Twitter, oh how I love thee. As some of you know, I don’t pick and choose who follows me. I let anyone who wants to follow me to do so and in return, since I’m not a celebrity — or even a webrity, I will follow back, an expected practice amongst “commoners” in the Twitter world.
Of course, I could handpick who I want to follow but I don’t. And quite honestly, I don’t really care to. As long as it’s not a bot, I’ll take bloggers, non-bloggers, marketing pros, MLM sales folks, stay-at-home moms, business people, kids in high school, etc…
As a result, I now have over 10,000 Twitter followers. And guess what, I love it. Here’s why: Twitter currently brings me more traffic than all other social bookmarking sites — combined!
And it also doesn’t hurt that I receive a ton of offers from Sponsored Tweets and get paid to tweet. Having such a diverse audience allows me to have many options when it comes to what I want to get paid to tweet about.
The controversy of opening floodgates
There’s always the argument of only having targeted followers. Sure, most niches have their own demographics but you’re telling me that a music lover won’t ever look at a tweet about technology or a sports fan won’t ever care to see some dating advice? BTW, I personally don’t tweet about those topics, just making a point.
Once again, purists will probably disagree with my methods (I find myself saying that a lot these days), but the bottom line is, we all need an audience. As long my follower is an actual human, who am I to determine how “good” of a follower he is? Many of my visitors and commenters are in other niches, not just blogging/MMO.
Trust me, I created accounts specific to each of my sites and I don’t even use them. I found that what works best for me is keeping just one account for all my sites. Yes, there’s overlap and I will lose some followers as a result but I’m willing to make the trade-off.
Besides, I don’t need every follower to read every tweet, or even every ten tweets. They can simply follow me, read my tweets, click on my article links, and even click on my sponsored links at their discretion.
Surprise! More followers lead to … more followers!
Think about it, which would you rather have:
- 500 followers where all 500 care wholeheartedly about what you have to say
- 10,000 followers where only 1,000 care wholeheartedly, 4,000 care once in a while, and 5,000 barely at all
If you chose the former, then keep your Twitter friends small and connected; there’s nothing wrong with that.
However, if you’re looking to grow your following at the expense of having some people not care about your voice, then it’s a no-brainer. Get as many humans as you can to follow you and let Twitter take your site to the next level!
Which strategy are you going with?
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Gabe,
I like this. It makes sense. Make the trade off and have so many people following you who care what you have to say instead of having an insane amount of people with only so many of those followers caring what you have to say.
As you know, BluePop13.com is my personal website or site or blog. Whatever you want to call it, it’s my main place on the web where I share information with people who care what I have to say. I don’t use my real name as it’s taken and I already had the name chosen anyway from the beginning. That being said, on Twitter, same thing, Facebook, same thing. I use bluepop13 but people still of course know my real name.
The point? Well, I use bluepop13 across the board for any site/blog I put up and I have only one Facebook account as well as one Twitter account.
I think it’s best that way myself. Of course, there’s probably advantages and disadvantages to this too.
Eric´s last blog ..Blogging Is Important… Here’s Why
The biggest advantage is saving time. To me, sacrificing a handful of followers/friends to cut my time in half or more is well worth it.
Everyone has to, at some point, weigh the value of diminishing returns.
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My strategy is following each people that follow me.
Dana @ Blogging Update´s last blog ..Robots.txt for WordPress Blog
That’s definitely the etiquette for most people. Otherwise, in most cases, we’re wiped from their list in a mass unfollow.
Couldn’t agree more with this – “Twitter currently brings me more traffic than all other social bookmarking sites — combined!”
I have over 34,000 followers now and it results in a substantial amount of traffic for me.
More followers = More traffic
TechChunks´s last blog ..Microsoft Releases Patch for ‘Google Hack’ Flaw in Internet Explorer
Targeting followers may sound OK in theory but it really limits reach. So I say put pride aside and get the message out to the masses. 34k followers, here I come!
