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5 Reasons Why Twitter Auto-Follow Is Bad Marketing | ||
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Let me start by saying this post isn’t going to be very popular with some people. In fact, it’s probably going to ruffle a few feathers. But that’s okay. I’m here to help people make more money with their marketing, and sometimes the truth hurts. There are certainly exceptions to everything, and some marketers may find a way to make auto-follow effective, but I’ve personally seen the light and believe it’s a doomed technique for long-term success with Twitter. A couple of days ago, I unfollowed over 30,000 people on Twitter. Many people are wondering WHY. And this blog post explains why I am no long auto-following people on Twitter (i.e. auto-following anyone that starts following me.) After using Twitter for the past several months, and running several marketing tests with it, I’ve learned many things about it. I think Twitter has great long-term marketing potential, but there are definitely some powerful do’s and don’ts to making it work for your business. Here Are Five Reasons Not To Auto-Follow People On Twitter 1. Twitter Auto-Follow Is The New Email ‘Safe List’ Do you remember email opt-in safe lists? Someone came up with an idea to help other marketers get more opt-in email subscribers. So they created a system where anyone who joined would get the ‘right’ to be able to send emails to all the other members. Thousands upon thousands of marketers joined these ’safe lists’ so they could instantly have access to a large opt-in email list to send their marketing to. Sounds great, right? There was only one small problem… barely anyone would actually read the emails that the system sent out. In fact, it became a known technique to join a safe list and use a throw-away email address that you never used. This made safe lists worthless for marketing. Twitter auto-follow is producing similar results. Think about it… No one can possibly follow the tweets from thousands of people. NO ONE. Trust me, I know. I was following so many people that I barely saw tweets from anyone. Heck, I’d ‘refresh’ my timeline and instantly see an entirely new page of tweets. It was just too overwhelming for me to pay attention to. If Twitter is to be used as a RESPONSIVE marketing tool for your business then you’re going to need people to read your tweets and to take action when you want them to take action - such as to read blog posts links that you post, visit links to special offers for your business, etc. AUTO-FOLLOW ATTRACTS OTHERS THAT AUTO-FOLLOW. It’s an incestuous cycle. If you auto-follow others you’re going to be attracting Twitter users that also auto-follow others. Let’s face it, most are using auto-follow to get more Twitter followers. But getting more Twitter followers this way comes at a price — you attract others that WILL RARELY (IF EVER) READ YOUR TWEETS. It’s just like the safe list model. Good marketing is all about RESPONSE. It’s definitely a QUALITY not QUANTITY scenario. There’s a reason that an opt-in email list of 5,000 highly targeted and responsive people can make 100 TIMES MORE than a lower quality opt-in list of 500,000. 2. ”It’s Not Show-Friends It’s Show-Business” That’s a great quote from the movie Jerry Maquire and it really applies to using Twitter for your business. Something you need to quickly realize is that ego doesn’t pay the bills. Most people want high follower counts for ego purposes. Heck, I do and I’m willing to admit it. Twitter is fun and your follower count is like the scoreboard of a video game. Who wouldn’t want a gazillion followers just for bragging rights? But at the same time, it really has to come down to MAKING MONEY. Do you want a big ego or do you want to make maximum money from your marketing efforts? If you want to make more money, then don’t auto-follow. The followers you do attract will be people that only want to read what you have to say and actively follow what your up to. Wow, what an amazing concept. (It’s actually why Twitter was created in the first place.) Your “@” replies and conversations will be much more valuable to your business and will yield much higher returns - because you’ll be eliminating a lot of other auto-follow marketers that will be wasting your time trying to get exposure for their own accounts by starting pseudo-conversations with you. Keep in mind that many conversations on Twitter don’t happen from just follower-to-follower connections. “But Is Not Following Someone Back Rude?” Not at all. Again, that’s not what Twitter was created for. If you want reciprocal communication then use an Instant Messenger service. Would you add all of your Twitter followers to your IM list? Of course not. People should follow you on Twitter because they want to read what you have to say. Period. If you want to make money from Twitter then you need to be saying and attracting YOUR TARGET MARKET. You need to be giving enough value to your ideal prospect that they’ll WANT to follow you. If you don’t, you’re not going to make much money from Twitter; regardless of what tricks and techniques you try and use. 3. You’ll Get Bombarded With Direct Messages That Aren’t Worth Your Time When you follow someone you give them the right to send you a direct message. Rest assured, you’ll start to get all sorts of spam and worthless DMs. I know, I was up to over 6,000 DMs before I nuked my account. You also run the risk of hurting your reputation with certain prospects and customers if you aren’t extremely attentive to their DMs. You’ll quickly discover it’s very hard (nearly impossible) to reply to all the DMs you’ll receive, and as a result you’re going to upset some folks that contacted you. This can hurt your business and lose you a lot of money. There are different methods to keep people from sending you Direct Messages on Twitter, but most are unaware of them and it can still create a problem for most marketers. 4. Auto-Follow Destroys The Twitter Experience As I’ve already mentioned, when you follow too many people it becomes impossible to keep up with all the tweets. You’ll end up discovering, like I did, that it takes the fun out of Twitter. Twitter ends up becoming just a bunch of NOISE. And, sure, there are more and more tools being created where you can ’sub-list’ your followers so you can keep up with just a select group of Twitter users, but to me that’s really DISINGENUOUS. When you follow someone on Twitter (automated or not) you’re basically saying, “I’m going to read what you have to say.” So if you auto-follow too many people that really does become just a big LIE. Because, again, it’s nearly impossible to follow so many tweets. 5. Twitter Users That Auto-Follow Will Lose Credibility If you’ve paid attention to everything I’ve stated so far then you’ll understand why most people on Twitter will eventually realize the same things. I believe Twitter users will begin to look at others that auto-follow (which is obvious when the ‘following’ and ‘followers’ numbers are very close to each other) as POOR QUALITY USERS. Auto-follow users will be looked at like safe list marketers. People will look at them (whether it’s true or not) as someone that’s just trying to get as many followers at all costs, and not really caring about what those people tweet about. Think about it… what’s more impressive… someone with 10,000 followers that follows only a few people, or someone with 10,000 followers that also follows 10,000 people? Twitter users know that the first person in this example must really be someone worth listening to because all those people that follow them stand to gain nothing in return. (Except for the great value of their tweets.) There’s a reason 99% of the most influential Twitter users in the world don’t auto-follow thousands of people. This is exactly what will lead to HIGHER RESPONSE for your Twitter marketing. Higher response will make you more money. This is a PROVEN FACT in marketing. You can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/johnreese. I won’t promise that I’ll follow you back, but I’ll do my best to deliver great value in my tweets. PLEASE RETWEET THIS BLOG POST. SO MANY PEOPLE NEED TO KNOW THE TRUTH. Just copy & paste below the line and tweet it. (Thank you.) —– PLEASE RT: @johnreese 5 Reasons Why Twitter Auto-Follow Is Bad Marketing -> http://tinyurl.com/l2jmzf
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July 9th, 2009 at 8:50 am
John,
I’m reaching for my hammer, because you have hit the nail on the head. But then, why do I need my hammer, you already pounded the nail I’ve been trying to hit for months. I despise auto follow software… and hate people who auto-follow me. I have blocked more followers than I have followers, simply because I subscribe to this same rule… more is NOT better when it comes to followers. When someone follows me that has thousands and thousands of followers, I usually do not follow them back, simply because I know they followed me with auto-follow software, and I want nothing to do with it. Thanks for “Telling it like it is”.
