There’s a great temptation on sites like Facebook and Twitter to turn your friends or followers into a game… trying to get more and more so that others will look at your profile and say “Woah, he’s popular!”. Whilst there’s nothing wrong with large numbers of friends or followers as such, is it really worth inflating these figures artificially with people who have little genuine interest in you?
There have been a number of schemes floating round Twitter recently that claim to help you boost your follower list by thousands of people. A case in point would be Tweep Me, where you pay a fee to have the system automatically add thousands of followers to your account. Everyone who signs up for the service follows everyone else who has signed up.
But would you actually want to talk to those people if you had the choice? Thousands of people whose motivation isn’t necessarily to connect with you because they’re interested in you, but to boost their follower number? Sure you may increase the number of conversations you have, but I struggle to see how someone can have meaningful interaction when their Twitter stream is spinning like a slot machine.
Maybe I’m missing the point. Maybe there is some value to having more followers. Maybe I’m just being a grumpy old man. Please tell me in the comments if you disagree with me, but here’s my point of view: I’d rather have less followers, but know that I genuinely want to connect with them, and them with me.
I have to say twitter is more about conversation and coming across like minded people. I wouldn’t suggest deliberately seaking out loads of people and adding them as friends. If they aren’t of interest to you then what’s the point. It just becomes a noise channel then.
Stick with people you find interesting and only follow those that you know or would want to have a converstation with. I tend to follow those that I have converstations with and then remove those that conversation has stopped with as that’s become noise.
What works for one though doesn’t always work for everyone.
Best of luck finding your personal twitter strategy!
Sometimes, having a larger number of followers leads to people stumbling onto your site and finding that they do love it. Or maybe if you have a follower that is just following for the numbers game, but someone else comes to their profile, finds you, and then genuinely takes interest, you have still made a good connection.
I personally like having tons of friends because every time I sign onto a network, I see something new and unique that I may not have found if I was only friends with a few people with the same interests.
~ Kristi