini-relationships. Some of these new connections I am proud to call dear friends and have chatted with on a very personal level. Many of these relationships share interests with me but do not necessarily share interest in my business.

My printing resources website has since taken a back seat to new projects. These new projects have taken new lives of their own with individual twitter profiles. In order to dedicate and target all updates and messages to the loyal followers of those new projects, I keep these profiles separate. Sure, I share some tweets on my personal account, as do I share great things from many of my friends on twitter. But bottom line, when a new user follows my profile on twitter, they bring with them a predetermined expectation of what they will read from my tweets. These expectations are built from important facts found in my bio, link, background, and updates. It’s important to use these things I have created to give my followers the correct impression of this particular twitter account and then deliver it.

One thing to remember on twitter is that people follow profiles because they share interest with that particular person, business, brand, or website. Followers want updates that are of interest to them. As a business owner, my goal is to provide the content that my viewers and customers require.

So relax, it’s OK to run multiple twitter profiles to meet those expectations. Do not lack the “personable” with your professional accounts; just be sure to deliver the updates that you promised.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



It’s OK to Have Multiple Twitter Accounts

• Keep your tweets short and leave at least 25 characters with free space. ¿Why? In order to get RTs your tweet will need that free space to contain the RT and @username. Besides, short tweets get more RTs because they look nicer and cleaner than long ones and, above all, because lazy people don’t like to read too much, and the Internet and Twitter is plenty of lazy people .

• The content of your tweet must be interesting and eye-catching.

• Just ask on your tweet for a RT. I don’t use it but I know many people who apply this technique and works quite well for them. For example: “Looking Into the Mirror of Life – http://su.pr/193M7S – Please RT!”

• Place strategically some call-to-action buttons on your blog to make easier for your followers to share your content. If you use wordpress I recommend you to download and use the smart sharing plugin just as Mashable.com does.

• Make some RTs to your followers. Some of them will want to return you the favour. If they don’t do you can’t get upset with them. Well you can but you shouldn’t because they don’t force you to RT their tweets; it was your choice.

• You can create a group of 5 to 10 twitter buddies and share your own tweets. I don’t apply this tip because it has two potential negative effects: (1) I don’t think that your followers will be happy to see the same people’s tweets time and again; and (2), it’s quite probable that your buddies don’t have the same or similar amount of followers as you have.

• Use hashtags in an effective way. I suggest you to add just one hashtag or even two but not more. ¿Why? Because they make your tweet look dirty and, at the same time, you would seem a spammer.

• Find some twitter users in your niche. Create a new column using TweetDeck with their @username. Check the RTs they receive and follow those people who made the retweet. If you’re lucky they will follow you back. If they don’t you can try replying some of their tweets or Retweeting them. You can identify who don’t follow you back and unfollow them manually with who.unfollowed.me.

• Make sure your blog posts have great and eye-catching titles.

• Send your tweet several times over the day. You can schedule your tweets with su.pr.

• Be grateful to people for retweeting your tweets. Don’t thank all at the same time. Each follower who RT your content deserve your complete attention and your sincere gratitude.

• And finally, my best piece of advice: be a good twitter user, be social, actively engage your followers, build meaningful relationships and your retweets will skyrocket for sure.

Follow these tips and your tweets will receive more retweets than ever before.

¿Did you like this post? Please, share it with your followers. Thanks, my friends.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



How to Get More Retweet Action on Twitter

For newer Twits, it may very well be. For those of us who were “early adopters”, we’ve got clearly different experiences. I remember Twitter before every television show and celebrity and news station had a Twitter account. Before every business went to crazy lengths to get followers. And before it became a place over-run with teenagers Tweeting about crazy sexual stuff. I remember when it was truly a networking place between colleagues, old and new. It was fun to go and see what some of the people I look up to in my field were reading or writing or talking about.