Ed
July 9th, 2009 at 8:53 am
All of this can be summed up really simply: don’t be a dope.
July 9th, 2009 at 9:35 am
Yes, you hit the nail, but really - shouldn’t common sense tell you all that before you start following (and auto-following) people. I frequently “unfollow” people when I notice they actually aren’t contributing anything that interests me, and I don’t feel bad for it either.
July 9th, 2009 at 9:36 am
I have been telling people this for a few months now. Its good to see this post. I have always enjoyed your strait shooter approach.
Whats sad is how many people are buying into the thought of making money one twitter! I am sure there is a tiny amount of people making money off of twitter, but there is no way they are supporting themselves. Most of the products about twitter teach you to auto follow people and then spam them with affiliate links. Or you have to spend hours on tweetdeck looking for someone needing solutions. Where is the ROI?
I would be interested to hear your thoughts on the matter John.
July 9th, 2009 at 9:45 am
This is the way Ed Dale has taught it from the beginning and as someone who followed him onto Twitter over 2 years ago it has always served me well.
I like to be able to keep up with the people I choose to follow and not make life too noisy, but I can still communicate with others outside of this through @ messages and by following other’s topics and conversations.
If I’m following 20000+ people and 20000+ people are following me back, I’m missing all the best stuff and they’re not listening to a word I tweet (fair enough if you are You, Ed, Ashton Kutcher or Stephen Fry - maybe more people are paying attention to you, but following them back is not going to change that).
Auto follows and auto DMs p**s me off.
July 9th, 2009 at 9:49 am
Thank you for explaining it in a way that might help persuade people to stop using this tool.
It’s simply counter-productive and you made that point well.
July 9th, 2009 at 10:31 am
Good post - but it would have been a lot more credible if you said something along the lines that “you made a mistake” instead of just blasting something that you recently did.
-Ryan (I’ve never auto followed)
July 9th, 2009 at 11:01 am
Amen. I have been trying to use various tools, including TweetDeck to filter emails and keep followers and those I’m following categorized–for work purposes.
When you’re trying to grow a business, it is all about the quality of your relationships, not the quantity. It’s not unlike having 1,000+ “friends” on Facebook or LinkedIn. Are you really contacting these people, “touching” them in a meaningful way on a consistent basis? The only ones I know who are have staff members doing it for them.
That’s the model we use in our business when we advise clients. Trust and credibility come with relationships that have been nurtured. You don’t get that with auto-follow.
BTW, how can you turn OFF auto-follow? I’ve tried to find this without any success. Until a few months ago, I would receive queries asking if I wanted to follow people. I like that. It allows the user to look at a person’s tweets and determine if they see some personal or professional value in following them. Already, I am then familiar with the person and viola, if I so choose, I can begin a real relationship.
So, how can I turn OFF auto-follow? PLEASE tell me!
July 9th, 2009 at 11:10 am
Woke up this morning to read the BEST Post Ever!
I don’t read many posts directly on my iPhone from beginning to end. But this post was iPhone worthy.
This is why I like following you John, b/c you say it like it is, and have always provided real value for your clients and followers. You’re one of the rare, solid marketers online who is not only making a living using the internet, you’re a man of integrity who has helped thousands with the products you’ve created.
WHY?
Becauuuuuse you’re teaching things THAT WORK!
Thanks 4 creating this post — so I don’t have to! :))) With the rise of robots auto-following just for other robots to follow them back to increase their “fictitious influence” Twitter became this boring place where nobody was paying attention to anybody. The more competitive people got with “numbers” the more people were inclined to use an auto-follow robot. And thus the saga began.
Keep it up John!
And Welcome to California!
(yeah, I know I just moved here too, from the other side of the Pacific - but welcome anyhoo…mmmkay?
Deborah
July 9th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Hi John, i could not agree more.. I used to auto follow back all those that followed me, as I thought it wsa polite and a nice thing to do.. However I have seriously changed my mind a few months..
All that happens is that you end up followng, people who have never tweeted, spammers, those people peddling get rich quick schemes and generally people that really do not know how to use Twitter..
I now recommend to all my clients that they chck out those they wish to follow first.. and it may well be that those that follow you, are different to those that you follow.. Nothing wrong with that.. Follow those that are of interest to you..
Also by following less people, managing the twitter stream becomes easier, and you can focus on those that should get your attention..
best
Mark
July 9th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
Thanks John,
You just kept me from making a big mistake. I was actually researching auto-follow trying to figure out why it was working for people. Now ti makes sense. They aren’t people…they’re robots.
Anyway, now that I have read this, I will follow you for a bit. I like well thought out blogs.
July 9th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
This is pretty common sense so I guess I’m surprised that anyone would use twitter to autofollow people that follow them. I’m actually really surprised that john reese would have even done this in the first place. If you are, first and foremost, using twitter to follow people you care about, why would you think following 30k people would make that easier.
July 9th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
This is such welcome info. I legitimely gained 700 followers on my own from truly blogging the right way. then suddenly I had 1200 followers next day with followadder updating my update box..it made me sick I lost so many real followers.Im Not here to be a used car salesman..( no offence intended, thats what my ex( son’s dad )does )
its wrecking my credibility.How do I undo this?
July 9th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
I completely agree with you- I really see value in twitter when I follow people who I think have valuable opinions. Shocking, right? I am not a fan of the follow request, it seems like begging for a friend, and I don’t have time to sift through thousands of tweets a day, or even an hour, just so I can ‘look better’ according to Twitter.
It really is what you make of it so if you want to auto-follow everyone, go ahead, but are you really keeping up with that much real time conversation?
July 9th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
You make some good points and I struggled with this for my company’s twitter account, but ended up auto-following everyone for several simple reasons, which you don’t address.
1) Auto-follow isn’t the same as an email safe list. However, if you randomly follow random people, hoping they auto-follow you, that is spammy. Even without auto-follow, we still get tons of strange people following us hoping for an auto-follow - proving that this happens no matter what your follow policy is. Especially if you are twittering from a recognizable brand name.
