How do you reeeeeally use Twitter? Do you register – go around searching for people in your niche to follow – most of them follow you back – you tweet your blog post links – you get dozens, hundreds or thousands of visitors your site or blog right?
While most people might like this tactic and the fact that they might get a lot of followers in a short period of time, it really doesn’t guarantee your twitter account quality. Let me tell you why.
Quantity vs. Quality
You click on a persons Twitter name, you see 8500 following and 8000 followers. What’s the first thing that comes to your mind? Is this person thinking:
“So what if I follow 8000 people, who cares, as long as they follow me back and they get to see me tweeting my blog links.”
Or is he really interested in what 8500 Twitter members want to say? Ok I understand you might want to return someones follow just to be nice, but what’s the point? I’d personally rather have 100 interested followers that will click on my blog post links and read at least half the post (may even comment) then 8500 people that will ignore my tweets and just spam their own stuff.
Social networking should never be exploited for one-way communication broadcasting, information/link dumping or spam. Unfortunatley there aren’t rules against all of those mentioned but there is a thing called online credibility. Social interaction can improve your results in the long run and I’m sure a lot of people with more experience with social media would agree.
Information overload
How do you effectively track 8500 people tweeting so that you can actually benefit from following all of them?
Twitter is pretty close to being real-time and I don’t know about you but every time I search something, a few seconds after I get the results displayed, the yellowish banner slides on top saying “XXX more tweets before you started searching”. It’s impossible to benefit from everything even if you spend 24/7 online, in front of your computer.
Something you tweet at 12:00 may already (any probably is) kicked down to and out from someones visible twitter stream by 12:03. Depends how many followers your followers actually have.
If you maintain a high following to being followed ratio, it will make your account look popular and more people might decide to join in!
Twitter lists
This is where the new Twitter lists feature comes in. You can follow a small number of people that you really like directly with your account. Then you can follow dozens of lists with hundreds of members about certain niches if you really want.
Are you doing it right?
There is a field called Average Time Spent On Site in Google Analytics which tells you the average time users spend on your site. Read one of your blog articles in a normal pace, time yourself, crosscheck the times. If your reading time is close to the average time spent on site from the stats, you’re doing a decent job, especially if you are a beginner. On the other hand, if your average time on site is 20 seconds and you have thousands of followers, you might want to rethink your strategy 
This can of course be most accurate if your main promotional method is Twitter like mine is at the moment. But even if it’s not, the tactic is great and you should use it.
What’s my secret?
No secret what so ever. Just be an altruist (I just had to use this word because it’s best describes it). What this means is, follow people you are actually interested in, ignoring your followers count. Ok, you can use it sometimes to motivate yourself and follow back people you might find interesting.
My Twitter account followers graph from Su.pr
Re-tweet things you come across that you think would benefit people with the same interest as yourself. Also re-tweet other peoples posts out of the blue, without waiting for that person to return the favour and re-tweet one of your posts.
So how do you spread your tweets if you just joined twitter and have no followers. Simple, you use
Hash tags
Hash tags are strings of text written after the symbol # which then turns that string of text into a link – when clicked, takes you to a search page for that word.
I’d like to think of hashtags as TV channels where you can broadcast information even if you don’t have followers. This method of tweeting can usually lead to people noticing you and following you. Especially if they think your tweets will benefit them.
Don’t forget to socialize and make friends!
You don’t have to … but after all, Twitter IS a social networking site. Don’t be a mindless Twitter drone just tweeting your own stuff not even caring about someone elses content.
I’ve met some great people on Twitter among my 35-ish followers that I wouldn’t change for anything. These people have given me ideas and motivation to do some things I’ve never even knew I could. Would I have noticed these people if I had 1.000, 5.000 or 10.000+ followers? Maybe – probably – not really – if you’re lucky.
It is not my intention…
to badmouth people who follow a huge amount of accounts. Some of them are also good friends of mine. That’s why I’d like to leave this in the air and let you comment why you guys think it’s good or bad to follow a lot of people and how do you manage to find the perfect tweets in your overpopulated twitter stream.
