So, as a lot of you know from this original piece (click here) I am on a quest to reach 100k twitter followers. Am I out of my mind? Probably. Anyway, my thought is to relay my twitter experience here at 5,000 / 10,000 / and then every 10k or so after that.
Some interesting things have become more concrete since I first started to really focus on twitter. Some great, some meh, and some I don’t know yets have taken shape. I’m going to list them for you below and spend a little time discussing them. If this is not your thing, feel free to click away. I’m sure I’ll have a more “slice of life” piece tomorrow or maybe never or maybe go jump in a lake. You’re still here? Great, you’re the one I wanted to talk to anyway. Let us begin. (And, as always, I’d love to know what you think in the comments section.)
content is king: I’ve known this for quite some time on the internet – that you have to be making something. You can’t just post one day and then wait 5 months or the next year to post again and expect something to happen. You have to be creating OR CURATING (a word on that in a moment) all of the time or at least on a pretty regular schedule. What I do is twitter jokes. New content based on current news or pop culture or whatever pops into my head at the time. However, that’s not all I do. If I find something that REALLY appeals to me – an article on social media, a tv show I’m really into (Downton Abbey), a funny video or post someone else has made, or my live comedy show that I promote frequently – I post those too. That’s what I mean by curate. There are some people who, quite successfully, post nothing of their own. Their feeds are curations of a style or a feeling/ mood and they are equally as good.
Content kings?
you need a “follow back” policy: As far as I can see, there is only one real way to grow your audience on twitter and that is ADD PEOPLE. You have to add people in a targeted way though – for example, I add bloggers, social media people, LA local stuff, and people who like comedy. Once you add them, you have to decide how long to keep them on your list. What I do is give them approximately 24 hours to follow back, if they don’t, they’re gone. If they interact with me – they go on a list. A list that I keep of my most interactive twitter peeps. Ultimately, that’s what I want – an awesome group of people that I talk to and who talk back. I don’t want to stand on Mount Twitter with a bullhorn and say my nonsense to the wind. So, for the most part, that’s my follow back policy.
you will lose people / some people will be idiots: If the only truth in life is, “death and taxes” then the only truth on the internet is, “people will unsubscribe and some people will be d*cks.” It’s just inevitable. BUT, if more people like what you’re doing than not – feck it. Drive a stake through the heart of the vampires (by clicking the “block” button) and focus on the awesome, larger percentage. If people “unsubscribe” or in the world of twitter, “unfollow” they are HELPING YOU. That’s right, they are. They’re not the right fit. You’re Metallica and maybe they are the Bee Gees. What I want is like-minded folks. Twitter is my online hangout space and I never hangout with people I don’t like. It’s simple, when you think about it. It also helps to let the nonsense roll of your back.
“I’m so glad I unfollowed that jackass.” – Stevie Wonder
i’m actually enjoying the experience: I’ve written jokes on twitter before. I’ve even curated interesting content. What I probably didn’t do much of before was talk back. Now I do whenever I can. As such, I’m really enjoying a lot of my twitter followers. You can tell there are some real humans behind their twitter accounts and those are the people I’m interested in first and foremost.
verified vs. unverified: You know when you look at a twitter account and it’s got a blue check mark in a circle next to the twitter handle? That’s a verified account. Almost all of the verified accounts that I’ve seen have huge follower numbers. Twitter is who verifies them and you can’t go looking for the twitter gods to ask. They will come to you, supposedly. What’s cool about the verified accounts is that they are able to keep a clean feed. You can look at a verified account two ways – by seeing only what the account holder has written or by seeing both the @replies and everything the account holder writes. I wish unverified accounts were given these options because when you really want to chat with people it can clog your feed. I still interact, but I probably would even more if I knew that new people could read the feed itself and not all of the interactions / conversations piled on top of my content.
That’s it – my top of brain thoughts on twitter as I pass the 5,000k threshold. It’s been interesting so far…
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Sweet Mother is updated daily-ish on the quest to 365 posts. Only 40+ to go. Join me in the home stretch by hitting the “follow” button above.
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Photo creds:
twitter-sand, stevie, bk-kings
Sweet Mother 