2) Our company twitter account is just an aggregation of our employee tweets, so it’s not too often that our employees actually read the full twitter stream for that account. However, I also use advanced twitter clients like Tweet Deck that allow me to set up groups for the people I follow, allowing me to group friends, coworkers, competition, news, clients, etc. into different groups so I don’t get overwhelmed by the mass of people we follow.
3) Auto-follow isn’t about attracting people, it’s about connecting to people who want to connect to you. We would like everyone who follows us to be able to send us DMs, but they can’t if we don’t follow them. Yes, a lot of it is junk, but we just don’t reply to the junk. By not auto-following, you may be missing important messages that people want to send you privately, just because you don’t want to sort through them all.
4) If I find out I’m following spammers or inappropriate people, I unfollow them. Unfollowing the handful of spammers when I notice them is easier than vetting the hundreds of people who follow us each week to figure out who they are and what their intentions are.
Your post claims that auto-following is bad marketing, but in the case of a company twitter account using twitterfeed or cotweet, I think it makes total sense. Your one concern that might hold true for my case is the negative perception of accounts with an equal amount of followers as followees, but I’m not here to win a popularity contest based of some artificial ratio. I’m here to connect with people interested in my company and our work.
July 9th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
Same thing happen with Myspace and their friend request and be able to spam you with fake invitation from dating website or make money online scams..
Like anything in life it will return to perfect balance…..
This is a short term strategy but a long term strategy worth way more
July 9th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
Virginia Steinberg Says:
So, how can I turn OFF auto-follow? PLEASE tell me!
Virginia… you have to make your profile private, only accepting people who TRY to follow you… but my experience has shown, if your profile is listed as private, no one will bother.
Ed
July 9th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Great stuff John! RT’d your message and added link on my site to your blog post.
Spread the word, #stopautofollow & save twitter from noise & spam.
July 9th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
Great post John, the more people like you and Ed Dale who come out and tell people that autofollowing is bad and what the spammers will help everyone.
Pity I was probably 1 of the 30,000 unfollowed, but maybe oneday I’ll own enough of the internet to get a RT from you.
Andrew
July 9th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
Good Call
I’ve always wondered why someone would bother following thousands of people, whenever I see someone following me with a similar number of followers to the number of people they are following (usually in the thousands) I just shake my head in bewilderment.
July 9th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
John,
You are on the money. I’ve also unfollowed users recently for the same reason.
Twitter is about building relationships with people you find interesting. Ultimately you want to follow people who you connect to. I only follow people with similar interests. It’s never about the numbers. Better to have 100 followers who are genuinely interested in what you have to say than 1000 followers who want to boost their numbers and could care less about what you have to say.
July 9th, 2009 at 6:05 pm
Good post John. I only follow people I am interested in reading their tweets and always have since the beginning of getting on Twitter. I like your analogy of the safe lists.
July 9th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
Great post John. I’ve been slowly unfollowing as well (although not to the tune of 30,000 people) and am now enjoying the Twitter experience much more.
I’m able to track much more valuable information and apply it to my business effectively now.
Thanks again for the post!
Boh
David Bohmiller
July 9th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
“Your “@” replies and conversations will be much more valuable to your business and will yield much higher returns - because you’ll be eliminating a lot of other auto-follow marketers that will be wasting your time trying to get exposure for their own accounts by starting pseudo-conversations with you.”
I stopped the auto-follow (manual, in my case - I was a little discriminatory) process a while back for many reasons you stated. I had my own rant about it on my blog after my father in-law innocently followed me and was instantly hounded by a bunch of Internet marketers.
But that quote above is a VERY good point that I never really thought of. Nicely summed up.
And to anonymous Ryan above: I think John’s post was pretty darned honest…perhaps you missed a few sentences in the reading?
July 9th, 2009 at 6:50 pm
Thank John.
Such insightful article! I now know what I’m doing with this “auto-follow” is evil. Will have to rethink my approach. Although to be frank, I have too few followers to do what you have done. So I would have to slowly unfollow…
Thanks once again,
-Jeff
July 9th, 2009 at 6:58 pm
Thanks for posting this John. You thought here and the email convo we had confirm my feelings and future actions as well.
Great post. I think it will help many enjoy twitter more and not get caught up in the numbers.
July 9th, 2009 at 7:24 pm
Good article. Agree with the points made. I prefer a small number of followers to form meaningful relationships rather than huge numbers that become meaningless.
That’s why I oughta not follow auto followers!
July 9th, 2009 at 7:46 pm
AMEN! AMEN! AMEN!
July 9th, 2009 at 8:23 pm
[…] to @JohnReese and @Ed_Dale for pushing me over the edge on this and John’s blog post here that was inspired from an email he sent me when I asked him why he did what he did. (The very move […]
July 9th, 2009 at 9:03 pm
Thanks for great info. I appreciate learning from experts that care to guide us in good directions. I can’t keep up with it all now and I don’t have near the ###s you are talking about. Thanks for giving me clarity.
Thanks John.
July 9th, 2009 at 9:20 pm
My take away: you unfollowed everyone so you could appear more influential with a high follower to following ratio. If you were authentic at all in your approach to Twitter, you would have given up all of your followers to by deleting your account. Tell me in wrong - I listen as @corbett3000
July 9th, 2009 at 10:22 pm
“Ego doesn’t pay the bills” …… hahaha. This is a very good post and, in many parts, is common sense. You are not one that needs inflated social proof since you’ve dominated the IM niche for awhile. MacPhearson and Dale have been saying this stuff since the beginning of micro-blogging.
One of the only reasons I would think that successful marketers auto-follow many is simply to try and build even more massive of a list. I mentioned this on another post. I think what’s going to happen now is that those that have inflated social proof are going to copy what you are doing by dropping their counts. Unfortunately, you’ll be left with many people that don’t really have anything of value to contribute but appear as leaders since they gamed Twitter early on.
July 9th, 2009 at 10:26 pm
Good for you, John.
You made the right move. You admit you made a mistake. God knows we all do. And you started to lose your enjoyment for twitter. And now you are starting to enjoy it again.
Dr. Mani shared with me his rule of Follow 40 and how he got lost in the follow you-follow me game.
His ebook made a lot of sense to me. I still follow more than 40 but I did cut a lot of the excess fat out and it has by and large made the experience significantly better.
So Dr. Mani was right.
And I think you made the right move, too.
I still follow you even after you unfollowed me because I’m interested in what you have to say. At least I usually am.
And that’s what it’s all about. I follow a bunch of interesting people who don’t follow me back. So what. How small minded of me to think that I should not follow them just because they don’t follow me back!
I follow them for my OWN self interest/benefit.
And I don’t believe for a second that you followed a bunch of people only to unfollow them later to jack your follower account, as if it was all part of some evil master plan from the outset.
Anyone who feels that way is expressing a cynical view that says more about the person making the claim than it does you by far.
