by Fern Richardson of Life on the Balcony – Follow her @LOTB
As Fredrickus mentioned the other day, there are many reasons why someone will follow you on Twitter. Many revolve around the fact that you followed them first. But what if there is a sizable discrepancy between the people you follow and the people who have followed you back? Assuming that you are publishing great tweets on a regular basis (and thus there isn’t a good reason for the lack of reciprocation), one tool you should check out is Less Friends, by the awesome Ruby on Rails developers at Less Everything.
After entering your Twitter user name and password, Less Friends will compare the people you are following to the people who are following you and divide everyone up into three groups:
- People who follow you but you don’t follow back (“they follow you”)
- People who you follow but who don’t follow you back (“you follow them”)
- People who you follow and also follow you back (“mutual following”)
You can use this data in a number of ways, but I want to highlight a way to use it to convert green “you follow them” people into blue “mutual following” people. It’s pretty simple. Click on the user IDs of “you follow them” people and read their recent tweets. See if they asked a question you can respond to, or maybe you know of a resource that would be helpful to them. Start replying to their tweets. Retweet their good tweets. More likely than not, they’ll notice how helpful you are and start following you.
The logic is pretty simple. You get what you give. And if someone has forgotten how good what you give is, give them the opportunity to remember. It is really important to not spam people though. That will have the opposite reaction you want from your “targets.” Just like everything you do in new media, the key to success is providing something useful.
Once you’ve converted someone you’re following into a follower, don’t stop once you’ve gained a new follower. Keep on providing useful and helpful a tweets! But since you’re reading TwiTip, I assume you already knew that, right?
@AlexForce
Sounds interesting. I’ll check it out.
@amauiblog
There’s one twitter application that is similar to this, I can’t remember the name. But this seems to be an improvement of that. I will check it out.
So sorry for this probably ignorant question, but what if I don’t want to read a bunch of Tweets that I don’t care about? When I get a notice that someone new is following me on Twitter I always check them out, but I don’t ALWAYS follow back. Is the goal to have the most followers, or to network with people in my industry and market to my target audience? It’s like those people on Facebook with over 1000 “friends”. At what point is it OK to be a little selective?
@readscott
When I first read this post, I tweeted this. Then, I went back and read it again because I wanted to leave an informed comment here on TwiTip and because the guys at Less Everything work from the same coffee shop as me (Sipper’s in Jacksonville, FL).
After I read it again, I was intrigued to actually follow through with the recommendation of the author; namely, to try to start conversations with those who I follow, but aren’t reciprocating.
So, I did it, and it was remarkably rewarding. Not just to ‘try’ to get more followers, but to interact with people purposefully. I liked it. That’s I have to say.
@readscott
@robyn – I think the goal depends on the user. Some people are trying to build a large network (which is fine) and some people are trying to build an intimate network (which is also fine). Twitter’s structure is built to handle both types of networks efficiently.
@LOTB
Robyn–I’m selective too. I’m not some celebrity on Twitter. I have about 330 followers on Twitter, and follow about 350 people. I only follow people who are interested in gardening or a related niche. But if someone was consistently answering my questions, and sending me interesting tweets, I wouldn’t find that annoying. Although I guess if I did, I could always block them.
That being said, Twitter is a rather useless platform if you don’t have any followers, and it’s utility increases exponentially with the number of followers you have. It’s an example of the paradigm “if a tree falls in the woods, does it make a sound?”
@ryanbarr
Hey Fern,
Great concept, although I feel as though there is some conflict: personally when I go to see if a user is worth following, I check to see the followers/following ratio. If they are too close I fear of three things:
1. (If the numbers are small…) Am I throwing myself into a small group of family or friends that use Twitter to communicate?
2. (If the numbers are high…) Am I about to follow someone who follows whoever they can just to increase their numbers?
3. Am I going to be following someone who might engage in conversation just this once to get my follow and then go on to just tweet random things and flood my timeline?
My thought is this: I use TweetDeck personally, and I have a feed sent to any replies to my account. If someone replies to me, I will often respond, however I only follow those who engage multiple times with me and provide useful tweets related to what I am interested in.
At the time of this post, I follow 167 people and have 258 followers. Many of my followers whom I don’t mutually follow don’t mind that I choose to not follow them, but still engage with me. Along with what robyn said: Twitter, in order to avoid being a giant who-can-get-the-biggest-pool-of-followers spam fest, needs to have users that are more selective with their following. So, to relate directly to your post:
Users should use this method to find new people who follow them but they don’t follow back, but should be more selective in those they pursue to gain a follow back from.
@andreasnrb
WHy not just use http://friendorfollow.com/ instead?
Write your twitter id and you get people organised in 3 categories. Friends, following or fans.
@BlogConsultLLC
I tried it out and got a re-direct (302) error??
Why isn’t it called FEWER FRIENDS? Is it in to be grammatically incorrect?
@ThoughtsHappen
I tried this tool and it seems to be well implemented, and gave me an idea of some people that I am following but are not following me that I would be interested in engaging in conversation with. Sometimes I forget if someone is following me or not, so it can give me an idea of someone I might like to engage with a little more. Ryan I thought you had some great comments and I completely agree with pretty much all of what you said. I don’t automatically follow people who follow me, and so have more followers than I follow. If someone wants to follow me but never engages me then I see no reason to follow them back. I expect the same from others and don’t expect them to automatically follow me, although sometimes they do.
@mikerlewis
I’m not very impressed.
I wrote a similar app, tweeptracker.com in a couple weekends, but tweeptracker is much faster, uses OAuth, and allows you to manipulate your friend list. I also feel like tweeptracker displays your friends in a much more digestable format. Perhaps I’m just biased.
@_djh
I tried this and it is a nice tool.
Good to see in a simple layout, just how my follower/following relationships are working. One to two surprises I must admit.
@lotb
Ryan–Not sure your assumptions are correct about people who have a high follower:following ratio. Presently, I have a 12 person difference between the two groups. I only follow people who twitter about gardening, organic stuff, green living, etc. The only person I follow that I share close family/friend ties are my husband and one friend from law school.
As you mentioned, a lot of people are skeptical about a one time responder. That’s why I try and consistently provide something useful, both in my replies to individuals and my tweets in general.
@LOTB
Mike — I guess you’re more than welcome to write about your tool and see if TwiTip is interested in publishing your post. I have no personal affiliation with Less Friends, it’s just the tool I happened to find, and it has been useful to me.
@mikerlewis
@Fern. I apologize if I came off a bit snarky, it wasn’t a slight against your article. I’ll try writing up an article if I ever get any time. Busting out new twitter apps isn’t my primary job, so I kind of lack it.
@alisonkerr
I really like the idea, but I don’t like being asked to enter my Twitter ID and password. I just don’t trust anyone with that information. I wonder if Tweetdeck does something similar. I imagine tweets could get out of hand pretty quickly – I’m only following 58 right now, but several are high volume. At some point I’ll need to follow less, or have a way to organize.
You can even automatically unfollow people if they meet certain criteria.
Check twitter-adder.com , don’t pay attention to the name, it can be a useful tool when properly used.
@mikerlewis
@Alison – Look for sites with OAuth which don’t require you to give up your password. All my sites use it, (and it didn’t require a whole lot of effort to enable it).
@hectorhenry17
Good product i would like a program that tell me from doze that i fallow, which one have like months whit out tweet, so i will take take that like a reason to on fallow them.
But good to know a programs like this one great thank you.