I starting using Twitter back in February because Adrian Warnock in the UK said it was essential part of blogging. It wasn’t as painful as I anticipated and Twitter provides a way to share thoughts too small for a blog.
It seems a no-brainer that who you follow dictates largely who follows you, but too much traffic comes from people who just want a lot of followers. So if you give into this temptation, what do you get? You may get a lot of followers, but most ignore your Tweets and fewer your blog. And thus you miss out on the benefits of Twitter, interaction. Wouldn’t you rather have ten interesting followers with interesting Tweets who are genuinely interested in what you have to say than 15,000 who are just counting their followers and talking about getting followers?
Follow People You Want as Friends
Follow people that you would like to meet for coffee sometime or share comments with about a blog post, book, poem, or artwork. And take ‘I follow back’ out of your intro. I’d rather know something else about you, because I’ll know if you follow back or not.
If somehow you think Twitter is the path to stardom, read William Goldman’s Four Screenplays, where he says, ‘To be a star, yes, you have to have talent, my God, do you you ever have to be lucky, but riding alongside is this: desire. One so consuming that your are willing to piss way everything else in life. Stars have no friends, they have business acquaintances and serfs. They can only fake love on screen. But they get the good table at Spago. And if that is your heart’s desire, and it is a lot of people’s heart’s desire, get rid of everything personal that might hinder you and good luck. I promise to stare as you go by.’
Do you want this? If you do, sorry even a 100K followers doesn’t get you there. Counting on Twitter? Sorry to break the news.
If I get to the point where I don’t have time to personally review the followers coming in and need an automated service, then it’s time to lock the account—not the time to use an automated service. Do your really trust an algorithm to select followers?