TWITTER: Should you follow or not?

Well Said!

I agree with what you are saying.  I think number one you have to have Fun and provide fun.  And add content that people deem valuable.  You are at a large party.  Don't go there to sell your wares.  Go to meet, mingle, have fun and leave people feeling glad to have met you.

Timothy C Burns

EXCELLENT INFORMATION

Thanks for this article David...and also for your perspective Timothy.

I am enjoying Twitter but did not really know how to decide how many and who to follow.  I get lots of 'thanks for the follow'....so people like being followed....altho some guard their contacts.

This is a nice added perspective - its a large party; go, have fun and be a worthwhile guest.

Love it

All the best

Rachel Cormier

Mission BC Canada

More Exposure = More Relationships If....

I agree 100%.

I see Twitter as my pre-email list.  I follow and expand my audience.  I can even target who I follow by their own interests.  Then I put value out there and attract in those who listen.  The more I follow, the more who follow me... and thus, the more who are exposed to my message.  Therefor, the more I follow, the more people I attract to my blog, lead capture pages, sales pages and phone number if I so desired. 

But only if... I provide value, share value, and interact with those who interact with me.  That's what I use the Replies area for.

I did a test where I sent an email to my list (about 30,000 people) and shared a blog post I had made.  I tweeted the same thing basically to my list of 30,000+.  I've written a lot about this in a forum thread here -- the results were interesting.

I'm liking the results of Twitter.  It's working by following people who are in my target audience... many of which who follow me back.  The power comes from providing valuable content to them and thus seeing them visit and comment on my blog posts, fill out my lead capture pages and yes, each day, even buy the products I recommend (happens daily now from simple tweets).  If I just had a reach of 500 Followers, I wouldn't be able to attract much back from a Tweet because the exposure is too low.  But because I followed so many who followed me back, my reach is 100 times what it would have been.

Mike

You're all very welcome. That was interesting too Mike...

I read your post Mike and was surprised by your results.

But after I thought about it... I wasn't so surprised. Because your Tweets get the re-tweet exposure like you mentioned (as long as your stuff is good) which is a HUGE viral plus.

So obviously your posts were valuable, as represented by your results. Nice to hear bro, thanks for sharing!

David you're a playa dude.

David you're a playa dude. You have a proper understanding of using social networks.

The thing is, one of the important things to understand about social networking is that it's all about the individual. You can use it any dang way you like!

All you need to do is look at how the youngsters are using them these days. I see young girls and boys adding THOUSANDS of friends and broadcasting to all of them. If someone is interested in what they're talking about AND they are interested in what the other person has to say about their contribution, they can explore that friendship further.

So in a way, this is a method of meeting other people online.

I remember when I used social networks ONLY for socialising...I used to get annoyed at people who just wanted to add new contacts to their MSN accounts and then past the first day would say nothing. I have till this day something like 300+ contacts on MSN most of whom don't speak to me and i dont speak to. So what?

That's our choice. 

They, in effect, use their mobile phone directory, their msn, their everything as a way to collect acquaintances and then exercise their choice of who to make more regular contact with and get more deeply into friendship.

When I lived in Australia, I remember sitting at a birthday dinner with an ENTIRE table of people who knew each other only from a social network called Auspal. Most of us had each other on our friend list, had looked at each other's profiles, and maybe even had a casual one=off conversation. Beyond that, this was our first opportunity to get to know each other on a personal level. Some of us hit it off and others didn't.

That's just how it is.

I'm not generally one of those people who likes to keep a lot of "acquaintances". But that may be why i also keep few friends. That just comes down to how much time i want to invest in building social relations. And honestly, i can't spare the time...and prefer to be doing other things!

Jim

Great stuff, David

Based on our previous conversation, I could not agree with you more.  I am using Twitter exactly as Mike Klingler is.  I use tr.im to shorten my URL's, but to also keep track of how many clicks they get.  It's fun to put out a tweet with value (sometimes with an affiliate link), and just watch the traffic that hits that URL.  I'm becoming fond of my refresh button....lol!  It's amazing to see it happen in real time.

Of course, this only works by providing VALUE.  Once followers know you have valuable things to offer, they are much more apt to do business with you.

Of course Yags is busy getting 1500 leads a month with PPC....I can see why he doesn't have time for Twitter!

Thanks for your tremendous insights!

Best,

Shecky

www.Twitter.com/ReallyShecky

One of the most fun-to-read and wonderful twittery post

David,

You got me there. This is no doubt one of the most wonderful post I've read about twitter. I loled at #2 because I was one of the confused entities about follower and followed stuff. But, it's fun. I completely agree that witty tweets bring you more and more exposure. Killing combo of fun, wit and value gives you some true followers who actually FOLLOW you. Great great post :)

Have my 5 stars on your way

Chill & cheers!