Makes perfect sense to me! Seems like I get a lot of get rich quick marketers wanting to follow me and lately have just been ignoring them. But I guess it doesn’t hurt to have them as followers and to return the favor.
There’s no harm in seeing if that benefits you. Besides, you can always unfollow them later if you change your mind.
I follow those that follow me, but I also began targeting people that have similar interests (blogging, wordpress, social networking etc..) and I follow them. I have more than tripled my followers in the last few weeks by doing this (only had a few hundred before) and it seems most of them are interested in the same things as me so it will be easier to connect.
I often wonder how you can actually see through the noise that 10k+ followers would make, and maybe I will get there soon to find out.
Keith´s last blog ..Comment Links Are Advertising
Targeting followers is a good practice. I just want to be clear that I’m saying that you don’t have to only target.
Also, one way to filter the tweet noise is to use the List feature.
Well, I’ve kept them small and connected but I find your argument for not targeting followers interesting.
Like Rob above, the flood of get rich marketers tires me out too and I’ve found it best to ignore them.
I’ll keep an open mind from now on and get the message out to the masses. Will update. .
David Walker´s last blog ..Five Steps to a Successful Blog
That may be true about some of the extreme marketing folks out there but they may also turn into one of your regular visitors or even customers.
Picture the embracing of every follower as using a billboard. You can’t really do any direct marketing but you can get your message out to the masses quickly, even if most ignore you.
You are right as I have unfollowed 2k followers just in one day as I thought they were spammers. Few followers but active is much better than more followers but inactive or spam
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Mass following and unfollowing always affects the twitter profile which may also result in getting banned,, I have used buzzom to increase my twitter followers.. but stopped using that after I came to know that this type of strategy hurts Twitter..
Rajesh Kanuri´s last blog ..ThunderBird 3.0.1 Released – Update It Now
Mass following and unfollowing is probably different than what you are thinking. Many spam bots will follow 2000 people as fast as they can, then unfollow them all after a short period of time and start over.
Following 50-100 new people isn’t really a big deal. In fact, the majority of non-celebrity tweeters with 10,000+ followers use this tactic.
Blake @ Props Blog´s last blog ..Sometimes Not Enough Is Still Too Much
Correct. Twitter doesn’t penalize people with large followings. They just want to deter spammers, and I’m not suggesting that we should be that at all.
Adding new followers every day is something Twitter actually wants. So banning heavy users is the opposite of what they’re trying to accomplish.
But they limited the max number of followers/day based on your current followers quantity
Tinh´s last blog ..[Thesis Tutorials] How To Boost Thesis Theme Blazing Fast with Gzip
Gabe raising up against “the man.” There’s always going to be a new trend with building followers and following back on Twitter.
I have a personal account and a propsblog account, and, like you, I rarely use anything other than my main account.
I do like following and being followed by people in my niche, but one problem with them is they won’t convert for anything compared to someone outside my niche (once they reach my site).
There’s dozens of people running the same ads on their blogs, so the niche is saturated and hard to convert. Bringing people with other interests is a great way to find “fresh meat”
With Lists, there is even less reason now to not follow back.
Blake @ Props Blog´s last blog ..Sometimes Not Enough Is Still Too Much
Tracking conversions is quite hard using Twitter. We have to make a lot of assumptions in the process.
That said, Twitter drives a lot of traffic to my sites. How many of those turn into dollars directly? I’ll never know but I can guess that it’s not an overwhelming rate. However, even if the answer is ZERO, the increase in traffic creates a snowball effect, making my sites more relevant in search engines’ eyes.
Plus word of mouth always helps. New people hear about your site and start linking in. There’s tons of value to having extra traffic.
The more traffic you have the more authority in your niche too.
Blake @ Props Blog´s last blog ..Sometimes Not Enough Is Still Too Much
Earlier I follow the first option but after Twitter introduce list system I follow the second. I follow almost everyone who make good tweet no matter which topic that is. However, I make my own private list to follow people whom I like to read always.
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Excellent work Gabe, this is the first of oh so many articles on the subject that ever got me thinking of not only targeting.
