The math behind Twitter is simple: the more followers, the more powerful you are (well, not that simple, please read on:)). It is quite natural Tweeple are obsessed with the following numbers and are ready to try various (often questionable) tactics to increase that number.
Of course, the only (legit) way to make your following grow is to make it worth it: post great updates people would love to follow. Naturally, this takes time and effort and not everyone has the patience to do it the right way.
Hence the popularity of other (“spammy”) methods to make your following number grow, and here I am listing the 3 of them.
Don’t get me wrong I am not going to tell you why it is unethical or bad to use them: who am I to educate you? (Besides, I have played with all of them just for the sake of an experiment, so I am kind of guilty myself.)
This post is why those tactics are ineffective and even dangerous, but it’s for you to decide is you want to use them or not.
1. Automatic Following Communities:
They work the following way:
- You give it your Twitter login info and allow it to access your account;
- Sometimes you need to specify your interests (but this seldom helps any targeting);
- After that you just start getting hundreds of mutual friends day by day.
Why is this ineffective?
The communities just make no point to me. All you are getting is a number, none of those so-called “followers” ever actually follow you: and you end up being heard by no one having thousands of followers. What’s the point?
2. Twitter Auto-Adding Scripts
This works the following way:
- You install a Greasemonkey script;
- You navigate to any Twitter user’s list of friends;
- You activate the script and it followers all the user’s friends;
- Many of those Tweeple will follow you back.
Why is this ineffective?
Except for often being irrelevant, this is good way to get your account suspended for exceeding the following limit.
3. Advertise Your Twitter Profile
This works as follows:
- You pay for your profile to be shown on some Twitter-related sites;
- A banner is shown to people and they click through and follow if they feel like.
Why is this ineffective?
It just doesn’t work! No one ever clicks and even if someone does, no one follows. Look at the diagram I got for buying 1000 impressions there (the green line represents those who clicked):
The conclusion?
It’s all comes to where we have started: Twitter math is NOT simple and it’s NOT about the numbers. Actually, it is NOT about math. The main thing is if you are really followed or not. 100 “real” dedicated followers who added you for merit are worth thousands!
Post image by Abulic Monkey
Thanks for this nice article. I was thinking of using a similar method, but dropped the idea because i understood it won’t help me in any way. Even without doing anyhting, I get a lot of bogus followers (who get benefitted when i click on their link – to check their website details)
#3 really applies to all banner ads in general. paying for impressions is like paying for richard nixon impressions. they are worthless.
I agree that Twitter success is not measured by raw numbers but more by how effectively you network and interact with others.
Is leaving comments on articles about twitter with your twitter profile a good idea? 🙂
Thanks for good information. but I don’t think it is useful. Twitter success is not depend on to add more no of followers but its depend to add profitable followers. Now a days twitter is one of the best social media to promote your business on internet.
Great article summed up very well in the last sentence: ‘100 “real” dedicated followers who added you for merit are worth thousands! ‘
Glad I found your blog!
For some reason, I am appalled at the concept of paying for a service that claims it can *make* people follow my twitter.
I agree that banner advertising is pretty much one of the least effective internet marketing strategies in general, but twitter account banner advertising?? My lord, what a joke!
I get many accounts following me on a daily basis – I’ll always follow the ones that have interesting non-spammy tweets relevant to my interests.
Good article.
@Phil, you tell us 🙂
[…] 3 dubious/doggy tactics of promoting oneself on twitter; […]
Regarding #3. Do you think it would make a difference if instead of being CPM it was CPC? Or even if it was cost per new follower? It seems like your beef is with the price vs performance. If the scale was tipped, or the performance was increased, or both, would you still take issue?
I guess the bottom line is whether you have something to tweet about that people are going to be interested in, and whether you can locate those people on twitter for them know you exist.
I also agree with you. I have 3 times more followers than whom i follow in my twitter account. You are absolutely right
Was searching for ways to increase my the number of my twitter followers and came upon this article. Good job. I totally agree with your statement that ‘100 “real” dedicated followers who added you for merit are worth thousands! ‘
I think the best way to do it is through commentluv blogs that allow Twitter links, or simply, as you said, just try to keep it up with good content and it will grow later.
It is a catch-22 but what is one to do? 🙂
The key is to produce quality tweets frequently and get real people to follow you. Then you build a relationship with your audience. Your goal is to get real fans not fake numbers.