Sulumits Retsambew

I agree with what Mike did

I dont' think he should follow thousands of people. It may not benefit him in anyway.

For some reason tons of people have started following me and I have no idea why. I don't tweet.

Just because they follow me doesn't mean I am automatically going to follow them. Actually if I don't know them, I don't follow them.

I only have time to follow those who I know provide value and I believe that is what Mike is doing.

I guess I dont think about it

Maybe it does get to a point where it becomes a crowd of people all shouting out for someone to listen to what they have to say.  I guess I dont think about it much.  If someone chooses to follow me at dBroseGroup then I try to keep my profile updated and return the follow to them.

There are a limited few that I actually tweet back and forth with but I dont mind following people.  The DM's have not been so spammy that its a problem.  Of course..my 500 followers does not compare to 10,000.  However, it might be nice to know that someone at the high end of the marketing community was reading what the masses were saying.

Otherwise, I guess Im not concerned enough that it makes me think of him any differently than I did already.

Almost forgot

That was dBroseGroup

Twitter- To follow or not

If my cheque was as big as Mike Dillard's  or Arron Rashkin's or Big Al's or a host of other great personalities in this industry, I wouldn't need to follow anybody. I don't think we need to follow thousands of people just because someone recommends it or they have designed software capable of allowing us to do that. We would be better off to follow only those whose thoughts and ideas carry merit and contain value and are also important to our particular industry. After all, how much of our time is wasted in front of the computer, reading messages that we really don't give a darn about? This is not my idea of networking.

A great idea!

I did the exact same thing as Mike did because, it makes sense.

The "mass" approach of just getting people "on the board" is a waste of time. Time is our most precious asset.

People will see tweets on the main page, if they see value they will follow to learn more.

Don't worry, most of my BN friends made the cut...

Reading "Social Media: In About An Hour" by Dave Evans, great stuff..

Bruce Shilander
Twitter @shilander

Twitter and Dillard

I do not agree Mike Dillard went on the warpath. I think he is right and agree with him.

If the idea is to get a ton of followers that's fine, but what good does it do to follow someone you do not relate to and will never relate to. I had to remove a few names because they were twittering silly things. Although good for some of their followers, what they posted was really not appreciated because of all the space their postings used.

However, I would not have met NixTV News without following people we didn't know before. If the goal is to interact with people who want to hear your thoughts and postings, and you deal with people you want to hear their postings and comments, then too many twitters don't work well with these goals.

On the other hand, if you want to expose yourself to as many people as you can, let me make this observation for you to consider. Twiitering people who don't care about your thoughts or care about what you are doing, they don't care because they want to receive your postings anyway because they want huge numbers of followers, is nothing less than spamming. Plain and simple. They don't want to remove you because the goal is to get huge followers. Now where is the common sense here?

Dillard and Twitter

Dillard's decisions are based on his experience regarding what's best for his business.  Lucky for us that he shares his decisions with the rest of us so we can decide what's best for our business.  Is disagreeing with his business decisions in this forum just an exercise in toppling the king of the mountain to make room for you?

Thanks for sharing what you do, Dillard.  Your success and willingness to share how you achieved it is what makes my business better.  All this questioning and criticism of what you do is really non-productive.

Re twitter

If someone follows me, I look to see if we have common interests. I also check to see if they have

valuable information that I can learn. I read their tweets and if I sense real value in any area really, I

will follow them. I do not like to follow people who are obviously there just to promote their

business.  It seems they are sort of  "spaming" in every tweet.

I will also not follow someone who uses bad lanquage and I really do not care if that person

unfollows me. I would not want any kind of relationship with that person anyway.

Good going Mike. You attracted a lot of people to The Better Networker which I am sure was your

intent in the first place. I have been getting your emails for years and I think this is typically you. I

always return the emails with inappropriate language but I have gotten use to your shock tactics.

I still find you quite rude but I do respect your accomplishments.

Every Opinion Counts

Thanks to this post I have decided that I will follow Dillard. I'm not one of those guys who likes to have massive exposure. I like the targeted stuff. I'm not even on Twitter yet. But now that I know what I know I will follow Mike's example. I'm not worried about being considered rude. It really doesn't matter. We all have a right to run our business as we see fit. Continued discussion on topics such as this help make all the difference for those on the fence. It makes sense to match your business to your personality. If you're just out to get a bunch of people following you then you should do that. But if you like to target who you speak to then you should do that. Every opinion counts. Choose yours wisely.