My personal feeling? There’s lots of clutter in Twitter these days. People who follow you in hopes of you following them back so they can increase their follower count, only to unfollow you if you don’t reciprocate, or once they’ve got you following them.

What do you think? Vote, and then discuss your answer in the comments!

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Poll & Discussion: Is Twitter Still Awesome?

Twitter is a lot like the wild west of social media. The venue is relatively new, many people are unfamiliar with the etiquette and an even larger number of people could care less about the few rules in place. Which is why I am quick to my trigger and hit the block or unfollow button the minute people’s poor Twitter manners cross my path.

Here are six ways to become a Twitter pariah with me (and I imagine a lot of other people):

1) Send out offers on how to increase Twitter followers. Especially if you have less followers than me. Come on.

2) Repeat the same self-promoting tweet over and over. One follower I have seems to repeat the same tweet every time I sign on about something I couldn’t care less about if I tried. We get it, you don’t need to tell us about this “incredible  limited time offer” eight million times. Obviously, the offer can’t be too incredible or limited if you’re tweeting about it every time I sign on.

3) Send me porn. Only on the web do you have complete strangers offering you free pornography. I’ve never been walking down the street and bombarded by sexy women throwing themselves at me, though I would have killed for that when I was a teenager. Spam, viruses and shadiness aside, porn on Twitter is just plain tacky.

4) Send me a link to your business without having ever tweeted to me before. Nothing makes me hate you more than a blatant and unsolicited tweet to “check out” your site. Seriously, every time I get one of these, I secretly hope that whoever sent it is cursed by a disease which prevents them from typing. This is bad, not to mention, lazy marketing. Unless I am asking for information about the product you’re selling, keep your tweets to yourself.

5) Tweet only slightly less than you breathe. Seriously, if I’m looking at your avatar every time I open TweetDeck, you’re tweeting too much. Go for a walk or crack open a book, just take a break. And PLEASE, don’t tweet, “Off to take a break from Twitter.” Just go.

6) Act like a robot. It’s okay to use an automation tool here or there, but if your Twitter feed is being run by Skynet, people can tell. I want a human on the other side of the tweets, not a robot scheduled to say “something funny” at 12:06.

In the real world, it isn’t so easy to put up with the personalities that annoy us. On Twitter it is as easy as the click of a button. Make sure you are tweeting in the way you would expect others to tweet.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Six Quick Ways to Becoming a Twitter Pariah

As I’ve been following people on Twitter, I’ve noticed an interesting trend. More and more people are starting to use a validation service to create a gateway between themselves and new followers. On the surface, this looks like a great idea, but I’ve come to realize that it might not be – here’s why:

• It takes a lot of time to validate every single message you receive – Although I don’t mind filling out a captcha every now and then, filling them out by the dozens negates what could be a positive experience. I’ve grown accustomed to ignoring these messages and as a result, I never get to communicate with the people on the other side.
• It can be confusing – Some people, particularly those new to Twitter, might not understand what Twit validation is or why it exists. Placing barriers in the way of communication is essentially the same thing as locking your Tweets, which is another behavior that I find troubling. What is the point of joining a network if you don’t want to communicate?
• Rather than taking your time to filter your feed, you are placing the onus on those interested in following you. Sure, I can ignore the request for validation, but in the end I’ll end up talking to myself. Although there are a select few I follow without a follow back, I don’t like to make a habit of it. Not because I’m a jerk, but because it shows good faith. If you aren’t interested in what I have to say, then we are going to have a hard time communicating.

We can blame the spammers for this, but they don’t care if they ruin the experience. Still, why should we let them change the way that we communicate online? Eventually, Twitter will find a way to weed out messages in the same way that Gmail does, but in the meantime, consider removing the validation from your account and taking the time to filter on your own. If you don’t want to communicate with the masses, then maybe a valdiation service will work for you. However, if your business or brand relies on open communication, then you should think twice about placing roadblocks in between you and your customer.

