When most people start with Twitter, they get really focused on the number of followers they have. Makes sense, right? You want your message to reach as many people as possible, and followers are people who are saying they want to listen to you…
But take it from me, this is NOT what you should focus on. Instead you need to focus on QUALITY of followers – you need followers that are actually going to read your tweets, that are genuinely intersted in what you have to say, and might ultimately buy from you or refer you to other buyers.
It is EASY to get tens of thousands of low-quality followers on Twitter.
Why (how)?
Well, a lot of Twitter people automatically follow anyone who follows them (they use tools to automate this). So, if you follow 1000 of these people, you’ll instantly gain 1000 followers. You can even pay a service to do this for you – they keep a list of Twitterers who are known auto-followers, and when you purchase the services use your Twitter profile to automatically follow all these people. You can become an auto-follower yourself, which will result in even more people following you, and then you get more followers for yourself, …. you get the idea.
So, voila! within a few days you’d have 10,000 followers.
Thing is, these followers are “low quality.” Anyone who automatically follows anyone who follows them is NOT READING your tweets. And anyone who is following more than 500 people is NOT reading your tweets.
So, great. You have 10,000 followers who don’t read your tweets.
And what’s worse is you don’t want to read any of their tweets either (remember, you’re following all 10,000 of them in return!). They’re all out there tweeting about weight loss plans, viagra, “make money fast” schemes, “how to get 100,000 followers on Twitter” schemes (which I already detailed above!), their radical political and religious views, etc.
So, while there might be people that you REALLY do want to follow – thought leaders in your field, people who always post interesting things — well, you can’t even find their tweets because you are constantly inundated by nonsense tweets from all those low-quality followers.
Instead of worrying about your number of followers and participating in one of these crazy auto-follow schemes, be judicious about who you follow on Twitter.
1) Follow people because you are interested in what they have to say. Strike up Twitter-sations with these folks via “replies” and “retweets”. They might follow you in return if you tweet about things they find you interesting. And then they might retweet your content to their broader audience of genuinely interested followers.
2) Do not follow anyone just because they followed you. This used to be considered “good manners” when Twitter was in its infancy, but now it is just insane. Look up who this person it – if they post things you are interested in or are in your field, follow away! But if they post about current events in Kentucky (assuming you don’t live there!), gossip about The Hills, and Twitter money making schemes, stay away. You don’t have to block them from following you, but don’t follow back.
Be VERY cautious about following anyone who has tens of thousands of followers and follows tens of thousands. This is a sure sign of an auto follower. And tweets from auto-follower people tend to be quite spammy and self-promotional (although not always – use your judgment).