I think Mike read my article

A few weeks ago I posted this article in response to Mike & Dave's video interview on things like Face Book, now my undestanding is that Twittering is bassically the same thing, it's building your social network and keeping in touch with them. I had no resonse from anyone, yet I think some people may have taken note.

This was my two posts:

Hi Mike & Dave

Great video, enjoyed listening, but I am a bit confused. You guys say Face Book and similar mediums are like going to a party and chatting to people. And I agree, if you just talk about yourself you will make no friends. You then say it’s the same as person to person Networking, you ask about the other person to build the relationship. Well on a one on one basis it makes sense. Where the confusion comes is that we are told to get as many “friends” on our site as possible. Some sites even reward or praise you for it. But how the heck are you going to be able to realistically find out things about all these people (other than the stuff they already have on their site) Where and how is the relationship going to be formed. How is the other guy going to know you identify with him? The bottom line is, surely, you can only do this with a handful of people, not hundreds or thousands like I see on some sites.

Just a thought

My understanding is, only when you start asking questions about the other person, will this person start showing an interest in you. So far I have not seen any of that happening on these Social media pages. It is all about promoting yourself (Now I understand the concept of promoting yourself to attract people) what is confusing is the contradictions I pointed out. (Again I point out that you can only realistically do this with a handful of people at a time).

Does anyone see my point or can someone clarify this for me, I am not making a STATEMENT, I am just putting it as I see it now.

Dillard on Twitter

I think Mike has the right to choose who he wants to follow just as the rest of us do. Frankly, I do take the time to look at each persons website, albiet briefly, to see what they are about and get an idea of their interests. If it appears that their interests are similar to mine, I follow them back. I do not follow everyone that follows me. I follow the majority of them, but not all. Some have "ISSUES" that are not in line with my way of thinking, and I just don't want or need to deal with that. That is not why I'm there. I am there to enjoy others, and to provide useful, and even entertaining at times, commentary. Like one of the posts here said, it's like being at a big party. Nobody wants you there shoving your business card in their face. Take a look at Tim Ferriss. He is very well known for his I'm doing things my way, kiss my butt if it offends you, attitude. He only follows about 150 folks, yet he has over 23,000 followers. Folks, it's all about enjoyment here. Business is in the background. An undercurrent. This is an avenue for interesting connections. You can't do business with 140 characters anyway. Lighten up, and have fun with it.

Out of everyone who follows me, and everyone that I follow back, I rarely see, or interact with 80 % of them. I am online a lot through the week. Have Tweetdeck open in the background, and interact as my day allows. The same at night. This gives me a great indication that 80 of these people are only casual Twitterers anyway. Who cares? Not me. Whatever floats your boat. There are also many many many out there who follow from the shadows. Many of these are too intimidated for whatever reason to actually post, or post very often for that matter. I see litterally 100's of people who follow 1000's, yet only have 2 or 3 posts. Why would I want to follow that person? They are not offering anything of benefit to the community are they? This is the point that Mike Dillard is trying to get across, and I have to agree with him on this.

Mike Dillard on Twitter

I agree fully....... and second what Mike Klingler commented about  When first starting out you don't have many followers.  After a while people realize you have something of value and want to follow you.  Only follow people back if you can provide something to share of value to them.

Twitter to Follow or Not to Follow?

I have had a dilemma about auto-following everybody that follows me on Twitter as my list of contacts has increased.  Mike's email re-sparked my dilemma and I explain my take fully in my blog post here:  http://budurl.com/followornot

Bottom line for me is your following tactics will be based on how you use Twitter and what you are looking to achieve on the site - ie mass exposure or immediate contact with close friends/colleagues.

I do have to add though that this has just proven to me how much of a Master Marketer Mike Dillard is!  Do a google search of "Mike Dillard Twitter" and have a look at how many results you get that are about his mass 'unfollowing' - including 3 different posts here.  Think there's a very big lesson in there for all of us ;-)

Have an Awesome Day - Zoe

It has nothing to do with Mike

A few people misunderstood the point of this post.

This has NOTHING to do with Mike. Mike did what he felt was best for HIS business. For his use of Twitter, I think he may have made the right decision for HIM.

This article however wasn't about Mike and it wasn't about Me. It was about YOU.

Most people in this community are working hard to get themselves some exposure. Twitter is one of the ways you can do so. And again, just because someone doesn't care about you when they begin following you, doesn't mean they won't grow to.

True followers will be created from the new people that follow you AND the people already following you.