If you are truly concerned about a cluttered or spam filled Twitterfeed, then consider using groups via TweetDeck or Seesmic. If there are only certain Tweeters that you pay attention to, you can also import their stream via RSS to be sure you don’t miss a thing. Lastly, it only takes 5 seconds to block or unfollow someone, but it takes nearly 20-30 for me to validate my profile for you. Multiply that by a dozen or two and you’ll see why most people don’t have the time to make it worthwhile.

The concept is noteworthy, but the execution leaves something to be desired for. One of the reasons that I love Twitter is that it opens the doors to communication. The problem with validation is that it closes them. What do you think?

[image: Unhindered by Talent]

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Twitter Validation – My Take

Could a solution to the FollowFriday conundrum finally be at hand? I’m not sure, but @PhilBaumann has a great idea.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you may have read my April post, Follow Friday, too Much of a Good Thing? In that post, I discussed some of the many Pros and Cons of #FollowFriday, especially why so many people are becoming disenchanted with the meme, and offered some recommendations that I feel would improve the FollowFriday experience. Unfortunately, while many people do seem to be making better recommendations recently, my personal FollowFriday experience still leaves me frustrated.

Dude, what’s your Problem?

Just to be clear, as I stated in my previous post, I love the concept of FollowFriday; a day set aside for Twitter users to recommend to their followers other people whom they enjoy following. It’s a great idea that helps users find new and (hopefully) fun and interesting people. And while it’s certainly the quality of followers, not quantity that counts, I’ve met many great tweeters through FollowFriday and, if you participate, I’m sure you have too.

Just Names. Endless names.

Unfortunately, as with all things “internet,” there were no rules about how to participate and regardless of whatever etiquette may have emerged, it’s far from universally accepted. As a result, people made up their own rules and, subsequently, made recommendations in ways that suited them and not necessarily their followers at large. Consequently, their resulting tweets are often filled with endless lists of names. No explanations. No qualifications. Just names.

Additionally, FollowFriday tweets can flood your tweet-stream. They clog the flow and make finding interesting or important tweets difficult, if not impossible. And of course, those names may not be real tweeters at all, but the addresses of fake accounts that are designed to lure unsuspecting tweeters for sinister purposes. Just take a look at your own tweet-stream on Friday and I’m sure you’ll see what I mean.

It’s all Academic

From a purely academic perspective, the wide variety of recommendation styles that have emerged is fascinating. In my previous post I identified the most prominent of these styles, and named them as follows:

• Blind Recommendations
• Packed Recommendations
• Clustered Recommendations
• Pretender Recommendations
• Automated Recommendations
• Recommendation Rings
• Recommendation Phishing (or Phriday Phishing, as I now like to call it)

While I am sure there are more permutations and that new ones have emerged since April, I have since stopped keeping track (leave a comment or tweet me @NealWiser if you know of new ones). However, one thing remains clear; for many people, FollowFriday just does not work as intended.

FollowFriday Today

Despite all this, FollowFriday is thriving. Micah Baldwin, the “father” of FollowFriday recently provided some interesting stats on his site Learn to Duck:

• #followfriday tweets hit a high of ~240,000
• #followfriday blog posts hit a high of 746
• #followfriday Flickr photos hit a high of 10 (really? photos?)

Clearly, FollowFriday remains a popular phenomenon and while I have noticed some improvements in how some people make their recommendations, there are still far too many who simply don’t exercise good FollowFriday etiquette. Proper etiquette could include (but is certainly not limited to) the following:

• Limit your recommendations to only the absolute best people.
• Explain why you recommend someone.
• Spread your tweets throughout the day via scheduling services like Tweetlater (currently rebranding themselves as SocialOomph, Futuretweet or Hootsuite.
• If making multiple recommendations, send them in small, logically organized groups.

Thank God, It’s FollowFriday (Not!)

