Number of Twitter followers no sign of expertise or influence
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There's a growing number of people on Twitter who are seeking large numbers of followers, apparently as a showing of their importance.
Look no further than the people who start following you on Twitter. People with 20, 40, or 60,000 followers. People that you have no idea who they are.
Why the chase the for followers?
- Ego?
- Insecurity?
- Need to feel important?
- Trying to sell services and products by spamming others?
- Whoring themselves out to other spammers?
- Trying to increase their measure of influence?
I don't know. But just because someone has a lot of followers on Twitter does not mean they are offering anything of value on Twitter or that they have any expertise in anything, let alone social media and social networking.
Don't believe for a second that it takes influence, expertise, or the desire to foster meaningful relationships to get followers on Twitter.
Some people seek lots of followers by following thousands and then un-following those who do not follow them back. Heck some folks do this repeatedly in an effort to get you to follow them. I can't count the number of email notices I get from Twitter that the same person is following me again.
And now for the lazy you can buy software that'll get you thousands of followers on Twitter. Do a Google search for 'software to get twitter followers.' Here's the type of crap you'll see promoted:
- Huge-Sized Twitter© - Explode Your Twitter Followers - Just $27, Money Back Guaranteed
- Buy Quality Twitter™ Followers Now - Buy Followers Packages For As Low As $37
- Endless Twitter Followers - Get 1000 Followers Per Profile In A Day. On Autopilot! Free Trial
- Twitter Adder - Professional Twitter Marketing Tools - Automatic
- Get Rich Using Twitter - Totally Automated Easy To Use Follow By Keywords - Make Money
- Hummingbird Auto-Friend Follower (for people looking for friends automatically)
Geez. Makes me think of Rodney Dangerfield's one liner "I was so ugly as a kid, my mother used to tie a pork chop around my neck so the dogs would play with me."
I'm sorry if LexBlog promoted some of this follower chase by LexTweet displaying legal professionals using Twitter in the order of how many people were following someone. We're working on ways to change that.
If you're looking for followers on Twitter, do it the old fashioned way. Share news and information of value to your target audience. Word gets around and more people will follow you. Follow others you'd like to get to know and learn from. Share things of personal interest outside the law. You'll find that others with similar interests will begin to follow you.
But don't fall into the trap of chasing followers or feel the need to follow everyone following you. They may just be seeking 'Auto-Friends.'
Good points. I guess I'm new enough to this that I'm finding some interesting followers who appear to be autofollowers. I can still find what's interesting and useful by filtering the tweets in TweetDeck.
The irritating ones are the scantily clad females only tweeting about their pictures and the get rich at this url tweeters. Over and over again.
Most everyone else I'm happy to give the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps I'll become more jaded as I'm more involved.
Got to agree with everything you have mentioned in that post. I can't tell you how much of battle I have been having with mass followers, script users, and spambots. Also, having been railing against people cheating algorithms so it looks like they are more popular then they actually are. Sometimes people forget there is actually life outside the Internet. ;)
All I want is genuine communication. I just find it unfortunate that some users put such a high emphasis on followers when it has been gamed and cheated upon.
Why no do both--follow lots, then periodically unfollow those who dn't follow you, AND, all the while, posting valuable, interesting tidbits that people who share your interests should like.
What bother me are the marketeers and the people who tweet ABOUT Twitter (incl, this article)...I mean, I'm ON Twotter I don't wanna read about it! That's like watching tv shows about tv or reading newspapers about the newspaoer biz. Zzzzzzzzzzzzz
The medium itself is all but irrelevant to me.
Tomorrow there'll be some new thing, and I'll use it until I can reach more people with something else. I don't give a crap about which company or what kind of medium it is.
Another article about twitter worth reading. Even if you don't agree with all the points stated, still good to consider them.
One thing I keep hearing over and over is to share something of value. I especially like the above sentence, "Share news and information of value to your target audience."
Good point that you may find some good folks who follow you at random who you may want to get to know better. I'm sure that's happened with me following back someone who first followed me.
As far as people like me blogging about Twitter and suggesting ways folks may want to use to Twitter, it's a positive. We're all still trying to learn how to use this strange medium. We can learn from each other.