Mar
19
Mike Dillard vs. Better Networker Members – Over Twitter
ByOkay, this is on a LOT of people’s minds and I’ve been asked several times now what my take on the situation is. Let me get you up to speed on what’s happening.
Several days ago, a good friend of mine, Mike Dillard, send out an email to his list:
I Have A Dilemma…
I have a dilemma Raymond…
It’s been the source of an internal debate for a few weeks now, and I’d like to get your thoughts…
I’m talking about Twitter, and the single question that we must all eventually answer…
Do you follow someone just because they followed you? Or do you only follow people you genuinely know and want to follow?
Over the past few months, I’ve done both.
After talking to my good friend and social media maven, Perry Belcher, I decided to “reciprocal follow” everyone who was following me about two months ago.
There are two reasons you’d want to do this…
1: It’s polite.
2: It helps you gain exposure, which will help increase your number of followers.
As of today, I follow around 10,000 people, and have 11,900-ish followers at http://www.Twitter.com/Mike_Dillard
Looking back, I’m not convinced that was the best move to make, and here’s why…It’s not the number of people who follow you on Twitter that matters, it’s the number of people who actually listen to you.
And if everyone is just “reciprocal following” everyone, not because they WANT to listen to that person, but because they’re trying to increase their exposure and number of followers, then we have a problem…
Everyone’s following everyone, but no one’s really listening.
When I had 8,000 followers and followed 50, I knew that all 8,000 people subscribed to my “Tweets” because they genuinely wanted to plug into my life, and hear what I had to say.
That’s no longer the case.
And it gets worse…
Once you follow 500+ people, you have to start using specialized software like www.TweetDeck.com, just to filter and manage so many messages.And if you already use TweetDeck like me, you’ve probably set up a custom sub-list of real friends so you can separate all of their messages from the masses of people you don’t know.
How genuine is that?
In the end, reciprocal following simply dilutes the power of an application like Twitter because it’s a behavior that’s motivated by greed instead of authenticity, just so we can all enjoy the illusion of having “more followers”.That doesn’t sit right with me, so after many days of thought, I’m going to do some surgery on my Twitter account and * gasp * “unfollow” the 10,000+ people I don’t truly know.
If you’re one of them, please do not take it personally. It’s not.I’m sure I’ll lose quite a few people during this process, but that’s fine. If that’s what it costs to be authentic, then so be it.
And if you continue following me because you truly have an interest in what I have to say and offer, then THANK YOU. That’s what this tool is all about.My Twitter address is http://www.Twitter.com/Mike_Dillard
In the end, I feel that any true “following” you build in your life should be based on providing real value, not the perpetuation of an illusion daisy-chained from one person to the next.(If you feel strongly about this as well and would like to share this letter, you’re welcome to do so as you wish).
Sincerely,
Mike Dillard
And boy did that piss some people off. You know what I think?
I say bah hum bug. This is what I think, please feel free to add your $0.02: “Give Me a Break: Stop the Twitter Vanity!“
Related posts:
- No More Twitter App! Disconnecting Twitter from Facebook There’s a Twitter application for Facebook that I’ve been using...
- Twitter Weekly Updates for 2008-12-14 nice to catch up on some sleep. Time to go...
- Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-02-08 a fuse blew… trying to find out which one. #...
- Raymond & Fernando Get Interviewed for Better Networker Recently, The National Networker did an interview with Fernando and...
- Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-03-08 Don’t forget to spring ahead everyone # yum yum hookah...
NEWS FEED
Even though they say the way to hell is paved with good intentions, I think at the end of the day, it’s about your intentions… Your intentions when you follow people and your intentions with those who are following you.
Are you following folks with the secret hope they’d follow you back? Or are you following them with the intentions of learning something from them because you value what they have to say/Tweet?
Are you gathering followers for the sake of spamming them or so that you can add value to them?
It looks like Mike is reinvestigating his original intention of following the thousands that he did (not saying he was/is right or wrong).
I question the intentions of those folks who are pissed because he unfollowed them…
Raymond
Hi Raymond:
I have spent quite a bit of time going over this in my mind. I have posted quite a bit over on BetterNetworker regarding it. I tend to agree with Mike. If you have a huge following, (especially if you are an unknown) it is not likely that those people care one iota about what you have to say. They probably followed you hoping you would follow them in return.
One of my points that I continue to go back to, is the fact that unless your followers are on Twitter within 30 seconds of you posting, they are not likely to see your post. How many people do you think are reading it? Only those who are on right at that moment. I suppose you could improve the number of readers to your post if you examined the statistics as to the most active times of the day for people signing into Twitter.
If I am interested in a particular person (such as Mike D.) then I will make the effort to get to his page and check out his recent posts. I am only going to do this for people that I genuinely am interested in.
I am still not convinced that Twitter is all it’s cracked up to be. I believe it’s a great platform for people who are well-known. I know of examples of people who have made over $40,000.00 from one post. These people though have followers who really hang on every word they say. They have earned, over the years, their trust and respect.
Millions of people are devoting time to Twitter every day hoping and praying that it is going to miraculously transform their business. My prediction is that it is only going to happen for such a small percentage of people, who are already in the public eye in one way or another.
Might I say, that I realize that Twitter was intended to be a social networking site and not a lead generation site. So many of us are working it to get leads for our business. If it continues on this way, my feeling is that it is going to implode.
Just my two cents worth. Would love to hear other peoples opinions.
Hey Raymond,
MD is 1000% right on in IMHO.
That’s what I’ve been doing since day 1,
despite the “Twitter Police” constantly
harassing me to do otherwise.
People in social media need to spend
more time learning how to friggin’ sell, and
less time whining about if someone is
following them or not.
My 1 cent (I donated the other to Twitter,
they need the moolah to keep their system
running without glitches.)
Ben
This auto-following madness (and stopping following anyone who doesn’t follow you back within 24 hours) is just crap. It’s purely a numbers game and I can’t believe how many hundreds of people have bought into it. I look at the top people on Twitter now (say, over 20,000 followers) and about half of them are ordinary people with nothing interesting to say. They just worked the numers game.
I know that everyone I follow, I have chosen to follow because I am interested in their content, in learning who they are. I value their opinions. They are not just a random group of people who Auto-Followed me back.
I think we have to redefine influence because I’m not sure some of these nouveau popular Twitterers (some of whom have just been on for a month), really carry any influence whatsoever. They’ve just used Belcher’s system or Tweetergetter to quickly inflate their numbers. For what purpose? It’s just big for bigness sake.