I know how you think. Here’s what you tell yourself about Twitter: “If I follow Mr. Celebrity Man and if I get Mr. Celebrity Man to notice and reply to me, I’ll get all sorts of new followers!” You heard the story of the girl whose life changed because Conan followed her, you’ve seen how cool it is when Shaq answers people’s questions, and you’re thinking that you’ve found your ticket to fame.
Well, don’t take this personally, but you haven’t, for three reasons:
- Only a select (albeit popular) few celebrities take a significant amount of time to reply to their followers.
- While your chances of getting someone famous to respond to you—to be honest—aren’t all that bad, the odds of anyone else seeing their response are not so good.
- If you’re getting followed by the random marketer lady who goes around following people who celebrities send @replies to, random marketer lady isn’t exactly the kind of quality follower you’re looking for in the first place.
With that out of the way, let me give you a revised strategy that will build quality followers. Even better, my strategy will boost your ego because you’ll at least feel more popular because of the number of replies you get. So, what do I recommend? Follow the little guy.
I’m telling you, if you follow a guy with 25 followers, you’re much more likely to get his attention than someone like Ashton Kutcher with 25 hundred thousand followers. Not only that, but you’re much more likely to get him to notice you and your tweets more than once, which is your real goal.
Here’s my hunch: lots of people are just using Twitter because everyone else is, not necessarily because they want to be power users. By befriending this type of follower, you’re not only spreading out your influence, you’re really making sure that you build quality relationships. And trust me, lots of quality relationships with people with only a few followers are much more beneficial in the long-term than a fluke @reply from some million-followers-celebrity who’s going to be out of the news tomorrow.
Now for the qualifications. You can’t just follow the little guy, you’ve gotta make an effort to communicate with him. He’s the little guy for a reason, he’s not monitoring every tweet. Choose a Twitter user directory, find some people who look like they use Twitter often but don’t have too many followers, and start a conversation. Oh, and don’t be a creep. Or at least if you’re going to be a creep don’t tell anyone that I gave you the idea.
So give it a shot. Follow five or six people who don’t get too many people to follow them. Start a conversation. I bet you they’ll appreciate it, and I bet you they’ll respond. It’ll be a lot more fun, if nothing else. Let us know in the comments section below how many new friends you’ve made.
@mmatthewlyle
Great tip; one that I use a lot. A good way to find some of these little followers is to check out http://retweetfollow.com and see which users have been retweeting things you’ve been retweeting. It shows you their following/followers count and makes it real easy to find quality people to interact with on Twitter. I started using it a few days ago and have seen some pretty awesome results.
@SuperMoonMan
@Matt, Thanks for the link. I typically use WeFollow and just look for people who have tagged themselves with tags that interest me. It works well because I’ve noticed that when looking for people with not-too-many-followers I’ll find a lot of people who signed up for Twitter and haven’t used it since. When looking at a directory to which users have to add themselves, it sorta weeds out the not-so-serious ones.
I like the idea of that site, though, and I will definitely check it out! Thanks again!
@k0zm0zs0ul
Haa…great post Steven…love it.
And I do notice that the bulk of my responses on Twitter come from people who have smaller followings rather than large ones. Nice reminder!
C
@VasserPro
Excellent advice. If you are looking to actually make money are create/nuture relationships, this is a must.
@rososusilo
good idea, but I have another reason why following famous celebrities become very profitable. the reason is when we are in the top list (page 1) the celebrity follower. we’ll get a free follower of his fans. focus on celebrities who have the following sugestion from twitter.
@SuperMoonMan
@rososusilo That is certainly true. When you follow a celebrity, you will be on that first page of their followers and probably get a few followers because of that. However, depending on how popular that celebrity is, you’ll be pushed off of page 1 pretty quickly. I guess if you made a habit of following celebrities, you could probably gain a good amount of followers this way. I’m just not sure you’d always get high quality followers, which in my opinion is more important than having a high number of followers.
Thanks for your comment!
@SuperMoonMan
@Cori That’s the thing…people who follow fewer people will generally notice your tweets much more frequently. If I’m following 5000 people, I’m going to miss a lot of my friends’ stuff (unless, of course, I’m constantly checking my well-organized lists and groups). If I’m following 50 people and actively using Twitter, though, I’m a good person to follow, as it’s a good bet that I’ll catch what you’re saying. Thanks!
@Chad Agreed! Thanks!
@geekiestnet
Yeah the last comment says it well. If you are not using the list feature well you will loose too many tweets which you need to read.
@SuperMoonMan
@Krish Very true. If you want to build relationships with people, it really helps to have your tweets organized.
@drinkwhat
Great Tips! A lot of people with less followers will most likely to follow you!
@travel_easy
excellent tip. Simple & yet so sensible. Probably people even know such things but they never really realise.
Look forward to more tips from you!