Regards,
Dan
July 9th, 2009 at 10:27 pm
Actually, if someone follows me who has thousand of followers, I start with the assumption that they are probably someone undesirable. It’s not reasonable to think that the folks that brought us email spam/porn/other junk won’t figure out how to use (misuse) all the other forms of communication.
July 9th, 2009 at 10:35 pm
Excellent post. I am just not that into twitter anyway. I dont find it addictive at all and I certainly agree with you on this one John.
July 9th, 2009 at 11:38 pm
I’ve been on Twitter for a year and a half and have never used autofollow. For a lot of the reasons you mention John, but mostly because I believe that those that I follow on Twitter are a reflection on me. If someone comes to my Twitter page and sees a bunch of default avatars, they’ll know right off the bat that I’m only in it for the “numbers”. I vet every new follower I get and have blocked probably just as many as I’ve followed.
BTW, there seems to be some confusion about the autofollow process. Having a public profile does not mean that you autofollow. That has to be set up through a service such as Tweetlater or the use of a some type of script that will automatically follow those that follow you.
@SharonMCP
July 9th, 2009 at 11:57 pm
Dan - I laughed when I read that someone thought I unfollowed so many people to have a high follower:following ratio. Heck, I had nearly 10,000 followers before I ever knew about TweetLater and that you could even auto-follow. I never actively added more than about 50-60 people. The rest came from others finding me.
July 10th, 2009 at 12:01 am
I totally agree John.
Excellently put. I have seen far too many with an
addiction to this and auto-follow? Let’s be real about this.
Does everyone who is on twitter really have the time?
If they do then they certainly aren’t focused on anything else.
I follow who I choose to follow because of special interest not
to be popular.
It’s all about the numbers to some, they only look at quantity,
not quality.
Nice Job. Well put!
Regards,
Jon
July 10th, 2009 at 12:46 am
I followed the advice of Ed Dale too and Twitter has been much more enjoyable ever since I fixed it.
Auto Direct messages are another pest that needs nuking…
July 10th, 2009 at 5:34 am
I would Retweet it, but because you ASKED me to retweet it, I certainly won’t now. I argee with everything else though.
July 10th, 2009 at 7:02 am
John, I have been on Twitter for just a few months and have been thinking this. I have some friends who asked me why I don’t reciprocate a follow. When I tell them my reason for being on Twitter is business and I want to follow people who can possibly help me business-wise. They think that’s rude.
Thanks for the article and I’m glad I follow Michael Martine so I could receive the tweet.
July 10th, 2009 at 9:47 am
I totally agree and have been thinking this since I’ve been on twitter. My purpose is to make long lasting relationships. You can’t do that using auto-follow. Nor do I want to follow everyone who follows me. I couldn’t possibly have the time to do so.
Thanks for saying what many have been thinking! And isn’t it fun to ruffle feathers?
July 10th, 2009 at 9:53 am
John, thanks for the post and thank you to everyone who has retweeted. Autofollowing opens you up to all of the “get 6,000 followers” and worse accounts and gives them access to DM’s.
I don’t agree with the assessment that similar following/follower counts is a bad thing. There have been many times I’ve wanted to pass information or a “heads up” along to people that I didn’t want the whole world to see, and if they are not following me, I can’t do that, and vice-versa. I would rather unfollow someone whose tweets I don’t like than to miss out on someone who could turn into a future collaborator or client. With the new page design, it is easier to read the person’s last tweet to determine if I’m dealing with a robot or not. My @mobienthusiast account has similar followers/following but for the most part I’ve been very happy with the people I followed, and I wouldn’t have met them had I worried about having too similar of a ratio.
There are different considerations for people like yourself who are high profile enough to have 5- or 6-digit follower counts.
July 10th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
lol Bang on!
I did a little test only a few weeks ago, and Lynn Terry commented on the post
enjoy http://bit.ly/lzuBp
July 10th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Before reading this post, I’ve always wondered why some of the Top IM Gurus and successful internet marketers follow thousands of people on Twitter, while a few other IM Experts follow under 100 people only.
And until John Reese declared ‘Twitter Bankruptcy’ and quitted the auto-follow game on July 7th, I really couldn’t get why John used to follow +30k people on twitter while his best friend Frank Kern (@masscontrolkern) used to follow (and still follows) +30 people only.
Initially, I thought John’s idea of following back his followers on twitter was:
- to show that he really cares about anyone who follows him, and also
- to boost his ‘following number’ and get more followers as a result.
I used to believe for a while that anyone with a large following in twitter is quite popular in the internet.
However, as soon as the auto-follow feature got introduced by TweetLater, I observed many ordinary people started getting hundreds and then thousands of followers on twitter quite easily.
And, soon Twitter users reflected an impression that they are almost like “zombies” who practise and preach “Follow Me and I will Follow You Back!” so blindly that they very seldom care to reply Real DMs to their Real Followers.
I quite understood at that point how challenging it could be to read and reply every single DM that one would get from tons of followers on twitter.
However, at first I thought John regularly reads his DMs on twitter when he once tweeted about some kind of fishy message he had received on Jan 4th.
(John’s Tweet on fishy DM: http://tr.im/Jan04)
Later, on Jan 18th, I realized that John was having some difficulty in replying to ALL his DMs (and even the @replies) when he tweeted this >> http://tr.im/Jan18
After a few months, I saw John was getting overwhelmed with his DMs when he stated in his tweet (http://tr.im/Mar22) that he wished if there was a way to ‘mass delete’ the old DMs.
Finally, on May 18th, John seemed to completely lose his interests on Twitter’s DM feature as he was having 5,500 DMs by then. (http://tr.im/May18)
So, I started wondering what’s the point of following so many people on twitter if it’s nearly impossible to respond to their DMs (the ‘real’ messages out of the automated ones).
Nevertheless, I thought maybe the idea of mass following on twitter for John was to give his followers the privilege to DM him anytime so that he could Make Them Feel that they are closely connected with him and later, if they get lucky enough, they would get a reply from him.
On the other hand, I observed some Top Internet Marketing Gurus (like Frank Kern and Jeff Walker, to name a few) who have a pretty large following, but they don’t get into mass follow their followers. The only way you can communicate with them (if you ain’t getting followed by them) is through @reply tweets.
So this major difference in the usage of twitter among the Big IM Gurus has always puzzled me and kept me searching for the ultimate way to get most out of twitter, until I read this post by John Reese.
A HUGE thanks to John for revealing some great reasons for not using Twitter Auto-Follow!
Well, now that we know and realize Twitter Auto-Follow is a Bad Marketing, it will be great to hear what the Social Media Gurus and Experts have to say about it, especially :
Maria Andros (http://twitter.com/mariaandros) > Social Media Queen > +38,000 following, +44,000 followers (at the time of writing this comment)
&
Joel Comm (http://twitter.com/joelcomm) > Author of Twitter Power > +58,000 following, +71,000 followers (at the time of writing this comment)
————-
My Questions to John Reese:
Q1. If we can find out prospects who are really interested in a particular niche and then ‘manually’ follow them (before they follow us), is that considered to be a Bad Marketing?