Regrettably, I’ve come to dread FollowFridays. Not only for the above-mentioned reasons, but also because I feel that if someone recommends me (and I’m genuinely honored if you do), I feel an obligation to reciprocate, even if I don’t have to or want to. Additionally, and I’m sure many of you will agree, my schedule is so consistently packed that I have little time or energy to make yet another list, provide reasons for each recommendation, then tweet it.

I’ve tried developing systems to simplify the process. Two examples I used:

• I used TweetLater’s Keyword Alert email service to provide me with a record of everyone I’ve tweeted with that week as well as tweets where I am mentioned. Surely, if I’m tweeting with these people, they must be worthy. Unfortunately, this required me to scour each day’s emails and pick out candidates one at a time. Furthermore, the TweetLater email doesn’t list my DMs, and aren’t those with whom I DM, by virtue of having a deeper interaction with me, better candidates?
• I also modified the search process. By using the Mentions and Direct Messages columns in Tweetdeck, I didn’t have to sort through a week’s worth of daily emails. However, I still had to scour through long lists of tweets and record both the names and rationale for each recommendation. Still too much work.

I’ve tried other solutions as well, but they all suffered from the same problem; too many steps.

Then, On FollowFriday, August 21, my friend Phil Baumann gave me an epiphany. With a single tweet from Phil, the dark clouds of my FollowFriday despair parted and a golden ray of hope shown down upon me from on high. Could this really be a solution to FollowFriday?

Who is @PhilBaumann and What’s his Big Idea?

Phil Bauman is a friend, fellow blogger and Registered Nurse who blogs about the impact of social media on health care (check out his excellent blog, Phil Baumann Online). He’s also appeared on panels at several social media conferences and, to put it mildly, Phil really knows what he’s talking about.

Interestingly enough, Phil was motivated by Facebook’s recent acquisition of Friendfeed. According to Phil, “With FriendFeed’s future in doubt, I looked for ways to more creatively use Twitter. One of the things I experimented with was to… view my Favorites as a substitute for Follow Friday recommendations and as a way to share tweets that I find interesting without bombarding my followers with Retweets.”

As is appropriate for something involving Twitter, Phil introduced his solution by tweeting it.

Phil’s idea to mark tweets from people he would want to recommend on FollowFriday by favoriting them was not only elegant in its simplicity, but tweeting his recommendations was just as simple; he just tweeted the URL of his Favorites page.

To be sure, no solution is perfect. For me, Phil’s idea does suffer from a few drawbacks, such as:

• Not every tweet I Favorite comes from someone I necessarily want to recommend (don’t worry; I’m not referring to you).
• I Favorite a lot of tweets for a variety of reasons, but while publicly available, they are not necessarily tweets I planned on sharing.

Regardless of any potential limitations, Phil’s tweet is important because it doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel. Instead, it uses an existing Twitter feature in a new way. And while there are variations, such as pointing people to your Following page instead of your Favorites page, as mentioned above, you may not necessarily want to recommend everyone you follow either.

On the other hand, Twitter could easily resolve the issue by creating a FollowFriday feature similar to Favoriting where a user clicks a button on a tweet to place that tweeter on their FollowFriday list. Then a link to that page could be scheduled to automatically tweet every Friday. Or an entrepreneurial app developer, such as PowerTwitter (get their firefox add-on here) or Favstar could add a similar feature to their respective apps.

While Phil’s solution may not be the perfect solution to FollowFriday (and if you don’t use your Favorites often, I suggest you try it), it does help us tame the FollowFriday beast. But perhaps more importantly, it is both a testament to how incredibly flexible the Twitter platform can be and proof that innovation on Twitter never ends.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Did @PhilBaumann Just Save Follow Friday?

“My company has approximately 50 employees, all spread throughout a couple countries. There are about a dozen of us managers who all have our own personal Twitter accounts, and the owner of the company wants us to be tweeting about business stuff. We’re finding it difficult, because most of our followers are based on personal interests (golf, cooking, etc.) and we don’t want to bore those people or lose them as followers by tweeting about work.