You will also be distributed on their stream, so even if they aren't a 'true' follower, doesn't mean some of THEIR followers wont become one. It's a spider web network and you wan't to crawl and connect wherever you possibly can.

When you put yourself out in front of more people, you WILL provide yourself with more opportunity. It doesn't mean you will get more response from the market, it simply means you have the opportunity to do so, because of your additional numbers, IF you utilize the opportunity to provide true value for people.

Twitter is a viral place and if you distribute valuable content, it will spread indefinitely. Having more people to tap into will help you increase your responses.

------

As far as Mike, people need to get off that topic. Mike's one of the best marketing friends I have, and I fully support his decisions regardless if I am in harmonic agreement. And again, his decision does NOT represent the vast majority, it represents HIM and his condition, not you.

------

Use Twitter to the best of your advantage and do what's right for YOU. But by following more folks, you are going to increase your exposure. That is why I personally did it, because I have other plans there that I've recently contructed, after observing the true power of that site.

In closing, I don't write articles on this site for Mike or Myself. I write them for YOU. And the philosophy I have outlined is what I believe will best serve you.

Happy Tweeting :)

To twitter or not to twitter

To twitter or not twitter, it is not really a question if your goal is to be successful. Consider the following story....

Once upon a time there were 2 farmers.

The first farmer had 1000 bushels of seed grain He spread it everywhere he went, on the road leading to town, down in the swamp where the ducks were, in the woods where he hunted for deer, on the mountainside where the goats lived and some on the fields while he wandered all over his land, a practice he kept up all spring and summer long until he had no more seed grain.

That fall he pulled out his harvester and drove down the road... no grain. He then drove his harvester into the swap and had to get help pulling it out again... but still no grain. The woods were an impassable barrier to the tractor and it would not make it up the mountain either... so if there was any grain there he was not going to get to it.

His fields were another story... there was grain there! But so little of it, most had dried up for lack of water, been choked out by weeds or eaten by the birds and other wildlife. His total haul from the fields was a mere 10 bushels.

The second farmer had only 10 bushels to start with. He carefully plowed his field, planted it, tended to it with watering and weeding. He set up scarecrows to keep away the birds and fenced it off to discourage the deer from feeding on his crop.

That fall he brought the harvester out from the barn and reaped a bumper crop of 1000 bushels of grain!

Focus your efforts and results will speak for themselves, stop wasting time and effort on everyone... or just be the twit everyone only twitters but does not have a personal relationship with.

Your most profitable investment will always be the investment you make in yourself. [url=http://www.thesecretpays.com/100Club/"]Invest In Yourself Today[/url]

David Great Article

It is a great article for those that give a _______ but for me Mike Dillard is another slide of hand dude that makes his money selling books he has copied from other people and also joining companies like Carbon Copy Pro where the CEO address for his corporate office is some post office box in the east village. Where is the integrity with you guys? I would compare most on here to a bunch of Madoff’s want to be's swallow that all you twitters Why don’t you write something that might help somebody instead of turning this into a gossip magazine.

Get your facts straight or GET OFF this community!

I know Mike personally... and he BUSTED HIS ASS to get where he is. For you to imply he copied other people's work is insulting and pathetic.

If you would like to leave any more meaningless crap without value on this site, then I will gladly have your profile REMOVED.

And obviously you didn't read the article, because if you did... you would see it that it has NOTHING to do with gossip and everything to do with helping people wanting to network and market on Twitter.

Contribute positive ora to the forum or stay out of it.

You will not be warned again.

Great topic..

It's very interesting.

I always felt that twitter isn't a lead generate but rather a way to connect, or the opportunity to do so. An opportunity to be in front of the masses but doesn't gurantee the masses will listen etc.

For me though I have to say, I just use twitter wall to write, share value and for the future vision. In time, as I grow, so will the maturity of my content, and the value, it will help the people on my follow list.

I won't be following just because someone followed. I like to find out who the person is.

You know what would be great? A strategy someone put in place and it worked and try it out. Like a step by step strategy using twitter and each strategy has a different result.

That be very interesting you know to see because sometimes many don't have a strategy for social media and some do, and those that do..well..many can learn from them.

Anyway, been great reading a lot about twitter, and other value topic.

So, thanks David. Valuable topic here mate. Enjoyed reading everyone's comment. Cheers

Adam

Too riciprocate or not to reciprocate that is the question....

