I’m Having Second Thoughts About Twitter

Ah Twit­ter. The great­est new thing since sliced bread. Every­one is there. But who is actu­ally using it the way it’s built for? As far as mar­ket­ing and busi­ness goes, it seems like there are a lot more spam­mers and farm­ers then there are qual­ity peo­ple. I’ve already known a cou­ple peo­ple that have given up on social mar­ket­ing just for this rea­son. It seems like most of the peo­ple that add you on Twit­ter are adding every­one else as well.

Granted, this is great for get­ting high num­bers and high num­bers look good to oth­ers. But that’s all you seem to become is another num­ber. That’s not social net­work­ing is it? Did I miss a memo or something?

And then there is the mat­ter of all the time it takes. I used to respond to all the auto DMs I would receive when I added peo­ple. And when some­one added me, I added them back to rec­i­p­ro­cate the ges­ture. Of course I would then get more auto DMs. For the most part noone responded to my response on their DM either. This doesn’t sound very effi­cient to me. And what about the DMs that are actu­ally messeges to me. Am I going to miss those as well now? Under a pile of “thanks for adding me, check this link out”?

I know that in any aspect of mar­ket­ing there are tons of mar­keters that are spam­mers. And of course these are the ones that get noticed the most. There are also tons of peo­ple that are great to con­nect with. So maybe we need to rethink how to use Twit­ter a bit.

Twit­ter is an awe­some tool. It’s sim­ple and straight to the point. It’s a great way to con­nect. It can be effi­cient too. And that depends on how you want to use it. I think Twit­ter is far from becom­ing sat­u­rated or dead or even use­less. But depend­ing on how you want to use it, you may need dif­fer­ent tactics.

The Num­bers Game

This is what a lot of peo­ple do I’ve noticed. The idea here is to get as high of a friend count as you can. And when you tweet some­thing, a per­cent­age of all those peo­ple are going to see it. So the more fol­low­ers you have, the more peo­ple that may see your tweet. It makes sense. But it’s a bit like shoot­ing in the dark. You will get some of it, but a lot of it you won’t.

While I don’t totally dis­agree with this idea, (it is effec­tive to a degree) it’s also pretty cold and, well, anti social net­work­ing. The more fol­low­ers the bet­ter. All those auto DMs from new fol­low­ers are what fill up my DM inbox.

The Net­work­ing Game

I do use an auto DM when peo­ple add me but instead of a link to my blog, or affil­i­ate link I think it should at least just say hi. Or per­haps a link to con­nect else­where such as Face­book. This game is a bit harder. This is where I’m rethink­ing things. You have to get a bit cre­ative. This is the game of bal­anc­ing net­work­ing with your avail­able time. With the num­bers game, most of the process can be automated.

I’m all for automa­tion but not to the point of ruin­ing the rea­son for Twit­ter. Use automa­tion as a sup­ple­ment to your networking.

The net­work­ing game is all about mak­ing con­nec­tions with oth­ers and help­ing oth­ers. As I said, it’s a bal­ance between your time and keep­ing in con­tact. Twit­ter makes it entirely too easy to spend all day tweet­ing and respond­ing to everyone.

But I think you end up with bet­ter qual­ity fol­low­ers (and fol­low­ing) this way. You stay in con­tact and help each other out. You make con­nec­tions and oppor­tu­ni­ties for you and your busi­ness. As long as you set a cer­tain limit for this, it’s pretty effective.

There are still a lot of peo­ple in this game as well. I think this makes your tweets a bit more impor­tant to oth­ers, instead of just another num­ber. Sure you can still acquire tons of fol­low­ers this way but it may take a bit longer. But on the other hand, you end up with a much more qual­ity expe­ri­ence. And more oppor­tu­nity for your business.

Sec­ond Thoughts About Twitter

Obvi­ously every­one uses Twit­ter a lit­tle bit dif­fer­ently, but these are the two dis­tinct ways to use it that I have seen. I per­son­ally like to net­work and that was my idea when I started on Twit­ter. But I’ll admit I started using it with the num­bers game. After my DM inbox kept fill­ing with auto messeges I noticed that my time spent on Twit­ter wasn’t quite what I hoped for.

I think every­thing you do for your busi­ness should only take as much time as needed and no more. After my fol­low­ers num­ber started grow­ing it took longer and longer to try and respond to all the DMs. Most of the time I didn’t get a response back. I did some­times but it just didn’t seem worth it.

So I’ve recently started to rethink my idea of how to use Twit­ter to bet­ter ben­e­fit me and my busi­ness. I started to take a more per­sonal approach to it. I’ve started to con­cen­trate more on con­nect­ing and help­ing oth­ers then try­ing to get my num­bers to go up. Of course my num­ber of fol­low­ers has risen a lit­tle slower, but it’s still going up. And so far it’s been much more satisfying.

Twit­ter is a pretty impor­tant part of mar­ket­ing and run­ning a busi­ness. It’s a pow­er­ful tool in many ways. I just need to rethink how I’m going to use it and take a dif­fer­ent approach to it to get what I need out of it. To make it work even more effec­tively for me. So that I can con­nect and help oth­ers in a more effi­cient manner.

~Chris

What have you learned since you started using Twit­ter? Does your approach to using it work for you or are you hav­ing sec­onds thoughts about Twit­ter too?

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