Who to Follow on Twitter?
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Twitter is very beneficial for your social SEO! In fact Twitter is more about modern SEO than other social media I hailed during my early years.
Yeah, Twitter has surpassed my wildest expectations.
Why is Twitter so valuable for bloggers, social media managers and search engine optimizers ? Well, Twitter is:
- Fast
- Relevant
- Simple
You can spread the word fast, to a relevant audience and do it in a very simple manner.
Word of Mouth Works well on Twitter
Also the word of mouth can spread virally if you get it right. To get it right you need to build a network of friends over at Twitter who share your interests and who care for you.
I was incredibly lucky as a blogger to already have such people scattered over the Interwebs. Thus I could get them to follow me on Twitter quite quickly.
When I reached approx. 200 friends (followers whom I followed too) the Twitter concept worked best for me.
Ever since it got tougher. The more people I followed the less I could communicate with each one. In the end at double the number of friends my Twitter experience has significantly deteriorated.
I got more and more unanswered tweets. People stopped to share my own posts on other social sites. Part of it was also due to my focus shifting to my business blogging clients though.
You can still get Twitter right. It’s just not about how many people follow but how close they are to you and how much they engage.
Get More Followers?
The main reason behind my Twitter problems was the nonsense the Twitter celebrities tell you. The size of your following is almost meaningless.
“The more the better, follow people to make them follow back”. I was wondering what happened when engagement dwindled:
- Did people stop liking me?
- Was I not prolific enough anymore?
- Were there too many new kids on the blog to notice the old fart?
I noticed some new voices among the Twitter clamor: People who said “quality before quantity” – that not the numbers are important but the bonds.
This is obvious but we tend to forget that the Internet is just a reflection of real life enhanced by technology. You can’t have hundreds or thousands of friends.
Who Did I Follow Initially?
I had to change my strategy on whom to follow. Before I followed quite indiscriminately
- Leaders of the search marketing industry
- People “I knew” from elsewhere
- People who might be useful due their high popularity
- People who followed with me
- Active Twitter users
- Renowned marketers
- Friends of friends
- People who addressed me
I ended up with huge amounts of tweets on my Twitter stream from people I couldn’t even remember to have followed.
Then I used the emergency brake. I started to “unfollow” people who never even addressed, linked or referred to me.
Unfollow the Noisy or Silent Ones
I unfollowed people telling me about their lunch and those tweeting all the time so that you couldn’t see the others anymore.
Just 50 noisy “friends” less and the Twitter experience already had improved significantly.
Would I only reduce the number of people I follow from now on? No, I wanted to move on and connect with new people, but this time I’ll do it differently. Who to follow on Twitter then?
The single most important factor for me to follow you on Twitter is from now on: You have to communicate with me.
- You can reply
- retweet
- mention me
- or let me know that you exist on other social media.
There must be a connection. I’m not just listening to you like to a radio station. When you don’t talk to me, I most likely won’t speak with you either and I certainly won’t listen all the time.
Also I don’t care that you do SEO. I hate such SEO! I practice SEO 2.0 so in case you think I’ll befriend you just because you’re a self proclaimed SEO expert: Fail!
Also I rarely “befriend” people who beg me to become friends. I befriend people who act like friends.
On the Web attention is the currency not money so I’m as poor or rich as you and I don’t beg you so stop begging as well.
Just in case you still want to follow me: I’m @onreact over at Twitter. I don’t tweet solely about work though. Prepare for shares that are relevant beyond niche audiences.
* (CC BY 2.0) Creative Commons image by Christopher Michel
I have found it impossible to fully manage who I follow on twitter. There are so many interesting people who use the service in the right way. I want to follow them all but I mean can I really keep up with the list once I start following more then 100 people, not really.
Then on top of this I want to follow people outside of my niche just because I like a diverse conversation.
In the end there’s just to many people but I do my best to keep up with them all.
Yeah, thus you have to selective, more selective than you describe above. Otherwise you just get overwhelmed.
i must admit, i havn’t set up a twitter account yet. Maybe i am behind the times! How vital would you say it is for increasing links? It seems you put a lot of weight on the quality of the friends you have there, not quantity. How many would you say is a reasonable number to have? You state 50 as a decent number, would you say thats achievable? I wouldnt want to have people just for the sake of it and not be able to interact with them.
Cheers
mat: You have to try yourself, some people prefer 50 other 500 I guess. You’ll find out based on the time spent and quality of conversation plus the outcome in visitors, links etc.
Twitter is great for quick direct traffic, I get 100 – 500 clicks per post announced on Twitter by now. For getting links (outside of Twitter) – I’m still undecided whether it’s that useful.
I’m pretty selective with who I’m following as well. I have learned a great deal and built real connections with many of the people I do follow. On the other hand I have scores of unknown people following me. Sometimes I logon to twitter and wonder who are these people. I agree completely with two way communication and community building aspects should be the focus.
This is really relevant for me Tad as a relative newcomer to Twitter. I had found my first few weeks quite enjoyable (surprisngly as an anti-Twitter spokesman). Over time however it has become much nosier as I follow more people. Twitter’s biggest problem is that it’s not scalable.
I’ve also implemented my own personal selection criteria to reduce noise. I hope it’s not perceived as some sort of Twitter elitism. But for me, it’s the only way I can make it work.
twitter is becoming a massive marketing utility maybe i should look in it. thanks for the post very informative
Thank you for your informative post. I don’t know who to follow on twitter but I guess you are right, I should not follow people who never even addressed, linked or referred to me. I hope your tips work on my site! ;)
thanks for sharing that, i willl definatly start looking into twitter now.
I think twitter is great. But you really have to be prepared to work at it. People who think they will just sign up and get business are really mistaken.
Yeah Steven, that’s the rule on the Web. It’s not like opening a shop in Manhattan. You have to build your streets and infrastructure before people can find and reach you.
Thanks for the share. It’s impossible to comprehend how fast the twitter community has grown. I am not on twitter yet. But maybe i will join to see what all the fuss is about. Thanks again for the post.
Also, check out http://www.tweettop.com/topic/SEO for the top people to follow re: social media.
J
maybe you all can help, just recently got on twitter. Qwickly got over the “following p. diddy” thing(yes I was one of them). Now i’m looking into how to expand my twitter experience “The right way”. Meaning based on my interests, sports, electronic gizmos, comics. How do I build upon that though? I’m at twitter.com/soulmonk if your interested but I am new so bear with me, oh and i’m trying to clean out my twitter box of “Friends” that don’t reply to me or blab about nonsense. Thanks
A list of to “to follow on Twitter lists”: http://followontwitterlists.com/
I also used to implement the same strategy at other social networking sites by making as much friends as I could. But, as time passed on reading quality posts like this one, I came to realize the same concept as ” Quality is better than Quantity”.
to follow these twitters just for seo ??
I’m interested in what sort of time people are investing in twitter on a daily basis?
I have been a big fan of @JasonSnell – Editorial Director of Macworld and @Padmasree Warrior CTO at Cisco Systems.