It was recently reported to me that a number of “successful” twitter users within the evangelical church and ministry space are in fact using automated systems for their accounts with the intent of getting more followers.
Come on… really?
Typical automated systems perform a variation of this method:
- Mass follow people around a keyword or a number of keywords.
- Get a bunch of new followers based on reciprocal follow-backs.
- Unfollow new followers who do not follow back.
- Rinse and repeat.
The issue is not that this is necessarily a bad practice but whether it’s the right practice. What do you think?
[Picture from Adamarthur]
Abraham Piper says
Only #3 seems lame to me.
human3rror says
Yes, i think that is the critical part of the “system” to be considered…
@adamrshields says
I have a "church leader" that keeps following me and my wife. We are both tired of his constant tweeting of questions. So both us have unfollowed him. But about once a week we get an email that says he is following us again. He seems to refollow my wife more often than me. So there is something that she is doing that is getting him to re-follow her more than me. What it does is just annoy me. Certainly it doesn't make me want to follow him more.
human3rror says
that's whack.
stephenbateman says
Would you rather 350000 ducks read your tweets, or 200 humans? It's so untargeted…that's pretty much how it is.
Phillip Gibb says
well that just hacks me off
and pretty much explains some of the behavior I have seen.
I think it is underhanded.
Kevin Cooper says
Its unauthentic. I want interact with people on Twitter not scripts.
Tom says
Like others have already said, I personally think it’s lame.
I guess people are free to utilize whatever methods they want when it comes to marketing themselves, but I don’t think it should come at the expense of irritating people (i.e., the auto-follow emails really get old).
Secondly, people seem to be using Twitter for different reasons, but the one reason I actually enjoy the service is (a) seeing what friends, family, and other online buddies are up to and (b) sharing and engaging with others.
This auto-following and constantly asking questions with no real communication happening is horribly inauthentic. And that’s not a good thing for the church.
Tyler says
it pretty much makes me sick. i wrote a post on this kind of practice and how unethical it is for christian leaders to be practicing if any of you are bored:
http://manofdepravity.com/2009/09/29/the-demise-o…
Jim says
theres some crazy commenting going on in Tylers post
Darren Ethier says
I think it all depends on what you're using twitter for. Are you using it for crowdsourcing, stoking your ego, or networking?
Jim says
crowdsourcing and networking are key…theres plenty of ego out there
Name:wvpv says
All of them are lame.
As soon as I see a follower’s tweets coming from API, they get blocked.
Chico Woo says
All of it seems Lamo.
Name:Trey says
Jesus said, “follow me”..Which meant taking up one’s cross and following at all costs. With the advent of autoscripts, following seems to mean something entirely different these days.
Love the thoughts and comments church crunch nation.
human3rror says
hahah! dude. never thought about that…
Jeremy Young says
I have been doing a little experiment with Twitter of late, and although I have never used a auto follow system nor sent out automated emails (I personally think they are nothing short of spam), but I have set up two accounts on twitter, both with my real name and both are being used in almost the exact same way, except my original account, which is almost two years old is where I only follow a few people and don't auto follow, but I have managed to attract just over 200 followers.
On my new test account which is not yet 1 month old I have managed to attract over 1000 followers.
The only difference between the two accounts is on one account I follow back.
and the results I have found regarding traffic to my site have been quite surprising.
I was, am still are to a degree, a bit skeptical about the whole follow back philosophy on twitter but in all honest my follow back account sends more traffic to my site than my original account, where I am selective of who I follow back.
make of it what you will, whether its good or bad I don't know but the numbers prove that the more you follow back the more people will continue to follow you and the more followers you have the more traffic you get to your website.
Occasionally I will run my account through a filter to weed out suspicous followers and spam accounts to try to keep the list clean but the numbers tell a story that can't be denied.
Mary says
Dont like auto follow. like people. Twitter is for abreviated conversation. Im constantly checking followers because some of the responses were not kosher. Even get smut on occasion. One person sent me porn picture and I blocked that person 3 times already. Most annoying! I converse and share The Word!
rodlie says
I think it's all pretty lame. Like people trying to pimp themselves and get more people to hustle their product. I expect that from these weird seo experts and marketing people, but from ministry people…just seems odd.
filmdp2219 says
I see no problem with following people so they can follow you back as long as it isn't automated. Following others is essentially a means of reaching out in twitter and I think that as Christians we should reach out. I don't however think automated following should be used by Christian organizations for many reasons. You could accidently follow porn or spam accounts.
I am ok with using automated unfollow though. If the purpose of your twitter account is to outreach for your organization then it would make sense to move on from the people that are not interested and to find others that may find your tweets useful.
Brad Knight says
I personally think its a great idea! your gonna need the competitive edge its almost crucial if you want to succeed at least in marketing online. I've actually gone and reviewed some twitter apps ( http://seoaffiliatetools.wordpress.com ) for this purpose. So far my best is Twitter Addr.