Many of us want to start up separate business accounts. The boss thinks we should be using our current mass of followers to spread the word, rather than setting up new accounts. How do we explain to him that it’s neither going to help the company brand or our own personal connections if we do it that way? Do you have any examples of the differences? He’s thinking in terms of people like Chris Brogan, whose names ARE their brands. We’re looking for the best way to explain this and it’s not easy!”

I think this is something many people might struggle with. Personally, I tweet under @larakulpa which covers both my business and personal connections. But in my situation, I’m only ME with the company. I’ve got people I outsource to, sure, but they’re not corporate employees. I’d think that maybe if I did have employees on the books, I’d try something with separate accounts that were identified somehow with the business name… @GinkgoGina and @GinkgoJames or something like that. LOL

What would you do, and how would you explain it to your boss so that he understood if you were in this reader’s shoes?

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Answer A Reader Question: Multiple Twitter Users In Business

Call me old fashioned, but I am one of those people that value community and relationships with people. As a child of the 90’s, I’ve learned to adapt to our technological age where we can keep up-to-date with people without ever seeing them in person. While this is not my preferred method of contact, the last couple of years I have seen myself rely more and more on online interaction than face-to-face. Recently though, I’ve been frustrated with the alienation of social networking sites to the point of taking some extreme measures, especially regarding Twitter.

I originally signed up for Twitter as a way to keep in touch with those interested in my history blog and network with those who have blogs similar to mine. As more and more of my friends on Twitter found me, I found myself following and being followed by people I knew in real life. While this wasn’t bad at first, I soon found myself “unfollowed” by those I was following. People I knew in real life wouldn’t follow me. Then, of course, people who knew nothing about me or my blog began to follow me out of the blue. This might be a provocative statement, but I believe this is due to the fact that Twitter is becoming more of a popularity contest than a real way to connect with people. No big surprise there. Anyone on Twitter can relate to the obsession of getting more followers. While this may be “cool” to have 10,000 followers and only follow about 300, it is an immediate turn off when viewing someone’s profile. Obviously, someone like that doesn’t, or even can’t, interact with over 10,000 followers.

I soon found this game of following and unfollowing pretty exhausting and disheartening. It wasn’t creating any sort of networking or connections with people I wanted. So I decided to take actions that could be called pretty extreme:

The first thing I did was block those who did not seem interested in me or my blog at all. It is pretty obvious which tweeters were just following me to see if I would follow them back. I don’t want to be reduced to a statistic on their profile.

I unfollowed those who did not follow me back. If they are not interested in following me back, then fine. I allowed a few exceptions for those I really wanted to follow, of course. Overall, though, I’ve found many bigger name organizations and tweeters are more than happy to follow me in exchange.

I’m pickier about who I allow to follow me on Twitter. If someone is genuinely interested in me or my blog, then I have no problem letting them follow me or reciprocate by following them back.
My Twitter updates consist of many different things, from my blog updates to interesting links. It’s good a variety for all types of people, but I want my connections to actually mean something.

I realize that Twitter should really be about more than who follows who but this obsession with getting followers seems to be the trend right now. I see it my social circles, both online and offline. It might be a little childish to take some of the measures I have, but I desire something more out of Twitter. Here are a few suggestions I have to make your Twitter experience better:

• Be extremely picky about who you let follow you. Don’t just let people follow you just for the sake of doing so.
• Make sure that people who follow you and who you follow seem genuinely interested in interacting with you.
• Go through your followers and following list periodically. See if there are any tweeters you want to stop following or keep from following you. Make sure that you are still interested in those you follow.
• Make a sincere effort to interact with those you follow. Getting connected with others is what Twitter is all about, right?

What about you? How have you made your Twitter experience more meaningful?

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



My Extreme Makeover: Twitter Edition