My main issue (I have several) – when I start tweeting again, I am very interested in the back/forth relationship building with followers…how would you ever do that with 10,000 followers.
Dennis Edell´s last blog ..Blog Move Is Imminent ! I’m Looking For Launch Partners…
You would use lists for that. So although you might have 10k followers, you would pay more attention to certain people using the list feature.
True, NOW, but lists just came out…you don’t use any of those auto follow tools, do you?
Dennis Edell´s last blog ..The Time Has Come. The Deal Is Done. It’s Time To Move!!
I don’t use any auto follow tools but I do use tools. There are many Twitter apps that can help you find people in a particular niche or simply people who want to simply exchange follows (and everyone else in between). Personally, I like buzzom, which I’ll also mention in my next article.
I totally agree on keeping just one Twitter account. Managing and actually actively tweeting on more than one just didn’t work for me.
I follow back as long as they’re not bots, hate accounts, or people using foul language (excessively). I am fairly active on twitter and once in a while I tweet about a recent blog post on one of my blogs. I’m always happy to see that quite a few people RT just because they know me and want to help me get the word out about my sites.
Anne´s last blog ..Keyword Synonyms and Google
BTW, following you now as @israelimom
Anne´s last blog ..Keyword Synonyms and Google
Hi Gabe,
I change strategies based on how I feel. As a rule I follow everybody, but I’ve been more discerning recently. I’ll probably switch back to following everybody soon.
As you mentioned, you never know who’s going to click on a link in your stream. Logic can be your own worst enemy – thinking that only targeted viewers will be interested in what you have to offer.
I’ve had more than a few interested in cash gifting who I’ve met at places like sporting events and weddings, let alone people who I’ve met online who definitely weren’t in the work at home target market.
Be open with your tweeting experience. Be careful of using logic alone in developing a tweeting strategy because logic can be extremely faulty.
Great advice buddy
You’re exactly, right. We never know whose interest we’d pique with any of our articles.
Absolutely. I wonder how many new followers I must have attracted via my blogposts that I usually publicize via my twitter stream.
TechChunks´s last blog ..How to Dominate Café World in Facebook: Biggest List of Café World Tricks, Cheat Codes, Hacks And Tips
I don’t really care about the number of people following me. But I want to follow people whom I really like. I don’t want to follow anyone only for the sake that they are following me. I like tit that way and I try to give my followers what they are actually looking for rather than spamming my account with promotional offers.
Rohit Sane´s last blog ..How to Make your Blog/Website more User-Friendly?
That’s one way to do it. There’s really no right or wrong, just what works for what you’re trying to achieve.
I just want to mention, however, that I’m not implying that anyone spam their followers. Rather, you tweet your articles, your thoughts on whatever you like, and even an occasional sponsored tweet.
Just dipping my toes into Twitter – not proactive except for having an account and somehow connecting my posts with Twitter (some plugin I think that I just recently activated). So I should accept the follows more frequently? Currently I may wander on over there once a week
One thing I am certain of and that is that if I am to continue my internet marketing career and look to growing it then Twitter needs to be part of my overall plan. Not anywhere near tweeting for money yet …lol… still working on blogging for money!
best…………valentina
Valentina´s last blog ..Tools of the Trade
Well, Sponsored Tweets can allow you to kill two birds with one stone. As you grow your followers, you also position yourself to earn money along the way.
The bottom line is that Twitter isn’t going away, regardless of how you use it.
Funny you should bring this up… I’m starting to work twitter a lot more, and I really like it.
In fact, I like it so much that the time I was spending in my RSS feed, I’m now spending on twitter.
Which means I’m not visiting as many blogs as I used to.
Dave Doolin | Website In A Weekend´s last blog ..Happy Anniversary! Website In A Weekend is 1 Year Old
I don’t spend as much time on Twitter as I could. If I did, I’d have double the followers. That said, we all wish we can spend a little more time here or there.
Anyway, glad you’re on board!