Twitter Fanatics Help Me Out - Apparently I'm Dumb...

Hi Jeremy,

You are missing the point of twitter. I didn't see the re-tweets on the people I follow so I don't know what you are talking about. But typically this is happening because whatever was said or whatever link was given was just that cool.

Most people who use twitter don't tweet things necessarily to be exclusively self-serving (and I have canned several twitter heads that try to use it to do nothing but market)...think of it like a day in the life...you find something cool or something that interests you and you "tweet" it.

Is that the guy trying to get over 19,000 followers in 30 days?

He's probably getting the attention because that's something that seems like a big deal to a lot of people. Lots of people struggle to get past that 2000 mark, so someone trying to get almost 20,000 followers in a short period of time is going to get their attention.

And, people will follow him to either help him reach the mark, or just to see if he can do it.

Of course, there are other people that will be turned off by an obsession with follower numbers. There are people that will unfollow you (or not follow you to begin with) if they think you are just trying to boost your following numbers, whether it's for bragging rights or to sell something.

Stunts like this may get attention, but I think it's a better long term plan to offer something of value, rather than rely on cheap tricks to get followers. It's easy enough to get followers; retaining them is where the challenge is. Of course, for many people, they're not apt to unfollow people so easily (and some will drop you like a hot potato for who knows what).

I think some people spend too much time worrying about getting followers, and not sufficient enough time worrying about retaining those followers. Because, even if they don't unfollow you, they may simply ignore you if you're not providing them any value. And, being followed but ignored is barely a step up from not being followed at all.

The reason I may RT something is I'll find a great blog post on marketing or adverting and I'll want to pass it along to my friends that are following me.
Here is a site that list off the top RT's of the day
Retweetist

Yea this is me you're talking about. Had an idea to get me and others a load of followers and gave it a blast, it caught on and is generating quite a bit of buzz.

Some love it, some hate it, the site is in my sig.