Conclusion
Wrapping this post up, I want to show you two examples of great Twitter ratios which just give out the impression that these two individuals are great content providers.
Thanks for reading! Don’t forget to share your opinion and to share this post with your friends if you think it’s worth it.
.-= Dennis Edell´s last blog ..Welcome Aboard Part 2!...
Chad @ Tech201 (10)
Dennis Edell (9)
Agent Deepak (5)
Ileane (3)
Melvin (2)
@Ileane
says
Gordon,
You did warn me last week that I would like this post and you hit the nail on the head. I agree with everything you mentioned here and I would like to add why I like it so much. I just met 3 new twitter users this week and it is a great article for them. You have answered many of the questions that I am getting from twitter and from the comments on my blog.
Of course, it is very nice that you included a link to one of my posts! I owe you one (or two) lol.
You gave two very good examples with Dustin and Lisa and you have helped pave the way for many that are trying to make sense of what it means to have a following.
Thanks for this! You did not disappoint.
btw, let’s talk more about Google Analytics some day shall we?
@der_schneider
says
I agree with Ileane. You do hit the nail on the head. There are exceptions maybe like guy Kawasaki who says he follows everybody back to give his followers the oportunity to send a DM to him. On the other hand he says, he only reads mentions and DMs.
About Google Analytics you have another very good point. I prefer to have 5 visitors on my blog or site that spend the time there reading the article and maybe even click through some more pages, instead of 1000 visitors with 3 seconds average time and a bounce-rate of 99.9 %.
Last but not least: Ileane actually is another good example on how Twitter can work. She doesn’t follow me but allready Retweeted me and comunicated with me. (Btw, @Ileane: I’m still thinking about that english blog you asked me.
)
So, thanks for this article. I will surely keep it in my favourites and read and share it frequently.
Hi Gordon, interesting article.
Lately I’ve read some interesting posts related to this topic of quality/quantity.
Robin Dickinson from RadSmarts.com have written two great post about it, I recommend you to check it out when you have some time.
To my way of thinking there are two different ways to approach the topic. I think that the best solution is to keep a balance between quality and quantity. As DerSchhneider said, Guy Kawasaki follows almost everybody who follows him, I read his article where he explains the reason: Exposure and get noticed.
I follow almost everybody (I don’t follow spammers) who follows me because I think is what best fits with my personality; to my way of thinking everybody (with the exception of spammers
) deserves to be followed.
See you Gordon
.
David | ilcantone.com´s last blog ..THE FUN THEORY AND THE PIANO STAIRCASE
@McKnightikus
says
It’s great to see big comments like these and also that I have the right idea about certain things, not just talking nonsense. Thanks Ileane and Schneider!
Google Analytics is a great tool but it can be hard to manipulate sometimes and I have noticed that I get different traffic results on Google Analytics and on my web hosting AwStats graphs. Still haven’t figured out what’s the deal with that but some of the features like Bounce Rate are quite useful.
If you need some help with Google Analytics Ileane, I can maybe make a post about it in the future, if you could tell me what exactly troubles you. Always happy to help.
@DavidCantone Hehe good points, maybe we should all have 2 accounts and use one for quality and one for quantity
Might do the Guy Kawasaki philosophy with my Knowledge Reactor account (@thekreactor), help people get exposure.
Gordon – Great post. Seriously. It is so easy to get caught up in the numbers and even seeing how your own jump after doing some mass following. I don’t think it’s until you really start getting interested in the content of others and the community itself that you begin to see how misguided certain types of usage can be.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m by no means an expert in the field, so what works for others is great for them too. I do think the idea of two accounts is a good one too.
You hit the nail on the head with this one, good job.
@McKnightikus
says
Hi Chad! I am no Social Networking Expert myself but if I try something and I see pretty good results, then I must be doing something right – right? Especially after I share my opinion with others and I get great responses like these, It’s really satisfying.
As I continue to gain experience, I will keep writing about it.