[e.g. EzineArticles.com recently joined twitter and had quick success in getting a huge following from their members and fans. Soon afterwards, an Article Marketing Expert started following the ‘followers of EzineArticles’ – knowing that these people are interested in his product that he sells.]
Q2. Some well-known internet marketers have twitter accounts with business/company name and follow back all their followers? Do you think it’s a bad marketing?
[Recently EzineArticles tweeted: “Saying goodbye to 3015 people who we follow who weren’t following us back. We follow people to engage & become part of the conversation. :)”
http://twitter.com/EzineArticles/status/2239889452
————-
Looking forward to your reply, John.
Cheers,
Ashique Abdullah
(http://twitter.com/ashique)
July 10th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
This is probably one of the best twitter related articles I’ve read in a very long time. I totally agree with everything you said. I always felt bad for not following everyone that followed me. But I knew there was no way I would read the tweets of everyone that followed me & quite frankly I didn’t want to.
Twitter is no different than any other tool that a marketer would use. It’s always better to have quality over quantity. Because it usually ends up paying you more in the end.
The other problem with twitter as a whole is that it can take you away from platforms where you can ever a bigger impact such as your blog where you’re not limited to 140 characters. I found that I was spending too much time on twitter than my own blog and the return for the effort wasn’t matching up. With that said, Twitter has a lot of potential. But I think we as marketers have to apply the basic concepts we do in other platforms to twitter.
Twitter is very much like a blog. Provide good quality content in the way of articles, retweets or comments and people will take notice. This will inevitably lead to a group of loyal followers that will probably take action when you want them to. I’ll take 1000 true loyal followers over 10,000 auto-followed tweeps any day.
Thanks again John. That was a good read.
@EddySalomon
July 10th, 2009 at 7:30 pm
I agree with you John completely and the value in Twitter should really come from engaging with others.If someone has a high profile like Oprah OR Lance Armstrong there can certainlt be great value in using Twitter as a noticeboard for fans/followers.
But for those of us wanting to use Twitter as a business tool I think following someone who has no real dialogue with you is jsut a passenger.
I think I will follow your lead and unfollow some people today.
Thanks
Nicky xx
July 10th, 2009 at 11:44 pm
For anyone that wants to ensure they don’t receive auto DMs, Socialtoo.com has a feature to switch off auto DMs from most auto DM services.
I am in 2 minds on this
It used to be a case that you could follow 100 people in a niche, and see the conversation, because you could use an option to see @replies.
Now if I want to see a reply from @johnreese to @mikefilsaime, I have to follow both.
The problem on twitter is that some of the best content is the conversation, often between someone you follow and someone you might not.
I have for instance gained significant insight catching the occasional conversations between @marlonsanders or @michelfortin and others, which I now would sorely miss… unless I also followed a search for them.
These days I don’t do as others do, follow everyone, then have a special filtered list of people I really follow.
I follow a fair number, 4K which is enough to pick up lots of “vibes” in the online marketing community which I now wouldn’t see otherwise due to Twitter changes.
Then for the people I want to follow closely, I actually follow them using search, because it is the only way to follow them.
It is a little like eavesdropping, but the conversations if not for stupid Twitter changes would have been 100% public.
I haven’t stopped following new people - I look at the people who engage me in conversation, retweet my blog posts, comment on my blog.
Things will change significantly as twitter applications start to introduce threaded conversations.
What could then happen is if I reply to @johnreese, I immediately get to see all the replies in the same conversation, even if I am not following some of the people.
Effectively the same as when commenting on a blog, you get to see all the comments on a post.
This is something Friendfeed could also achieve, unfortunately conversations on Friendfeed can happen on any node of the social graph that refers to the same content.. Tools like UberVu are trying to pick up all these conversations.
July 11th, 2009 at 2:57 am
Ashique - it’s perfectly fine to follow anyone you want on Twitter - that’s why it was created. However, if you spam them or abuse the conversation with them, that’s another story.
As for certain businesses or others auto-following, that’s their choice. Some will continue to do so and many will defend the practice. I, however, think it was a mistake that *I* was doing it and as you can tell by the other comments for this post I am not alone.
July 11th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
What I find most interesting is that no one seems to make comment on what twitter was for in the first place - blogging or in this instance micro-blogging.
Personally I would take away the ability to see how many followers a person has then all this nonsense about auto follow etc will go away and we can get back to what twitter is all about.
Do I auto-follow, yes but then I believe in random, and because of that I have plenty of great conversations.
To have an opinion on who to follow whether that be manual or auto is like going into a party and throwing people out because you have an opinion about them - not exactly PC is it?
For those who use twitter as a marketing tool then I suppose it’s important to target and not auto follow, my argument is that’s not what twitter was made for!
Still each to their own.
July 13th, 2009 at 1:03 am
I’m actually new in the social media cloud. here in europe there is only a few people involved and competent in social media marketing. so I spend time to learn…. as much as I can. But what I’m sure of, is that the people I follow on twitter are either newsmags/newspaper or great people I learn a lot from… I’m very pleased when people follow me of course, but it’s not my focus yet, as my ebusiness is to be launch in couple of months only. I hope that, I will be martering by then, (at least a little bit more) the power of social media marketing… I still feel very beginner!
July 13th, 2009 at 2:01 am
I tried auto follow for a few days, yet I find it is easier to review all new followers to see if I am interested in following them than to unfollow all the folks using robots to follow me.
It was a bit more fun last year when I only followed about 800 people and met some interesting people. I met Coach Deb on twitter and engaged her with a challenge and did not even know she was a guru.
I still enjoy following interesting people I am not personally friends with that have interesting tweets and are just real folks having fun. I also get a chance to keep up with the news on twitter instead of reading a daily paper or heaven forbid watch the news on TV.
I am not sure what the right number is, but at 3,500 for me it is just a bit too many to keep up with and engage and get to know.
I find that I go to my friends twitter page to catch up on what they are up to because I miss the tweets during the day with the steady stream.
I have been and will continue to trim some of the people I follow to the ones I want to be friends with, love the inspirational quotes, or have met in person.
Thanks for keeping it real.
BTW love traffic secrets 2.0 and looking forward to watching your Sunday presentation at Mass Control in April. I left Sunday morning.
Looking forward to some more car videos.
@ClayFranklin
July 14th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
[…] sure if mass follow and auto-follow are the same thing or not. But you should really read this 5 Reasons Why Twitter Auto-Follow Is Bad Marketing Seems like some of the "g.u.r.u.s" are finally realizing auto follow/mass follow isn’t […]
July 14th, 2009 at 4:55 pm
Your RSS feed does not work - RSS subscribers do NOT see the new posts.
