Twitter – Followers vs Following
Recently much has been made about the numbers of followers people have in Twitter, when in reality, the opposite should be more important. I’m not a preacher and therefore if I have 10, 50 or 1,000 people following me, it doesn’t really make a difference. What is important to me, is what other people are saying, recommending or talking about as it may help me in the future.
Twitter, to me, is a business (and occasionally social) networking tool, more akin to LinkedIn than Facebook. My Twitter account is locked, meaning I prefer to see who wants to follow me, and check that either I know them or I share some interests. It’s far too easy to open access up to everyone and have 100’s of spam bots or Russian escorts who promise to show you a good time for £1.
How do you find relevant people or companies to follow?
Well TweetPromote is relatively new to the scene, and is by far the fastest, easiest and most powerful way of finding targeted people worth following on Twitter. You can find people based on your interests and keywords, and also drill down to friends of friends!
In the example to the right, I follow Fraser and both of us have tagged “Affiliate” and “Marketing” as being an interest of ours. I can now take this one step further and explore Fraser’s contacts to see any that he follows, which I don’t, that also have similar interests.
As a result I find Fraser is following someone called Jim Banks. Jim is old school SEO but also happens to run Global Media Network which is an affiliate network I haven’t heard of before and has UK merchants!
So TweetPromote has helped me locate Jim who maybe worth following and reading what he has to say in the future, and also has opened up the possibility of working with a new network.
TweetPromote is about helping you find people to follow and learn from NOT about getting gazillions of automated followers! There’s no automation, no robots, no spam, just quick and simple exploration of the Twitter users that match your interests.
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Social Stuff
Really useful tool, took a bit of getting used to but I can see how this will help a lot, I also blogged at the same time about a list of 20 Twitters to get started in the UK with for Affiliate Marketing http://bit.ly/BCpax people will think this was planned but as said to you via Twitter has to be the great minds thinking alike thing going on here
Good point, it’s so easy fall into this trap and clutter things up. I’ve become a lot more picky recently
Seems to me the same old problem of people willing Twitter to be something it isn’t. If I want to follow deals, news, or even train times then I’ll just subscribe to the relevant party’s RSS feed, email newsletter, Google up the info, or even just *visit their website*.
I still don’t really get how twitter is supposed to replace any of these things, it seems like a less good version of each one?
Interesting analogy, however it seems that the recent death of Michael Jackson spread around the web faster on Twitter, than any website, RSS feed or email newsletter. I don’t think twitter is out to replace anything but I consider it as yet another source of information, just as email, IM or Text messaging.
The example in my blog post shows the ability to connect with people via http://www.tweetpromote.com, a utility for Twitter. I wouldn’t have connected with Jim via his website (didn’t know it existed), RSS Feed (not subscribed), Newsletter (never joined).
There are some good things with Twitter, but as with everything, sometimes people develop or introduce things that aim to assist or resolve a problem, that was never there. Train Times being an example.
An update…
I use this tool every few weeks to make sure I’m not missing anything (or anyone) that I should or could be following.
Lately, I’ve found I’ve been dropping a few people who tend to be using Twitter as a discussion tool. To me that is what MSN, or any other IM transport, is meant for. Ten public tweets between two people is a little too much IMO and telling me you’re going for a nap isn’t… well… the most exiciting of Tweets is it!
One person that everyone should follow, both in and out of affiliate marketing, is DGM’s HelenMarie21, especially here Friday Playlists!