The great thing about these type of topics is there is no right or wrong. Originally I only followed the ones who I recognized as valuable to my success and my goals. I started reciprocating those who were following me with following them only after Mike Dillard began following me. I figured if he was following me then what was I stumbling over, just start reciprocating. But I started reading some of the things that were being posted by the ones I was beginning to follow and wondered what I would possibly learn from that person; but Mike Dillard was following me and there was absolutely nothing he could learn from me about this business so I continued to reciprocate. I still do but now it's to build my email list. I use the rss feed to really follow the ones that I see offering real value.

Roosevelt Secrease

Gossip Magazine...

I see this from time to time.  A candidate for anger management joins a friendly constructive discussion & negatively criticizes it. Nothing inherently wrong with that though it won't win you any friends, may make you an outcast, and certainly won't attract you much business if it's a habit.  In this case William Lyman accuses this topic of being a gossip forum when truly, your post, William, is the only true essence of gossip here.  Hilarious. Love it!

I was going to make the opposite point.  The value that David is offering here is golden. 

If I were a selfish man I'd want to keep David's advice a secret.  I find it rather interesting that the single most obvious (and easiest) strategy to build an audience at the moment (Twitter) still gets utilized by only the 20% (I bet it's probably 20% of that!).  80/20 rule strikes again!

I have no qualms with that... I'll continue to do my part to help the few who are looking for HOW to make things happen, rather than HOW NOT to make things happen!

Got another 200+ views to my blog again today from one little Tweet and it's only 9:46 AM on a Saturday.  I went from 2000 followers to 40,000 in about 4 months mainly by doing what David shares here.

Twitter is where it's at right now if building an audience is a priority (should be THE priority). It's smart to align with monumental trends and to leverage them fully. I did a video on this and "Why Now Is The Time for Twitter" if interested... http://renegadeproblog.com/twitter-training/

It's the 3rd video down... the 2 vids above it are for ABSOLUTE beginners.

Mike

Icons will always spark controversy.

People who are well known in their industry, like Mike is, will always make the headlines. I don't believe for a minute that Mikes decision to unfollow thousands was to attract attention either. Honestly, until we here have proven ourselves in this great industry and made it to the top of Mount Everest, like Mike and other greats we know have, we really don't have a damn thing to say about what THEY do or don't do unless it's positive.

So let's  break on through to the other side,

JC

Should you follow or not?

I reciprocate when followed as long as it's not a bot or someone who believes by their actions that they are Elite and only follow a small percentage of people.   It used to be that people I respected I'd RT and now it's  as simple as finding three things that could RT that had great content.  If the person doesn't follow (no matter how many thousands or tens of thousands of followers) I unfollow.   When people decide to stop following (That's one of the methods people use to gain massive followers is following and unfollowing soon after so the ones that autofollow keep following) then they are unfollowed.

It's like in real life to the extent of our individual conversations being of enough value for a relationship to start.  If only 100 people are followed out of 1,000 then theirs nothing invested and there's no need for the Network Marketing Guru, Internet Marketing Guru, Famous Person, or anyone else if there's not interest. 

It's like a one way conversation instead of being in a crowd and having a chance to talk.

My two cents! :)

I basically agree with Mike

I basically agree with Mike Klinger's approach but I have set all my Twitter up auto-pilot - on the basis systems should be used when possible. Interestingly since I have done this people think I am much more sociable I ger reccomends on Follow Firday and please, please, please forget the idea you have to know these people. Does Britney Spears know all her fans? Nooooo does she have a lot of wealth - yes - won't comment on her personal life. See Twitter is as Mike Klinger says a pre-email list. The actual secret is THE NICHE. Use a tool called http://www.twollo.com/ and you will be blown away how easy it is. Set up 5 criteria like social media etc etc and set it to follow up to 30 Tweeple who reference that term in an hour. Guess what you now have a targetted audience. I have said this before about Twitter and it will always be my mantra about it - it IS NOT a social network in the same way as BN, Facebook, MySpace etc. It is too dynamic for that. DELL has 10 yes 10 Twitter Accounts one for each brand - think they know who is following them perosnally? And always follow back unless you have a reason not to if you have more followers than you are folloing you are classed as a Twitter snob. So if there is one thing to take away remember Twitter should be you targetted potential audience who you can woo. Easiest way to do that? Get a profile/to/xxx for your Facebook account and set up an auto follow with Tweetlater that say "Hi, thanks for the follow I will or have followed catch me on FB [tinyurl your profile/to adresss]. I log on to Twitter chat for 20 mins on anything catches my eye, always end by putting up an inspirational quote in my status.

Everyday without fail I get at least 10 new FB friends. Oh and I figured all this out by research with the exception of watching Mike Klinlgers last video. This information is out there people and you can find it in nano seconds on google don't have to pay for expensive software to do it and you get the fishing net instead of just the fish.