When recess was over we did a little bit of playing around with Twitter. I explained how one is able to analyze other twitter users to find the ones who are actually interested in forming relationships. Twitter, much like the internet, has thousands of people who think that every get rich quick scheme will work. To some degree, the claims of thousands of followers is not a lie.There are spammers who have programs that troll the twitterverse and all they do is follow people. The point is that if they follow 1000 people, 100 people will likely follow them back. The goal is to get thousands of followers and then use that to make money. The problem is that if you have 10,000 followers who were found using this method, not a single one of them will care what you tweet about. To build a brand you need to have people who are interested in what you have to say.
There isn't any way to fake it. You have to genuinely care what the people you are following are doing. You have to want to see them succeed. You must try to help. If you are just out to make a quick buck you will fail, get blocked, or be accused of being a spammer and the fine folks at Twitter will take your account away from you.
So how do you tell the contenders from the pretenders? That is the question. I told Bob that he had to check a number of areas on their page. The avatar, is it a custom avatar or the little tweeter bird? The tweeter bird is one sign the person isn't serious about their account. Next we looked at the following to follower ratio. A good rule of thumb is to be wary of those that are greater than 1.5:1. You might also avoid someone who is following 50 people, but has 10,000 followers, unless they tweet about a subject you are interested in. If they do, then follow them and learn from their tweets.
The next stop on the tour was to check out the last time they tweeted. If the person only tweets every few days, then they may be interesting, but they have little value in a brand building exercise. What do their tweets consist of? I have seen hundreds of people who are interested in the same things I am, but all of their tweets are only about their product or service. They don't RT (re tweet) anyone's tweet. They don't mention what they had for lunch. They don't have conversations with their followers. In short, they are not going to want to build a relationship with you. They are out for themselves.
I also explained that a person who taked the time to write a clever or funny bio, is probably a pretty good choice to follow. These people are generally engaging. I like to see a person with a url for their blog too. They get one brownie point for that. The reason will become cleal later, but I didn't want to overload Bob with too much info. The last area I check is how many times they are listed. More is better.
When we were done I gave Bob some homework. He was to follow 10 people, all of whom he didn't know. He wanted to follow a bunch of his contacts from Linkedin, but I told him to hold off for a couple of days. It is important that he sees how one can build relationships with people he has never met. The power of Twitter is that one can develop friendships all over the world.
So tonight I popped in to see if he had done his homework. Bob had followed 16 people. He had 6 followers, but two of the accounts were mine. So 4 new followers. I gave a look at the followers and 1 of the 4 is a spammer. He didn't tweet one time today. So I have to give him a C + on the day. He exceeded his following quota, did ok on followers, but didn't tweet. That is the point of this exercise, to chat with the world.
