As a power user on LinkedIn (10,000+ direct connections) who, just over a week ago, setup a Twitter account, I thought it might be interesting to explore my thoughts as a newbie to Tweeting.
At the time of this writing, I have close to 1,300 people following me and I am following 1,800. First let me say to get to anywhere close to that number of connections on LinkedIn was well close to a year’s worth of effort. There are so many constraints on who one can connect to, and how connections are facilitated on LinkedIn, that just do not exist on Twitter.
Anyone can follow anybody they choose, whether or not the person being followed returns the favor, strikingly different from the strategy employed by all the other major social media sites. I guess one could say in the Twitterverse one can truly have one-sided relationships, and in some cases that is an acceptable practice and even makes sense.
Just prior to setting up my Twitter Account (@LinkedInMaster), I didn’t fully grasp the benefit one would receive from participation on this very busy and at first confusing site. Which is the same sort of feeling I have heard several others express. I was discussing with a friend and Twitter enthusiast Brent Jordan (@Brent_Jordan), and he compared Twitter to a party or a business networking event. We all love parties, right? We attend parties and meet new people, especially big parties.
In any party there can be hundreds of conversations going on at once. No way can we be involved in every conversation that goes on at a party; but we can have a very meaningful introductory conversation while surrounded by all the other conversations.
I knew this was true from my own experiences, and the proverbial light went on. So going forward, at least at this time, my strategy will be to meet numerous people on Twitter and solidify the meaningful/strategic relationships on LinkedIn, facebook, or whatever platform is most appropriate. The analogy that works in my mind is to view Twitter as an online handshake, and LinkedIn or facebook as an online meeting for one on one lunch, coffee, or a happy hour.
-Lyndle Savage, VP-Business Development
June 29, 2009 at 3:58 pm
One problem with all this “twitter followers” craziness is that just because of the expansion of the entire system, people are getting followers for really no reason. Masses of followers serve no purpose. It’s an ego stroke, but are you SELLING anything? I’d rather have 500 RESPONSIVE BUYERS that follow me than 60,000 idiots that do nothing because they only followed me in hopes that I would follow them back. In fact, a bunch of the so-called Internet Marketing “gurus” are now getting slapped by Twitter for the techniques that they banter about.
Even on Twitter, content is king.
August 24, 2009 at 2:47 pm
I agree, the numbers game really doesn’t add value. Some people have advocated keeping the number of followers hidden (will probably never happen).
Tools like Tweetdeck, Cotweet, and Seesmic make it easy to pare down the noisy stream of a large number of followers into a meaningful interaction. I use keywords, groups, and so forth to manage it… Even if you gave one minute a week to 3000 followers, that’s 50 hours. Unless that’s part of a CRM initiative, or a sales process, that’s not going to be realistic.