Someone should update this blog (remove spams from previous posts, fix RSS feed etc)
July 15th, 2009 at 9:28 am
Hi John,
I have never auto-followed because for me personally it just felt so phony.
Yes, it takes a fair amount of time, but I actually checkout the profiles of those following me to see if there is a match in terms of things in common or interest.
I often think to myself, ‘why the heck is this person following me? Oh yeah… they want a follow back”. Sad but true.
I do follow people that don’t follow me back if it seems I can learn things from them.
I guess the ones who think “Massive action will produce massive results” are finally getting the picture. It’s producing weak watered down results.
Just my take.
Mellisa McJunkin
Digital Information Broker
July 15th, 2009 at 10:38 am
Hi John,
Great article. I really considered doing this because it made a lot of sense at first. The more I read up on it, the more I realized that there was no way to create true community and converstaion by doing it this way. I even took it as far as thinking “maybe I should just post about the keywords that I was going to target and people will auto-follow me”.
The end result was that I should just tweet about the things i am interested in and the right people will hopefully get the message. this is the intent of twitter to begin with. So I went full circle and am a little wiser. Thanks Again.
Clint
@clintstelfox
July 15th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
[…] […]
July 15th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
[…] […]
July 15th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
I’m glad to find someone who has actually seen the light! Most people make an excuse that they auto-follow people so they wouldn’t be tagged as rude. Lol, YEAH RIGHT. They just can’t admit that they love the idea of millions and millions of people following them. (wouldn’t we all want that?) For business sake though, it is better to follow prospects and potential clients who you can actually get into a conversation with. That way, you’ll be showing them the quality/credibility of your business and if you do it right, you might even earn yourself a “quality” prospect.
July 16th, 2009 at 2:15 am
Hi John,
Thank you for sharing this excellent post.
I agree with you that the it is the quality of the list that is more important. At the end of the day, I would like to have respond from my subscribers whenever I communicate with them.
Zack
July 16th, 2009 at 6:51 am
Whenever I saw someone who have thousand of followers and following on Twitter following me, I just wonder who they manage to follow so many or they just up to something. I can even read a handful of tweet let along hundred of tweet which move so fast from my dashboard.
this not only happens in twitter, it happen in most if not all social site. I believe many are in for a safelist.
July 16th, 2009 at 7:15 am
Hi John,
Excellent post. I couldn’t agree more.
Although I would like to point out that just because a persons follower numbers are close to the number of people they follow does not mean they auto-follow. My numbers are very close but they are by no means the same people. I feel very strongly about taking the time to ensure that a person I follow is someone that I can gain something from and give something to.
Perhaps your next post could be in regards to Auto-DM which I see as equally ineffective.
Charlotte
July 16th, 2009 at 8:13 am
[…] and realized that following everyone who follows you is not the best use of Twitter. He gives 5 Reasons Why on his blog, but I can give you my two reasons why I have never auto-followed […]
July 16th, 2009 at 10:28 am
Actually to have meaningful relations with or through twitter, you are are very much right - however if one just wanted something that points to him, that also stays fresh for googlebot, well then I think you’re not entirely right… It would instead seem to relate to exact purpose…
PeterPC
July 16th, 2009 at 8:29 pm
I never did use the auto follow feature and have put off the time I’m dreading of unfollowing people that I don’t read lol.
Maybe when I hit 50,000 I’ll think about it
July 17th, 2009 at 5:13 am
Auto-Follow — I never used it, never will. I guess it boils down to common sense, but thank you, John for stating the obvious. People need to know this.
July 18th, 2009 at 3:28 am
hey john - thanks for sharing your view on this
very interesting post
July 20th, 2009 at 2:01 am
[…] 5 Reasons Why Twitter Auto-Follow Is Bad Marketing; […]
July 20th, 2009 at 7:36 am
[…] John Reese, the kind of person I thought would abuse Twitter, actually gets it (except the part where he asks you to RT). He shares five reasons why Twitter auto-follow is bad marketing. […]
July 20th, 2009 at 8:15 am
[…] Reese says the same thing in 5 Reasons Why Twitter Auto-Follow Is Bad Marketing. Tags: twitter This entry was posted on Monday, July 20th, 2009 at 2:15 pm and is filed under […]
July 23rd, 2009 at 4:27 am
Thanks for your insight John:)
July 24th, 2009 at 7:25 am
John, you hit it on the money. I always wondered why people wanted so many followers especially when they weren’t targeted followers. Just didn’t make any sense to me. But boy did you explain it well. I think I am going to have to make a blog post mentioning this article. Very informative. I appreciate the great content you post. Thanks
July 24th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
[…] Is auto-follow and auto DM’s the right thing to do anyway? […]
July 24th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
[…] So then I started thinking about deleting the followers I didn’t want when I came across and article by John Reese called 5 Reason Why Twitter Auto-Follow is Bad Marketing. […]
July 25th, 2009 at 2:56 am
Dear John,
It pleases me to think that I was probably a little wise about this earlier too… Albeit not wise enough to blog about it.. [:P] … I think that Twitter is something that has come up simply because of the Social Networking Market Boom. And to me, personally, even Google Talk Status Messages appeal more than Tweets. Anyway, the point is, people should listen to you when you say this. And, me being from India, I guess I can sure help spread the word in India. To know how, please talk to me @ shirish.subramanian@ktj.in.
Thanks, and hoping to hear from you soon.
-Shirish.
July 26th, 2009 at 11:53 pm
John
NEVER MIND ABOUT TWITTER - WHAT ABOUT REPLYING TO MY CUSTOMER SUPPORT
ISSUES? I WROTE ON 11TH MAY 2009 - & NEVER RECEIVED A RESPONSE AND THEN
ANOTHER ONE ON 15TH JULY 2009 AND AM STILL WAITING 12 DAYS LATER!!!!
THAT’S A PRETTY P*** POOR SHOW…..NEVER MIND ABOUT TWITTERING - GET YOUR
CUSTOMER SERVICE SORTED OUT FIRST!
July 28th, 2009 at 12:57 am
jigsaw puzzle is a intern membership calibated by the biolinglypebibient countership colonory. what is the meltra lobatony symbol?
July 28th, 2009 at 12:57 am
arms for a rock
July 28th, 2009 at 5:24 am
Steve - if you didn’t receive a reply to your support ticket after 1-3 days then the odds are good the email didn’t get delivered. Why not just call our offices at 407-310-1000? We’d be more than happy to help you with whatever you need.
July 29th, 2009 at 8:00 pm
right on John
July 31st, 2009 at 12:16 am
John,
I was talking to Alex Jeffreys about this very subject this morning.
I have just shutdown my main Twitter account because of all the spammer tweets I was receiving, from people wanting to sell me everything from an ebook to their fathers left testicle…… If only I understood before I started.
Thanks for the insight, and from here on in I will follow your guidance.
