Before you jump off this post, make sure you take a look at the screenshots. The proof, literally, is right there.
Now, there are tons, and tons and tons of marketers and self-proclaimed experts that spam you every single day about how they grew 10,000,000+ followers in a hour and how you can too if you pay them $19.99 for this eBook. This isn’t that.
In fact, it’s just one simple principle: Follow everyone who follows you.
The neatest thing about this? Is I’m not exactly sure why this works… it just apparently does. There’s no magic formula or, from my research and perspective, any logic behind it (you could come up with a lot of reasons though that are, well, reasonable), but, it is what it is.
And I’m not charging you for this either.
The first day I did this I jumped 301 followers in a day. At the time, I was increasing my follower count by about 9-13 followers a day. Now, I’m around 50 or so a day.
What gives? What’s the point? I don’t know. Seriously. I just wanted to try something different.
Now, I know there are two camps of thought here in terms of whether you should follow everyone or just follow a few. I’m not going to necessarily argue for one or another. I think both are legitimate.
Period.
I honestly think that I’ll go back and forth on it and just change it as I’d like. And if we really are serious with ourselves… who the heck cares what you do…? Just do what you want to do.
If you’d like some more information on where I got this idea, it’s actually from Michael Hyatt and the interview I did with him a little while back. Check it out for more details. His thoughts and suggestions really worked.
The End. Now pay me $19.99!
Just kidding.
Cool. I was wondering how that went for you. BTW – What website allows you to get the graphs you show above. I have not seen it on twitter.
TwitterCounter.com!
Do you follow the spam bots and such, too? And how do you handle having a full twitter stream of tons of people you don't know or really care about following? Just create a group in Tweetdeck for the ones you really wanna keep up with so you don't miss everything?
This is how I handle following more people. http://readscott.com/post/108668258/get-twitter-g…
yes. tweetdeck will do that.
And no, I ban alot, ignore, and unfollow.
Playing with TweetDeck… I guess that would work. Create a group for the people you want to listen to. Delete the "All Friends" column. Is that what you do, John?
Now I need to find something like tweetdeck that let's you manage multiple twitter profiles.
You can use http://socialtoo.com/ to auto follow and unfollow users. It has tools to block spam bots and auto dm
Twitterholic http://twitterholic.com/ creates graphs.
Yeah, to echo Tim's comment above, what about the spam followers? Do you follow them, too? I've heard this discussed a little bit in various other places, but I was never sure about the spam followers.
Apparently I follow a lot of spammers, so that's a typical “cost” associated with this… but, it is what it is. Groups baby!
my my, that's a pretty big twenis you have there…
it's getting bigger every day.
I have been following this strategy from the time I joined twitter and I am amazed at how the numbers have grown. It is quite interesting and it seems to be you hit a critical mass and the followers just keep coming. Twitter seems to be based on a completely different math than something like facebook.
Ancoti,
YES. I knew you would bring up something “smart” about it.
I've been thinking about the “critical mass” piece and wonder what the “ceilings” are too. I've heard 5k is a big one and 10k is a big one too… but, who knows?
Another question: So you get a lot of twitter followers doing this, but does the "quality" of your twitter followers decline with it? For example, 1,000 people following me all started following me because they want to keep up with me and my tweets. But 5,000 people following me because they want to be followed back to increase their stats who will never put me in their "people I actually wanna keep up with" Tweetdeck group doesn't really count as much as a follower, ya know? So the numbers may climb with this strategy, but does the effectiveness of leveraging your audience on Twitter actually increase? Your tweets fall into a stream that most people don't look at, just like you do with all of theirs. Does that kinda make sense? If that's the case, I think I'd rather than 1,000 people who actually read my stuff than 5,000 followers who don't.
Tim, great point. I bet the vast majority of Twitter traffic is generated by people with 5k followers following each other but none of them actually reading each others tweets.
Paul,
Read my thoughts on Tim's comments.
You can see it that way or you can admit that you have no idea what really is happening.
That's where I sit. I mean, seriously. Can you control the social web? No way.
There is, though, some very hard and fast factual data that I can bring up though: For example, there is without question an increase of traffic from Twitter to my blog as my twitter follower count goes up. That, my friend, is a win. I don't necessarily “care” if they are “quality” followers or not. In fact, I consider all of them to be “quality.”
It's all in how you look at it, but the numbers (traffic) is real.
And, i've been able to increase my connectivity with others dramatically. Those are “wins” for me. And if I get stuck in the “who cares bucket”…?
… It doesn't bother me…!
Yeah, that makes sense. I just didn't know if it worked out that way or not. Thanks, John.
That's just way more of a social media whore (I say that with a smile!) than I desire to be. I follow this strategy with my work accounts [because I really don't use work accounts to engage a ton] but for my personal account I just don't want to be bothered by building an inauthentic throng of people I don't know and don't really want to know me.
Adam,
Thanks for sharing that. But, how do you know that they don't want to follow you? How would you know? How would you know that the blog content thatyou may link isn't something they need?
thanks man!
I don't block people who want to follow me. I just only follow back people I want to. I do look at every profile of someone who follows me. If they are following 2000 and only have 25 followers and are a web designer in Missouri… I just don't need to follow that person. If they are in my town, I met them at a tweet-up, and I think they have something worth reading, I'll give them a shot.
The other thing I hate, people who follow you just to get you to follow them back. Then when you follow them back they unfollow you right away. I can't tell you how many times John Chow and Jeremy Shoemaker have followed and unfollowed me. They really need to get a life!
Ouch! you're right, that does suck. that motivation is point-blank obvious and doesn't gather and earn trust and respect.
but, they apparently don't care, right?
You should have at least left a PayPal Widget within the post, just to see if anyone would have actually paid you $19.99. Think, you could have gotten cable for free this month.
Tempting man…very tempting to do that. I've been pretty selective w/who I follow…
One thing I did notice was when I looked at my own graphs, my followers (obviously) went WAY up when I stopped protecting my updates. I did that for a very specific reason for awhile, but things started to increase a lot then…and I do try to block spambots…
But yah – I'm a Tweetie user (haven't gotten into Tweetdeck) — so I would be stuck with a ton of updates that I just didn't really care about……
Why doesn't twitter have a friends in common feature like Facebook?
Because then Twitter would be copying Facebook instead of vice versa! But it's a great idea Chris.
They don't need to be first. They need to be good, useful and relevant.