I have been at 1,560 to 1,570 followers for at least a year. I waver back and forth between the two numbers. My popularity is measured from one to 10 on any given day. I can’t seem to attract any new followers. I feel like Clark Griswold circling Big Ben in European Vacation where I can’t get out of the circle.
Don’t get me wrong; I love each and every one of my current followers. Of course, if some of them were to show up at my home I would probably have to go all Samuel Jackson on them. Of course I would be going all @samueljackson on them since I am not verified and neither is he. But I digress.
I decided to ask the one guy on Twitter who could immediately diagnose my problem, @guykawasaki. He is always sitting there staring at me with that wonderful smile, ready to help those in need.
@GuyKawasaki, I have been at just below 1,600 followers for more than a year. What is wrong with me? Be honest. I can take it.
No answer from Guy. I should have addressed him as Oh Great Twitter Lord Kawasaki since he has over 203,000 followers. I must have sounded like a tiny squeal from a microorganism riding a rodent to the Great Kawasaki. Or the Great Kawasakis, since I have heard he isn’t the only one writing his pieces. He is verified by the way.
What can I learn from Lord Kawasaki? Well, he tweets a lot, 39,779 and counting. He is the firehouse that answers the question, What’s Interesting? That’s straight from his Twitter page. This is not a lie by the way. A little mind could bloat from the large supply of knowledge launched from the giant beak of Kawasaki and Alltop. If Guy did answer, he would probably say – @guykawasaki, the answer you seek is in the tweets, my son.
I don’t need 200,000 followers. That’s when it gets really scary. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them are outside Guy’s house right now with high-powered binoculars in a nondescript van. But I should have more than 1,570. It’s getting embarrassing.
So what do I have to offer? Well, I often tweet some pretty interesting stuff. I think I have a pretty good sense of humor. I’m an executive creative director at a successful advertising firm. I’m told that is a good job. I’m an early adopter. I think I have my finger on the pulse of the new and exciting. So what’s wrong with me? Maybe it’s the number of tweets.
Using a highly complicated mathematical formula called “division,” I was able to deduct that the number of tweets really shouldn’t matter since Guy has over 200,000 followers and only 39,779 tweets. Still, it couldn’t hurt to tweet more.
Maybe it’s my profile. Guy is the authority on what’s interesting. My profile says, “I left the iron on.” And there is a picture of a man standing in front of a burning house as my background. I tend to tweet on great pop culture stuff I find: art, advertising, etc. However, my bio and background picture would never alert you to that fact.
Also, I’ve never used any of the services that claim to find you followers. That always seemed like cheating. Plus, they probably wouldn’t be the “right” followers. And who wants a bunch of unqualified followers? Not me. Blocking the twitter hookers is hard enough.
It could be that what I find interesting, only slightly less than 1,600 other Twitter folk find interesting. No, I can’t accept that. I won’t. That’s failure talking.
Another little birdie told me she didn’t like my picture. Guy is looking down from the heavens at his brethren. I am on a boat (not my boat) looking away, detached, nonplussed, unconnected. Guy is saying, “Hey, wonderful little humanites out there, I am thinking for you. Don’t worry, I have you covered.” I am saying, “Hey, I’m on a boat. You are not on a boat.” She also told me that there isn’t enough of you in your voice, people don’t know what to expect from you, use your position and become the authority you are. Wow, I have a hard enough time doing that at work.
The bottom line is that Twitter is a strange bird. And way more goes into it than meets the eye. It isn’t enough to just be interesting. You need a voice, a purpose, a personality, a strong profile, a meaningful picture, the ability to interact with others and a ton of energy to gain more followers. And even then there are no guarantees.
I don’t know if I will ever get past the 1,600 mark. I’d have to change my picture, tweet way more, be more interesting, interact more, be more me, and just plain be more special. And I think I might have reached my “special” ceiling. But I won’t quit Twitter. I like being a part of the collective whole – the giant twitter brain. And every once in a while, when I get a nice retweet or a #followfriday, it makes me feel like I am just that much closer to – GUY.
the CIRCLE OF INFLUENCE – build your twitter circle of influence with people who themselves are COI. your circle should be large and varied and include tekkies, musicians, artists, ad people, ad rags, music rags, pop culture etc. keep buliding that circle and communicating and fully utilize the value and enormity of retweeting with said circle and tweeting out to each other openly. communicate consistently with shoutouts about the content of the RT’s. congratulate them when it’s in order. it’s a kinda RT PR.
be more discerning about your followers and whom you follow. clean them out and give yourself more room to follow more people who can “make you smarter” and share new stuff with you. i followed everyone when i started twittering. watch people that go by your tweetdeck and think do i ever look to see what else they have been tweeting. i firmly believe who follows me is as important as who i follow. if one is “judged by the company they keep” ……
for the new people you follow take the time to go to their websites and try to get to know more about them. again – do they fit your criteria outside of twitter that you would demand in your COI in your “real” life? let them know you like what they have to say, their website, their music, their portfolio. they will return interest in you and turn people onto you. being curious and interested can’t be faked. people need to feel you are authentic.
stand for something — anything. who are you supposed to be? if someone were to describe who and what you tweet – what would they say? being the FIRST to report on everything and anything is important to me. i tweet info about people and their successes sometimes before they have even read it. i have an ongoing joke with a few people about how i hate when i’m second to tweet it. in my mind every time i tweet something that everyone else including mags and newspapers get around to one week later – i feel that was a victory.
be POLITE – manners count. so does a bit of self effacing confident humility. be a human. let people know you. thank them when they RT you.
and finally – HUMOR HUMOR HUMOR pls. that is what we ALL love as people – lotsa humor here and there and in between.
ok scratch that last point. you seem to have that one down.
@showbizgirl You do always seem to be the first to know. I just don’t think I can get up that early. Maybe I will become the authority on things that happen around 2 am. Thank you for your response. I am sure it will help the rest of us become twitter experts like yourself with a little work.
Arnie, there are many twitter apps that let you schedule tweets. You could be tweeting around the clock and even retweet the same information ad nauseum.
But on the other hand, does it really matter? If you want to ‘artificially’ pump up your numbers and be more accessible, then there are a lot of ways to achieve that. I believe that once you get over 1000 followers, what are the chances you’re going to interact with them individually? It’s like owning 50 t-shirts and only really wearing 5.
What’s important is to grow your following organically and just post things that are worthy to you. You’ll be better off having followers that have the same interests anyway. Scan your friends’ tweets and see what they’re saying. Maybe they have something interesting as well.
You are so right Herman. I didn’t put this in the post but I usually tweet late at night. Which means most of my followers and anyone who might follow me are sleeping. I have to get better at that. And as for the artificial pumping, that’s what I do at the gym. Thanks for the response.
I started twitter a few weeks ago, since then I’ve begun to love it. What started out as a love hate relationship it’s allowed me to network with people in my industry alot easier. News and updates happen in quickly which makes for a great user experience.
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