 Jim Storer
Sr. Director, Social Media Strategy
Return on Community
Jim Storer : Return on Community |
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On Twitter: Following and More
A few people have asked my approach on following back on Twitter and what I'd recommend for folks just getting started. It's important to note this works for me, but might not if you're adding a LOT of followers (I average ~5 new followers a day). My approach involves some screening, because my overarching philosophy is that I want to connect with "real people" on Twitter, not bots, spammers or overzealous followers (more later). I've tried TwitterKarma, but decided against it because it's too tempting to just check and follow everyone new in one fell swoop.
1. First of all, I set up a tag in Gmail called "New Twitter Followers" and apply it to anyone new that hits my inbox. This makes it easy to know who I need to take a look at.
2. Every couple of days I sort my inbox by the tag (above) and look at each account. I typically follow everyone who's clearly human and speaks a language I understand. There are a few exceptions:
- No bio or link - Even if you sound like a human, I like to know you are. Having a link to your blog and your real name is nice to see. People choose some pretty strange sounding handles on Twitter (that's your business), but let me know a little about who you are.
- Overzealous followers - I look for a balance between a person's followers and how many people they're following. I think you should grow your network on Twitter much the same way you do in real life... deliberately and honestly. Just because you can follow a whole bunch of people on your first day doesn't mean you should. I'm not talking about a 40/100 follower/following imbalance; that can happen as you start to find groups of interesting people on TwitterPacks or elsewhere. When someone is following over 52k people and a couple hundred are following them, something's going on. I don't follow them.
- Little value in updates - I usually glance above the fold to get a sense of what you're interested in talking about and sometimes I scroll down to see more. If there's not much there, I probably won't follow back. I might have caught you during a dry spell (we all have them). Send me a reply if you think I should follow you back and I'll take another look.
3. I send out a quick update (or two or three) let my network know about the folks I've just started following. Some people appreciate it and reply back. I'm not sure how much value there is in this, but I like to do it.
That's pretty much it on how I manage following back. A few more Twitbits before I sign off...
- I tend to keep an eye on who people in my stream are talking with (looking at the @ messages) and if it sounds interesting I follow them to keep building my network.
- If you have a Twitter account you need to sign up with Tweetscan. Once you have an account you can set up an auto-email with a five keywords to arrive in your inbox every morning. This will help you catch conversations you missed out on that matter (i.e. Twitter only puts a tweet in your replies tab if you're the first person mentioned, but there are a lot of cases where you'll be included 2nd or in the middle of a tweet). I subscribe to my Twitter username and I'm amazed by some of the stuff I catch up every morning. I also subscribe to a subtle bastardization of my username and catch some wayward replies every so often.
- My love for favorites is well-documented, but suffice it to say I really think they're underutlized by 95% of the peeps out there using Twitter. I go back to my favorites all the time to find something interesting to insert in a presentation or reference in a paper.
- When you comment on someone's blog leave your Twitter handle as part of the comment. It makes it easy for people to find/follow you.
- Thanks to Isle for asking the question on Twitter that led to this post.
- Thanks to Pandora for being a great example of a company that's following the unwritten rules of Twitter and growing a following one person at a time. Lucia's transparency was the kick in the pants I needed to write this post... today.
What do you think? Did I miss something critical? Am I insane with my process? Let me know with a comment and feel free to spread the word through Twitter or otherwise. This is my give-back for this week. ;-)
Mon, May 05 2008
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Comments |
 I linked to your post today under the label of "Advanced Twittering" - check it out at http://www.irise.com/blog/index.php/2008/05/07/do-you-twitter/
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I was looking forward to this post, thanks. I am a semi-n00b Twitterer, and had experienced a few follower issues -which was why I put the request out. Good insight. Nice even outlook, I agree with your logical method. Personally, one of my turnoffs is less-than-subtle spamming. I am far from a fool, and like most others am aware and tired of push marketing.Social Media is supposed to be about sharing and community, with a natural progression towards mutual benefits...not a thinly veiled excuse for spamming which is a sure fire way to get "not followed". This is where value vs self promotion comes into it for me. I know we all need to promote... but when someone goes above and beyond to *contribute*, rather than just honk, I recognize that and respond with appreciation and retweets. If it seems overbalanced with personal spamming that doesn't do anything for me, unfollowing happens quickly.Someone had tweeted the other day wishing for an app that would allow them to easily "unfollow" those who didn't follow them back. Seriously?... I don't care if I am followed back. If I am, great. (Hey, human nature, we all want to be popular) but I follow for the benefit or interest that the person gives to me, not to build up a crew. Unfollowing for the sake of not being followed to me sounds like a little kid on the playground taking their skipping rope and going home. </rant> :)Tweetscan is awesome, -I hate trying to get all the old replies in the morning so I don't "Miss Anything" Thanks for the recommendation. I was looking for a way not to miss certain twitterer's contributions. I think favorites got a bad rap by being associated with FB top friends, or MySp top, and not being used as the saving info resource that it is. If people use it for a ref to fav "tweets" as reminders, rather than associating it with picking favorite "tweeters" it would be more widely used, I think. Maybe if Twitter renamed it to Bookmarks from Favorites.. :D browser wars via twitter..oops. I have also gotten in the habit of leaving my @isle when signing off on a blog comment. If they twitter, they know what it means, and if not, no harm, no foul, right?I can't recommend Twitter highly enough for info and resources (if one builds a relevant presence) -what I still find difficult is explaining to a non-tech exactly what it is and why I can't stop.If you are an info sponge, Twitter is addictive, absolutely.Thanks again for the post and shout,@isle(I need more Twitter brevity practice)
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Jimbo - I know you and I have had this conversation a number of times so it's nice to see your thoughts in a post. I like your philosophy even though I'm a lot more lenient than you are. ;) Thanks for creating a "how to" guide for we Twitterers!<p>Best,<br>Aaron (@astrout)
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Thanks for the shout-out, Jim! Very interesting post.I go out of my way to be a respectful twitterer. :) Twitter's been a great way to connect with Pandora listeners; to answer questions, gather suggestions, and share tips and radio stations.Our standard "customer service" is excellent; this is just a bonus method of keeping in touch with listeners who don't bother to contact us directly.I hand pick everyone Pandora follows, and I answer all Pandora-related questions publicly, or via direct message. We usually only follow twitterers who post positively about Pandora, and those who have more than 50 or 75 followers/followees. Those users seem to be using Twitter as a public communication venue, and it?s often a safe assumption that they don?t mind one more follower. In most cases, they?re pleased with such an easy way to get in touch with a company they?re interested in engaging with, and they follow us back. I?ve found people really like getting their Pandora questions answered so quickly and easily, right in their twitterstream.Thanks for noticing!Lucia, for Pandorahttp://twitter.com/pandora_radioLucia at pandora dot com
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Sure great, but sometimes you don't notice. Yesterday I was on the first 50, so I literally had to refresh the page to see the numbers rising. There's a lot to it to get past all these 'cheaters'. It's a little bit of a shame that we're already experiencing vandalism of services when they have just literally come out.
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