Face it, Twitter is mainstream…and just because you have friends that are not on it doesn’t make it any less mainstream. I have friends that refuse to get on Facebook because they think it’s for “kiddies” or “geek’s” or “people who spend 18 hours a day in front of their computer” and don’t try to tell me Facebook isn’t mainstream.
I’m an avid Twitter user, I’m on in one way or another pretty much all day. Either on the computer or on my phone. Twitter is a great social networking tool, a great news feed, perfect idea generator, and more. I’m getting to realize though, that more and more, Twitter is unclean.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to start avoiding Twitter, quite the opposite actually. Because it’s now become unclean, I’m forced to spend even more time with the 140 character beast.
Let me explain.
When I first got on Twitter (just over two years ago) yeah there were a lot of people on it…but these were what you call “the early adopters.” The people who are looking for the next greatest Internet “thing.” These were the people who were shaping Twitter into the great tool that it became. The pioneers. They weren’t necessarily looking to pimp their own wares (mostly). Just looking to connect with people, share their thoughts and collaborate with people all across the Internet in short message bursts.
Fast forward to today. Twitter is a sea of marketing messages and deception. The fog of uncertainty would hinder most tech savvy people while they wade through the murky waters of what’s real and what’s not.
Two years ago, it was actually easier to find people you wanted to follow on Twitter, even without all the search tools we have now. More importantly though, it was almost automatic for you to follow someone who found and followed you. It’s called connecting.
Now, I’ll be honest, I follow about 2 of every 10 followers I get. Mostly because the majority are spam accounts, or people trying to game the system.
Example: There are three follower emails in my Inbox right now. The earliest one came in 2 hours ago. I haven’t even looked at them yet but I’ll check them out and tell you how it goes. (I’m not going to post usernames because I don’t want to give the spammers the credit.)
1st – xxxx (username is a ‘name’ followed by three digits) is following you on Twitter. 12 followers, 0 updates, following 699 people.
I don’t even need to click through to the profile. That right there is the blueprint for spammer. You might as well have spammer in your username. DELETE.
2nd – xxxx is following you on Twitter. 512 followers, 23 updates, following 1657 people.
The 512 followers is interesting, although you could probably get that many following people who employ the autofollow back (another reason Twitter is unclean). I’m going to click through to the profile.
The name really tells me nothing, other than it looks like a blog. There’s a website address…that’s ok, you’re supposed to promote there. The bio is just a re-wording of the name–no help there.
On to the posts. Each Twitter home page will show the last 20 posts from that user. In 20 posts, 18 have links at the end (probably to their blog), one has a single word followed by a mention and one (the most recent) has what looks to be a thought provoking post.
This doesn’t appear to be a hardcore spammer, but they are promoting themselves a lot. They’re not really using Twitter to engage people. Now, this isn’t exactly wrong. If it was a subject I was really interested in, I might actually follow. It’s not though so I won’t
3rd – xxxx is following you on Twitter. 23,397 followers, 1939 updates, following 23,840 people.
::sigh:: These are the people I don’t understand. I’m sorry, but you can’t follow 23,840 people and have any clue what “your community” is doing. My first thought on this account is “gamer”. I might be dead wrong there, but I’ve now been trained to think that way. Gamer or not though, until someone proves to me that they can follow, AND PAY ATTENTION TO, 20,000 people–I don’t buy it. Even if you have Tweetdeck set up and groups for everyone, there’s just not enough time in the day to follow and be engaged with that many people.
There are a few Tweeps out there that have the ‘celebrity’ status and have those numbers, but they don’t engage their audience very much as far as I’ve seen. They mostly post their Tweets (and some are very good at it and post great/informative Tweets) and have a core group of people they engage with but that’s about it.
However, then there’s the gamers. The ones that play the system to get these numbers. By either using some whacky pyramid scheme to get followers or some other method.
OK, let’s check out the profile and see what we’ve got here.
Yup, just what I figured. Of the 20 most recent posts, zero are replies or mentions. All 20 have links…and several of the links are repeated. There looks to be about 3 unique links there, repeated over and over again. Apparently, if I follow that link I’ll be rich beyond my wildest dreams in about 14 days. All from the comfort of my home and even if I’m “new to marketing”. Awesome, where’s my delete key.
Well, there you have it. A brief trip through my Inbox as I’m writing this post. You see…Twitter is so huge now, people are all trying to “cash in”. Trying to get on Twitter, get thousands of followers and then magic happens.
Guess what…it doesn’t work like that.
Here’s the dirty little secret that no one wants to tell you, but what the hell do I care.
Ready…are you sitting down?
LIKE ANYTHING WORTH DOING…TWITTER TAKES WORK TO DO IT RIGHT
There I said it. Feel better?
Yes, Twitter takes work. I don’t care if you’re a guy or girl sitting in front of the computer looking to make contacts (friends) to share your ideas or if you’re the Marketing manager or CEO of your company and you’re looking for leads or just want to listen to what’s being said about your brand. Twitter takes work.
It’s work to sift through the noise and find the messages and people that you can connect with.
It’s work to get your message heard above all that noise.
Like the gold miners coming to California in search of something amazing, you have to now sift through a lot of dirt to find a nugget worth keeping.
Yup, Twitter is unclean. It’s not a horrible thing, it was bound to happen. Price of success.
For those willing to put in the time though, it’s totally worth it. Yeah, I’m bummed that I have to spend so much time sorting through what I think is good and what I think is crap. And sometimes I’m wrong, and it takes time to maintain. But what I get out of Twitter is really worth the effort.
So, if you’re new to Twitter just know this going in…it’s going to take time. You can’t just turn Twitter on and say “There, I’m on Twitter, I’m good”. You’re not going to get anything of worth out of it that way. Trust me though, if you have the time, and you stick with it, you’ll be glad you did. Just like I am.
