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Should You "Follow" Everyone Back On Twitter?
By Andrew Wee
Expert Author
Article Date: 2009-03-11
A Twitter snob is someone who has a large gathering of Twitter followers, but yet is too "uppity" to follow many of them back. So is this going to hurt your brand on the micro blogging platform? Not really, and here's why...
So in recent weeks, there's been a spate of discussion about "Twitter Snobs" - twitter users who don't follow many people back. Maybe following 200 people and have 20,000 follow them.
Todd Friesen AKA Oilman was analysing how he could get into SEOMoz's Rand Fishkin's twitter cliche. Rand follows 11 twitter uses and has about 5,200 followers.
Likewise, other bloggers have been pontificating why it's bad to be a twitter snob and how you should fix it (follow more of them back, make friends, etc). See the references here, here and here.
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So where do I stand?
I follow 217 users and have 1,374 followers. Or about a 15% follower rate.
Which is closer to about 12-13%, since I have a number of fake twitter profiles among my followers.
Here is where I think it's good to be a snob - I read every update each of the people I'm following
As my twitter profile page says "If I follow you, I read every update"
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It's just like the traffic generation game, although quality (raw numbers) is good, I still focus on quality (lead generation/traffic quality) over quantity any day of the week (or month).
Assuming you're in this business to do more than just generate eyeballs and plan to convert or monetize them, I'd say quality is darn important.
And there's a difference between a snob (someone who's selective and realistic about who they follow) versus someone who is just out to be a "faux twitter rockstar", gathering a following of 100,000 and just seeing everyone as just another number.
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There's a difference between being a participatory and non-participatory member of twitter.
You participate when you use DMs (direct messages), @user (to reply to a specific person, while everyone can read your twitter stream) and selectively RT (retweet) and broadcast/syndicate quality content.
As the folks at Bruce Clay note: you could go the Guy Kawasaki route and use twitter as a broadcast medium - funnelling traffic to your own site (in this case Alltop) and not responding to replies or messages, that's your perogrative.
It shortchanges the social media channel in my opinion and relegates Twitter to being in the position of just a digital signboard in the middle of the virtual deserts, when it could be used as a channel of online conversation.
And ultimately, the best customers are the ones who feel they are appreciated.
So I'll keep my twitter snob hat on my head, until it isn't working for me anymore.
Oh yes, and you can join my followers at http://twitter.com/andrewwee.
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About the Author:
Andrew Wee is an Asia-based Internet Marketer focused on blogging, social traffic generation and affiliate marketing. Previously rated as one of Asia's top technology journalists, Andrew covers breaking news and industry developments at WhoIsAndrewWee.com
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