BTW, if you would like to follow me my twitter id is Successidea
July 31st, 2009 at 2:34 am
I was just reading a similar post on David Risley’s Blog. Thank you for this information. I retweeted it on Twitter.
July 31st, 2009 at 9:32 pm
John,
Hey, great post! I was thinking about buying one of those auto-follow software and after reading your post, I probably wont buy. Social media queen Maria Andros also recommended not to auto-follow.
August 1st, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Great post…thinking about it!
Thanks,
Jorge
August 2nd, 2009 at 8:09 am
Hi John,
Have you noticed that you lost many followers from unfollow all those people?
What about back lash? Have you received much of it? I recently wrote a post about how Twitter is losing respect and users because of all the spamming that is going on, so I know exactly where your coming from.
Matt
August 2nd, 2009 at 6:29 pm
I’m just new to twitter and figuring out how to use it best still. Thanks for the post and to all the many commenters with more info on what has worked for them.
It has already become difficult to find the tweets of those I’m really looking for information from.
August 2nd, 2009 at 9:51 pm
so what if there are people like me that have a modest amount of followers (ie: 200), but choose not to follow anyone? I personally don’t like twitter, or status messages in general. I just do it to share random ideas or situations that don’t warrant an entire blog entry.
August 7th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
[…] the title above I’m referring to the blog post by John Reese on the Income.Com Blog which I read […]
August 8th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
This has been something that’s crossed my mind many times. Many thanks to you posting this.
August 10th, 2009 at 9:15 am
[…] I also want to highlight this post from John Reese 5 Reasons Why Twitter Auto-Follow Is Bad Marketing […]
August 12th, 2009 at 8:05 am
I have to agree with this not only with twitter but myspace, facebook, they are all the same. My coach says you need to get your name out there and have a great eye catcher to bring in the crowd (haha). I have lots of people that say they are following but I do not see anybody reading my blogs and no one has come to visit my site. I am at a lost and without spending money I do not have, I still do not know how to get the people to my website. Good luck with our venture.
August 12th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
I personally don’t believe in this kind of short term marketing activities very much but yet quick profits could be attained by these kind of methods.
August 12th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
I wouldn’t call it bad but you’ve got a few good points.
August 16th, 2009 at 8:10 am
Hey John,
I want you to know, you’ve been my marketing hero for a long time. However, your income.com lannch and opportunity launch has hurt you legacy. We’ve been waiting for income.com for a long time now, and opportunity.com isn’t your typical ‘A’ quailty. Also, when you say “must have” it use to mean something. When you said Affiliate Jump was a “must have”, did you notice they’re charging 200 bucks plus a montlhy fee to join a network(plus crappy templates design). I don’t even know what kind of offers they got, you know, how am I suppose to know if those offers convert well. If I join and they don’t I’m out 200 bucks plus testing fees. Can you atleast look back on your email’s from 2006-2007. I mean, you was on fire man, a real marketing legend. Now your fading like most superstars who get’s old in sports(like SHAQ).
August 17th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
did you have to unfollow each an every one of those 30k fans or were you able to find a program to do it for you? I am going to through the process of unfollowing 10K. Thanks.
August 17th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
Congrats on coming up to steam with what EVERYONE thought was a bad idea months ago. I researched both sides of the issue before launching my twitter, and I found that twitter is best used as a resource for information from people in your industry or outside it, that you respect and want their insights.
It NEVER should have been about thousands of followers. It just shows how much of an egomaniac one is to say “hey look at me I have 100k friends!!” Yeah friends!! It’s a joke and all social media is being hurt by those “big guys”.
Good for you seeing how toxic your previous practices were.
August 18th, 2009 at 10:20 am
This sound like a Jim Jones rally. I guess I’m the one who drank the punch and am now trying to figure out if I made the right decision. I’m calling you out John on my blog
August 21st, 2009 at 11:24 pm
[…] Last but not the leats, John Reese’s Post on Why Twitter AutoFollow Sucks Is Well Worth […]
August 22nd, 2009 at 4:37 pm
John, I unfollowed you when you unfollowed me. Not that I didn’t value you’re Twitter stream ( I’d give it a C+), but it showed you have no interest in what I have to say, suggesting either you have a monstrous ego or aren’t very interested in having conversations at all, and are only looking for (another) list to monetize.
August 25th, 2009 at 11:02 am
This is so true, I like what you have put out here, great information for people that are just trying to get off the ground and are starting to abuse the playing feilds and taking themselves out before they really ever had a chance.
August 27th, 2009 at 7:55 pm
Hey Michael, can you just imagine what it is like to “follow” and “care” about what all these people have to say! Dam it! Just think for a second… And, sorry dude, but you’re only one of these 32K…
Some people use twitter to make friends while some for business…. Just stick with what’s bes for your goals.
Thanks for the post John! Great stuff! Totally agree with what you said!
Take care you all!
August 27th, 2009 at 8:46 pm
Thanks! I have to agree. I have an auto follow program for Twitter and I sure can’t keep up! Once I get unhooked I could maybe find your tweets(LOL) Judi
August 29th, 2009 at 1:15 am
I am new to twitter and was clueless as to what I was doing. I wish I had this information when I first started to twitter. However, it’s never too late to take a different road.
August 29th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
How did you decide who to un-follow. I need to clean up my list. Is there a way to tell if the people you are following is following you?
Billy
August 29th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
How do you decide who to un-follow. I need to clean up my list. How do you find out if the people you are following are following you?
August 29th, 2009 at 7:52 pm
“You’ll Get Bombarded With Direct Messages That Aren’t Worth Your Time, ” this comment is definitely true. I was excited when I rec’d my first few tweets, only to open them to discover they weren’t “worth my time!”
Gina
August 30th, 2009 at 10:14 pm
Thanks for having the integrity to post this. It is genuine. You can tell you really want people to succeed and add value.
To Your Success
September 7th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
Hey John,
Great post. When I get followed I tend to check out there profile and see if they have every posted anything of use, if it doesn’t interest me then I don’t follow. Also what gets me is the ones who auto post the same thing every day and that’s all they post but Thats for another post I guess.
All the best,
James Howard
September 10th, 2009 at 10:35 pm
[…] Re: Twitter Tips For Big Success Yeah, I gotta agree with Andy on that one Dylan. Some autofollow, others manually follow. I think manually following & being selective is truly the way to go when it comes to personal accounts. It’s not about how many followers you have or any of that stuff but who actually listens and cares and the same on your end. Someone with 2000 followers can be just as effective as someone with 20000 followers, as long as they build value and showed they care by engaging and interacting with others. IMHO, John Reese summed the whole auto follow ordeal up pretty darn good - 5 Reasons Why Twitter Auto-Follow Is Bad Marketing […]
September 10th, 2009 at 10:49 pm
Great post John! Sorry I’m just “a little bit” late lol
I totally agree with everything you said. I first started out autofollowing and realized many of the things you talked about. I’ve lost several thousand since then but it’s all good. I understand that it’s not about the number of followers you have but who’s actually listening and cares.