There is a small experiment I did on Twitter and got really awesome results. Going to share them with you guys in one of my next posts. It’s about one certain subject and the way of Tweeting it that will, right after tweeting it, get you about 50-100 followers almost instantly. I’m not saying quality followers, but it’s funny how people swarm like that and only for that subject (so far). Stay tuned
You nailed with the quality vs. quantity. I have around 2000 followers, but it does not actually mean a thing. The most important thing is to have people that are so interested that they retweet your posts. 2000 followers vs. 10 people that retweet your posts is a no brainer.
I disagree a bit with not following the people that follow you. I do not loose a thing about following people back. By following people back I acknowledge other people and tell them they are important ( even though in a minor way ). After you follow over a hundred people it is impossible to keep track of all the people you follow. After that it does not matter anymore if it is 100 or 5000.
Thanks for the post Gordon! Let’s keep on tweeting mate!
Blog Handbook´s last blog ..Community Effort: How to Get People Commenting on Blog Posts
@McKnightikus
says
You have a good point. But if you follow a lot of people, your Twitter stream will be clogged up and it would become increasingly more difficult to find those few really really good tweets which are worth RT-ing and sharing with your followers.
If some “JohnDoe555″ follows me, ok great, he is welcome to do so, I will do my best to provide good tweets. But I follow him back just to make him happy, and he likes to Tweet about how he had sex with his girlfriend or a lot of other “irrelevant” personal stuff that I don’t need pushing my Tweets down and making me miss tweets from ProBlogger or CopyBlogger and so on. This is just a raw example, but I think you can see what I’m targeting at. I put quality over quantity when I follow others, so that I can provide that same quality to my own followers when I re-tweet useful tweets.
I hope my explanation is understandable. It’s always nice to agree to disagree and I’m happy you stopped by and shared your opinion. Thanks!
Ugh , there are so many “twitter experts” out there, that they give “twit” it’s real meaning. lol. Excellent post explaining it all.
The 2nd to worst are those that encourage mass following just to get followers, whether they mean anything or not….the worst are those that add the next step of mass unfollowing after the fact.
Dennis Edell´s last blog ..Are You Thankful For Your Blogging Community?
@FamousBloggers
says
Very nice post Gordon, and thank you for visiting our Famous Bloggers blog, I thought it’s so hard to get followers on Twitter when I fist started tweeting, but after some time I got the idea, but your secret is so real and make sense to me!
Hesham ´s last blog ..55 Famous Bloggers Interviews in one Place Between your Hands
@robertbravery
says
It’s all about being social isn’t it. Giving to others instead of expecting from others.
I am a great fan of promoting other bloggers and twitters.
I like to follow those who have something of vlaue to add. Just following any Tom Dick or Jane is pointless.
Re-Tweeting, well I only RT that which I see as good value. Thei RTing everything just clouds the twitter stream with spam.
I certainly look at their blog ration, if they follow substantially more than those who follow them, then it is unlikely that they provide good value. Altho there are exceptions.
@McKnightikus
says
Exactly! I love your comment Robert. You pretty much summed up everything I wrote in the post in a nice and clear way!
It’s important to distinguish between good and bad quality on Twitter. Any never and I mean NEVER re-tweet links that you haven’t at least visited (not necessarily read). If it’s a bogus link or just a flashy popup add, you will damage your own reputation and credibility on Twitter. Thanks for visiting Robert!
@techfreaks
says
I completely agree! There is no shortcut way to increase you followers except for paying them to follow you, but it is useless.
It is important that they take interest in you and follow your activities rather than just following you for the sake of following!
Tech-Freak Stuff´s last blog ..5 Cool ways to Add graphs to your Website!
@McKnightikus
says
Yes and all these Followe.rs and Twitter Tank programs make me sick because they are just destroying Twitter and people who run them are taking the cream from the top, earning cash while you are getting useless followers and following them back. Thanks for the comment Tech-Freak, I might do a post about those various Twitter followers programs.
Hi there! I have just started the Twitter game and I did the exact same mistake as you said: following people with high hopes that they will follow me back! It isn’t really that productive, I suppose? Thanks for this article Gordon, I think I have a clearer picture of how I should go about Twitter now
@McKnightikus
says
I’m glad you found the post useful. It might be slow doing it like that but like I said in the post, you will get a much better click rate on your tweets if you go for quality instead of quantity. Thanks for stopping by!