Twitter 101: Gaining Followers

Say hello to Twitter, the platform where you post brief and sometimes cryptic messages in the hopes that people will become your followers. Sounds a bit like a cult, doesn’t it? Actually, it’s one of the more central tenets of New Media here in 2008, having become so popular that it’s seeing perhaps more growing pains than any other social networking platform. It’s also extremely difficult to explain what it is and how it works to someone who isn’t using it. Most people go for the “instant messaging” analogy, but I find that doesn’t help much since it’s difficult for anyone to envision an iChat conversation involving a hundred or a thousand people in a way that doesn’t sound nightmarish. So instead I tell people to picture Facebook stripped down to nothing but status updates and profile pictures, structured in such a way that you see nothing but status updates from your friends, one on top of the other. Limit the updates to 140 characters, substitute “followers” for “friends” and you’re most of the way to understanding Twitter.



But one of the fundamental differences between the two services is that on Facebook you typically only “friend” people who are actually friends (or acquaintances, friends of friends, etc), Twitter’s stripped-down nature allows you to theoretically follow as many people as you want, perhaps including people you’ve never met whom you simply find entertaining. New users often struggle with this concept: who should I follow, and if someone follows me, should I follow them back? Should I follow people semi-randomly, simply because someone I’m following sent them an “at” message, or simply because someone I’m following is following them?

None of these questions has hard and fast answers, as it depends on what kind of user experience you’re looking for – an admittedly difficult question to answer when you’re just starting out on Twitter and you’re still figuring out what you’re doing.


One fairly common theme among new Twitter users, however, is that they want to get at least some people following them (otherwise they’re almost literally talking to themselves when posting). And the easiest way to make that happen is to go ahead and follow some people yourself.


But not everyone is going to follow you back just because you’ve started following them. I generally try to, as evidenced by the fact that I currently have about 2600 followers and I’m following about 2400 people myself. (that’s about a fourth the number of followers that Chris Brogan has, and less than a tenth of Robert Scoble, so it’s all relative).


I receive several email notifications from Twitter per day, letting me know that someone has begun following me. And with each one, I have to make a decision (sometimes rather quickly) about whether to follow each of them in return. I typically do unless I see any red flags, but I thought I’d take a moment to share exactly what it is I’m looking for when making those decisions. It’s probably not that far off from what other users are looking for, so it just might come in handy for those of you who are new to Twitter and hoping to get people to follow you in return:

Are you a human?



With very few exceptions, I’m not about to follow anyone whose account appears to consist merely of posts from an automated robot. So if all of your posts are of the “@johnsmith posted a photo on Flickr [link]” or “@johnsmith new blog entry at [link]” then don’t expect me to jump on board. Some popular websites have successfully gotten their twitter-using readers to follow such twitter-bots, but it’s not my thing. I’m much more inclined to follow an account that’s being maintained by a real person, with the occasional site link thrown in amongst their real-world posts.



Actually post something!



One of the toughest calls to make is when someone begins following me before they’ve posted anything yet. How do I know whether you’re a real person or an automated bot? Do yourself a favor and make a few posts before following anyone. They don’t have to be polished or witty (most people’s earliest Twitter posts aren’t), they just have to provide evidence that you’re a real human being.



Easy does it



Often the first things I look at when deciding whether to follow someone back is the ratio of “following” to “followers.” If someone is following 300 people but only has eight people following them, my first thought is that there has to be something wrong. My tendency is to want to assume that it’s because the person is posting absolute crap and none of those 300 people wants to follow them back. That might not be fair, but nonetheless that’s what it looks like on first blush. So don’t set yourself up to be confused by one of those unfortunate folks by following hundreds of people right out of the gate before you give them the chance to follow you back.



Find your friends



Take advantage of Twitter’s “Find & Follow” feature to seek out people you know from other walks of your digital life who might be on Twitter. There are two obvious reasons for doing so: these are people you’re likely going to want to follow, and they’re more likely to follow you back if they know who you are. Enough said.



Find the friendlies



Twitter users such as Brogan and Scoble are highly likely to follow you back, so long as you fall within their rather broad criteria (which are probably similar to mine). Finding these folks is easy: just look for users who update rather frequently and have large-ish and fairly similar “followers” and “following” numbers.



Speak my language



Although I feel bad about it, I’m unlikely to follow someone back if the majority of their posts are in a language I don’t understand. I’m not doing either one of us any favors by following you back if your posts are in German or French or Japanese. It always makes me wish I could speak (or at least read) more languages.


Use your real name



When I first started on Twitter my username was “iProng” and I didn’t get a lot of followers. It’s not that other users weren’t fans of the magazine, it’s that they assumed my account was some kind of auto-feed for iProng’s content instead of a real-life account from a real person. So I changed my user name to “billpalmer” and found that a much higher percentage of the people that I was following were following me back. Some Twitter users have attracted a great number of followers by using the name of their show as their username, but in my experience that’s the exception.



Don’t play games



If you’re going to click the “follow” button next to someone’s name, make sure it’s because you actually want to see their posts in your timeline. There’s nothing wrong with realizing later that this just isn’t someone you want to hear from and subsequently unfollowing them. But whatever you do, don’t follow people just so you’ll follow you back. You’ll end up with a Twitter page full of posts you don’t want to see, which just craps up your user experience. And whatever you do, don’t “follow” someone so they’ll get an email notification and then immediately unfollow them, as such behavior will get noticed and you don’t want that kind of reputation among the Twitter community.



It’s not a race, there’s no prize for having the most followers, and attempting to rack up followers through insincere means will get you precisely nowhere. That doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with following total strangers – just make sure you’re doing so because you actually want to be following them.


Don’t assume the worst



Sometimes Twitter has a bad day and sends out follower notifications on a delay or not at all (I usually make a point of not following people on days in which Twitter seems to be slow to load, or on days when I’m not receiving any follower notifications myself). So just because someone hasn’t followed you back, don’t assume they hate your guts; it could just be that they haven’t gotten the memo. Give them time to catch up on their email, receive a delayed notification, or manually comb over their followers list to check for new people (I do this myself about once every two weeks).



What you don’t want to do in such cases is to keep unfollowing and re-following someone, as that’s just a good way to clog their inbox and make them think unflattering thoughts about you. Instead, try sending them an “@” message introducing yourself. Not all users have their account set up so they can see “@” messages from people they aren’t following, but I do. Each time I receive one from someone I don’t recognize, I check to make sure I’m following that person.



Don’t sweat it



I post a lot. Too much, in the eyes of some users – particularly those who only follow a dozen people and end up having their Twitter page filled by my voluminousness. So I never take offense when someone doesn’t follow me back, even if it’s someone I know from the real world. Not everyone has the same amount of time to keep up with other people’s Twitter posts during the day, so if they feel they have to limit the number of people they follow and I don’t make the cut, that’s cool. I recommend adopting the same mentality yourself. The bottom line is that if you’re following them, you get to see their posts whether they’re following you back or not, which is the real point of Twitter anyway.



Feel free to follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/billpalmer. So long as you’re an actual human being and I can determine that by looking at your Twitter page, the odds are really strong that I’ll follow you back. In fact if you’re already following me and I’m not following you, it’s probably in error – shoot me an email and let me know.