Design, Coding, SEO and Social Media Marketing, WordPress & Facebook

My boss and I have been engaging in a little friendly rivalry via Twitter, jokingly competing to see who has the most followers at the end of each day. A little arms race, if you will. Because of my natural competitive spirit, I have been tweeting more and more, hoping to encourage more followers. Of course I only tweet really amazingly hilarious or stunningly poignant messages...But I have noticed that almost daily, although my follower count is steadily growing, the numbers fluctuate a bit. I hovered around 50 followers last week, and then it was around 57, up and down for a day, and then up to 60, and today, at 70. I wrote my first tweet on February 17th 2009, and for a long time my tweets were few and far between. As soon as I started tweeting at least 2x a day, my follower count went up. I wonder, do my tweets have anything to do with who follows me? Am I turning people away by too much noise, or not enough?

I follow around 45 people currently, and I tease my boss that there are almost twice as many people following me, that I don’t need to follow them all back because they just love me and my tweets regardless. But most likely they are just waiting patiently for me to follow them…it seems to be the most popular tactic for gaining followers; follow as many people as you can and hope they return the favor. I am trying to come up with a word for that, a Twitter slut…like a twlut? Doesn’t really roll off the tongue. We need a Twitter linguist in here...a twinguist? Enough already.

So, what IS the best way to gain followers? Many bloggers have tried to answer this question, telling us to tweet well and tweet often, and there are some people out there who preach the auto-follow and auto-responder method. HootSuite is a popular application that is supposed to help. But there are also several Twitter users out there who have thousands of followers, some of them without following ANY back. Granted, these people were already famous before Twitter, like Demi Moore or Lance Armstrong. Is there anyone out there who has become famous because of Twitter and their tweets? How did they do it?

Here are some of my main questions about the Twittersphere, with my own attempts at guidelines on how to use Twitter. I would love to hear any additional comments or questions in response.

Why Twitter?
Why not just twitter to share your wisdom with the world? Not everyone will appreciate your own brand of humor or political views, but pleasing everyone is not the reason you are there. Or is it? Some people Twitter specifically for business, others for pleasure, and some a mixture of both. When I recommend Twitter to a client, I tell them that their goal should be to establish themselves as a thought leader in their field, simply by sharing their thoughts and expertise freely with anyone who cares to listen.

Who to follow?
Why not just follow people you like, who have interesting and useful things to say? I don’t feel the need to follow people who follow me, especially if I do not know who they are. And if someone talks waaaay too much, and about nothing in particular, I stop following them, even at the risk of losing them as a follower. Some of the people I follow only rarely share something valuable to me, but when they do post a useful link or nugget of wisdom, they make following them worthwhile. Some people are just plain strange, and that can be entertaining.

What to say?
Why not just tweet things that would be interesting to anyone and everyone, share links to helpful sites and articles, and occasional (good) humor? If you are representing yourself as a business or brand, you can stick to relevant subjects, but it does not hurt to share some personal anecdotes and preferences with your followers. I prefer to follow brands though, because they usually stick to sharing helpful things, and avoid the mundane status updates, like the users in this famous twitter parody video.

How often?
If you are only tweeting when you have something really good to say, is that going to be very often? Should you come up with things to share, comment on or debate just for the purpose of creating a new tweet? I think that businesses out there trying to to use Twitter for promoting their brand should be tweeting often, since they probably have a wealth of useful information to share. I would say, only go on Twitter if you have a lot to say! Why would you start a blog if you had nothing to write about? Twitter is just micro-blogging, after all.

How many followers?
Yes, it does matter how many people follow you, but why would you want to trick people into following you? If they are following you for the wrong reasons, they probably won’t be interested in what you have to say anyway, so they will not follow links to your sites or blogs. This Twitter powerhouse really wants people to follow him, and he claims he makes money off of his 20,000 or more followers. Each person that follows his link is a potential client, and with 20,000 people receiving those links, he is bound to get some business eventually. Yes, you can drive more traffic with links if you have more followers, but this should come naturally, albeit slowly, if you just continue to share quality content at a reasonable pace.

Please share any of your thoughts, and there is more to come on Twitter soon...I don't think that I have nearly exhausted the subject!