Also, if you build consistent value & post things of interest to your followers while engaging & interacting, you can be just as effective with 2,000 followers as someone with 20,000 followers.
Thanks again dude,
-Mike S.
P.S Killer stuff you did with @tonyrobbins! Lovin’ it
September 12th, 2009 at 1:08 am
I just don’t understand some things. I am soooo new to this stuff. I read the post, I followed you. I really don’t get the copy and paste and retweet stuff. If I don’t get it, I am sure hoping there are others out there that would like to “retweet”
Copy and paste I now how to do…. but what line, where, ???? This info would be very helpful.
I think I could be your dumb question director….. it could get more customers…don’t you think????
Thanks for all the insights I like them, just don’t know how to spread them…..
Roxanna Dayl
September 15th, 2009 at 4:55 pm
Thanks for the info! Im fairly new to marketing with twitter but i do understand it has its perks. Glad to know some of the pitfalls however. Twitter’s auto-follow sounds like a breeding ground for spammers lol
September 19th, 2009 at 8:57 pm
I think auto-following can still be somewhat useful; the problem is part of your “credibility” is based upon your follower amount, obviously inflated due to your previous use of auto-follow, and then sub-sequently “firing” nearly all of those that you have followed. Which, of course, allows your current “follower”-base to remain in-tact. I think it is a little bit deceitful and “shady” and seems a negative practice.
I auto-follow for two reasons: broaden my horizons, and broaden my follower-base. I do not care if I catch the occasional spammer or two. I market for myself as well, as does Everybody! Mass un-following everyone is, in my mind, the shadiest thing you can do after already accumulating almost 30k.
September 20th, 2009 at 8:50 am
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September 21st, 2009 at 10:07 am
Wow. Thanks with your advice. if not my twitter account may be get suspended after using all those twitter auto follow tools.
October 4th, 2009 at 3:35 am
An eye opening article about Twitter. I’m sending this to my entire team. As a side note, I don’t even read Twitter direct messages anymore because after opening a gazillion of them I have never once received an honest, sincere message.
October 12th, 2009 at 4:13 am
The Power Of The Twitter Post Card
I’ve been using Twitter for 3 weeks now and spent hours and hours trying to master what I thought was a good twitter strategy (get as many followers as possible via profile keyword search using auto-bots) but I soon discovered that my stream was getting clogged by “Teeth Whitening” pitches and MLM/Affliate crap.
Plus when I auto unfollowed I discovered that the unfollow was reciprocated immediately by those I culled – Aye?
So I reasoned that they were following the same strategy I was. Pursuing what I thought were targeted followers ended up being a spam fest with little value exchanged either way.
Thank goodness I’ve STOPPED.
I’m of two minds:
Either I keep my following and follower ratios really low and build strong reciprocal relationships on a small scale…but do it organically
Or I build I really large following using both and automated (20% say) and an organic approach and set myself apart by providing really good content and using offline techniques to build strong relationships with my followers.
See how here http://bit.ly/2cetY
Nobody and I mean nobody on Twitter is doing this – Do you think if I had 20k followers and I sent out this stuff to my heavy hitters do you think they would look out for my tweets amongst the clutter – Not enough value is being exchanged.
Try it out and let me know how it goes.
Email salesonsteroids@gmail.com
Address 15i Queens Ave
Hamilton 3204
New Zealand
ph: 0064 7 838 1548
October 13th, 2009 at 8:36 am
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October 14th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
Not to mention all the porn followers you auto-followed. Nothing will ruin your credibility faster than an x-rated avatar on your followers list.
October 20th, 2009 at 8:38 pm
John-
You make some great points. However, what is next, or what are some alternative methods. I understand that if you have over 20K followers you may not be as effective. But what if you have just started, have less that 100 followers and want to get to 1 to 2K? I still think for 60 bucks it is worth it for the time. Yes, you should be very very targeted - but right now I just hear someone shooting down autofollowing, not offering any marketing alternatives to this technique…
October 22nd, 2009 at 3:34 am
Overwhelmed! That shook all worms in my head. For you guys Jhon, good things are revived again. Keep the good work up.
October 29th, 2009 at 7:03 am
Yes using auto-following, you attract quantity and not quality. I’ve stopped using this facility, however even today, I’m getting junk followers that don’t add any value to blog.
November 9th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Great post! Exactly the thing why i stopped login to twitter every day, cos there we’re so many twitts that i couldn’t get through all of them. Started tod reducing some follow ups.
November 10th, 2009 at 11:50 pm
Really good points here, but the fact that twitter users are able to build lists now, surly eliminates many of these arguments.
I agree that as a user of twitter, I should add value and build trust through my content, catalysing response; but higher numbers equates to more impressions in my mind.
Twitter lists cut through the noise and filter out the crap right?
Cheers…
twitter.com/Blue_Roo
November 23rd, 2009 at 2:44 pm
[…]www.income.com is another wonderful website of information. Car insurance claims […]
December 8th, 2009 at 12:03 am
Hi John….just stumbling upon this. i read your whole article but am here to disagree with you! i believe in following everyone back unless they’re offensive to me. you can list people or put faves so that only the stream of folks you like are there and there is a reciprocity which i think helps the twitter experience. i don’t ‘auto follow’. i do it by hand.
now. i noticed that you have 25k and change in followers but only follow 77 people back? that means that you’re only interested in 77 people’s stream? hmmmm. sort of an ashton kutcher/rock star/oprah mentality? not for me! and loads of other heavy hitter twitterers are in my camp! but i honor your thoughts and read your article with interest hoping to learn something new. best to you. http://www.iget2work.com or follow me at @iget2work
December 13th, 2009 at 2:10 am
Hi John,
Just wanted to stop by and say Happy Holidays!
I love Traffic Secrets and have a lot of respect for you.
I am a Mass Control member and love the business building class you gave us access to in side the members area.
Looking forward to your next insightful email or blog post.
All the best,
Clay
December 27th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
Is there a certain Teeth bleaching product that you may suggest that you suspect works great?
January 5th, 2010 at 5:09 am
Very interesting discussion. I had a hard time trying to figure out what to do because I have 5 twitter accounts - all in different niches - and only so much time. I opted for a software program that allows me to target people asking questions or airing problems that they need solved. At least that way I can attempt to answer questions or help in their area of interest which would be the same as mine. I’m sure my list won’t grow as fast but that isn’t really my intent. I looked at so many programs and it seemed like this was the only one that made it easy. its ironically called autofollowscript. I’ll let you know how it works out.
January 5th, 2010 at 2:57 pm
[…] Some people recommend following every person who follows you. Some even have automatic ‘autofollow’ messages that ‘thank’ the original follower for following and follow in return. […]