I have not blogged about Twitter in a while and actually had an interesting experience today that I wanted to share. First some perspective. I got on Twitter in 2009 and currently have a little over nine thousand followers. If someone follows me, I will usually follow them back. The exceptions are accounts that are obvious spam accounts or ones that seem to promote questionable content. Even considering that screening criteria, you will probably find some spam and some questionable tweeters that I follow, because generally I just follow anyone that follows me.
Ok I get that Twitter started out as a tool for people to connect with their friends and family and share all their intimate episodes of their lives, but we all know it has been overrun with folks marketing. With all due respect to the Twitte purist who would like to drag it back to its roots, marketing is why I am there. You might also like to know that the first year I was on Twitter, I picked up 6 new clients who specifically found me on Twitter, so the marketing part of it does work.
Back to the following and being followed part. I guess there are folks who judge the value of your Twitter account by the ratio of followers to people you follow. If you have significantly more followers, it is supposed to indicate you are popular and maybe even stand a chance to monetize your Twitter account. Think Justin Bieber (I just checked and he has almost 27 million followers and he follows 123,000 people himself) To me that seems natural and fair. The ones I don't like are the folks that are trying to game the system. They will follow you and then turn around and unfollow a day or so later and hope to get their follower count up. I am pretty sure the 27M folks that follow Justin did so organically because they care desperately about everything he does.
The other folks are banking on the fact that most people will follow someone who follows them and also that most people will not take the time to unfollow people. Not me. I use a site called Friendorfollow all the time to find the folks who I follow that don't follow me back and I promptly unfollow them. I know the very few people that I have consciously chosen to follow with no expectation that they will follow me back and everyone else better be listening to me if they want me to listen to them.
I am certainly not a purist about Twitter. I use it to market my CPA practice, I am not that great about following what my friends and family post on there and I am certainly not going to lock my account, but for some reason it does bug me these folks that are trying to boost up their followers. You can say that there are bigger problems in the world than Twittersnakes (what I call them) and I would agree, but they bug me for some reason. Hey two months in a row now I have been selected as #1 of the top 100 accounting experts to follow on Twitter. (sorry had to work in a little self-promotion), so I think maybe I have good stuff to say on Twittter and people would benefit by listening in.
Anyway here is the point of my tale. I joined a professional organization (I'm not saying which one) related to my accounting/tax profession. It was a trial thing and I thought it might be beneficial. I guess I would categorize my feelings about this group as lukewarm. They have some good resources and while they don't give me particularly high value information and networking, I did think there was some value there. Given that my trial membership expires the end of this month, I was on the fence if I should renew.
Then a few days ago, they follow me on Twitter. It is such a small thing, but still you feel a little pride when a national professional organization that follows your own profession chooses to follow you, so it felt kind of nice.
Today I log onto FriendorFollow and guess what? The professional organization, has un-followed me. I go and look at their account and it would appear they are a bunch of Twittersnakes! They seem to follow and then un-follow accounts and actually have about 22K followers and only follow about 3K. Guess what, my opinion of them changed immediately . They just lost the chance to get my renewal money over a tiny insignificant thing like un-following me on Twitter, but that is how it works when you sell something.
Are you doing anything that drives away customers or clients, maybe something you don't even consider important?
Ok I get that Twitter started out as a tool for people to connect with their friends and family and share all their intimate episodes of their lives, but we all know it has been overrun with folks marketing. With all due respect to the Twitte purist who would like to drag it back to its roots, marketing is why I am there. You might also like to know that the first year I was on Twitter, I picked up 6 new clients who specifically found me on Twitter, so the marketing part of it does work.
Back to the following and being followed part. I guess there are folks who judge the value of your Twitter account by the ratio of followers to people you follow. If you have significantly more followers, it is supposed to indicate you are popular and maybe even stand a chance to monetize your Twitter account. Think Justin Bieber (I just checked and he has almost 27 million followers and he follows 123,000 people himself) To me that seems natural and fair. The ones I don't like are the folks that are trying to game the system. They will follow you and then turn around and unfollow a day or so later and hope to get their follower count up. I am pretty sure the 27M folks that follow Justin did so organically because they care desperately about everything he does.
The other folks are banking on the fact that most people will follow someone who follows them and also that most people will not take the time to unfollow people. Not me. I use a site called Friendorfollow all the time to find the folks who I follow that don't follow me back and I promptly unfollow them. I know the very few people that I have consciously chosen to follow with no expectation that they will follow me back and everyone else better be listening to me if they want me to listen to them.
I am certainly not a purist about Twitter. I use it to market my CPA practice, I am not that great about following what my friends and family post on there and I am certainly not going to lock my account, but for some reason it does bug me these folks that are trying to boost up their followers. You can say that there are bigger problems in the world than Twittersnakes (what I call them) and I would agree, but they bug me for some reason. Hey two months in a row now I have been selected as #1 of the top 100 accounting experts to follow on Twitter. (sorry had to work in a little self-promotion), so I think maybe I have good stuff to say on Twittter and people would benefit by listening in.
Anyway here is the point of my tale. I joined a professional organization (I'm not saying which one) related to my accounting/tax profession. It was a trial thing and I thought it might be beneficial. I guess I would categorize my feelings about this group as lukewarm. They have some good resources and while they don't give me particularly high value information and networking, I did think there was some value there. Given that my trial membership expires the end of this month, I was on the fence if I should renew.
Then a few days ago, they follow me on Twitter. It is such a small thing, but still you feel a little pride when a national professional organization that follows your own profession chooses to follow you, so it felt kind of nice.
Today I log onto FriendorFollow and guess what? The professional organization, has un-followed me. I go and look at their account and it would appear they are a bunch of Twittersnakes! They seem to follow and then un-follow accounts and actually have about 22K followers and only follow about 3K. Guess what, my opinion of them changed immediately . They just lost the chance to get my renewal money over a tiny insignificant thing like un-following me on Twitter, but that is how it works when you sell something.
Are you doing anything that drives away customers or clients, maybe something you don't even consider important?
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