The Twitter Dilemma: Mass Followers, Or Mass Reach (Or Both?)

1 replies
Hi Folks

How do you solve this dilemma?

I'm still fairly new to Twitter, and like most Internet Marketers, I'd love a gazzillion followers to drop everything and follow my every tweet with rapt attention... ... and I'm well aware of the many auto tools to make that happen, should I choose to use 'em...

BUT...

For those who are following THOUSANDS of people (usually as a result of a mass following blitz), my question to you is... How can you possibly keep an eye on thousands of people's tweets?

After all, if you follow 10,000 people after your mass following blitz, and they all make 1 tweet a day, you're receiving 10 tweets A MINUTE to your Twitter stream... and you'd obviously need to be superhuman in order to read even a fraction of them!

So the truth is, only a small amount of tweets from people following 10,000+ people are going to be read.

Now, I appreciate that people who employ these mass following strategies are going for VOLUME... after all, you're more likely to be heard with 10,000 followers than with 100...

OR SO THEY SAY!

However, what this fails to take into account is MASS REACH.

For example, if every one of your 10,000 followers is like you, and follows 10,000 people, then the chances of your tweet actually being read is not that great. (I'm just using 10,000 as an example... I know this can be easily achieved through automation).

On the other hand, while I only have a small Twitter following at present, because I have some authority figures following me, I can tweet a blog post and have it re-tweeted by some big names, and have 400 visitors in a few hours (tracking with a Bit.ly link).

So here's my dilemma...

On the one hand, I'm tempted to do the mass following blitz so I can suddenly and artificially look like I have the popularity of a rock star

But on the other hand, I actually love the small nature of my Twitter stream, because I really do get to notice the tweeters that post valuable links, such as @michelfortin.

Michel has (to date) 6,000 followers but only 300 whom he follows, and he's the perfect example of someone who presumably also wants to keep his Twitter stream fairly clear, so he can focus on people he thinks are worth following.

So my questions to you good Warrior folks and folkettes (and those coming in from Twitter) are...

  • What do you think is more important? A mass following, or mass reach?
  • Is it possible to employ auto mass following methods without cluttering up your own Twitter stream?
  • If you follow thousands of people, how do you cope with the volume of tweets in your Twitter stream? Am I right in saying you only notice a small fraction of them, and therefore me following you is a waste of time, 'cos you're rarely going to get to read MY tweets?

Let the discussion begin...

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  • Profile picture of the author Dana_W
    All I can tell you is that the more followers that I get, the more clients I find for my business.

    And yes, I do not even ATTEMPT to keep up with every single follower. I just go on Twitter, read and answer the Tweets that are on my Twitter home page at the moment I check in, check my replies and DMs and respond if necessary, and do that several times a day so I can reach more people.

    And I assume that other Twitter members who follow tens of thousands of people do the same thing.
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