ClickToFollow.com

by Keith Goodrum

There are “Gurus” ranting about how you should manage your Twitter account.  Some of these folks stand on a soap box and tell you to only follow a small number of people.  They go on to say anybody following 100, 200, 500 or more people are liars, fakes or any number of insulting adjectives.

These Gurus say If you are following this many, then the noise level in your tweet stream is deafening.  There is no way you could possibly pay attention to anyone.  

What is the real motivation here?

Stop and think about this before you dismiss it outright.  Why do high profile marketers want you to only follow a few people?  Of course they should be on your small list of followers.  After all they are providing useful, valuable content.  The kind of content deserving your attention.

Once again; Why do they say you should only follow a small number of people? Oh yeah, don’t forget… it’s critical for them to be on your tiny list of followers, so you don’t miss a single one of their tweets.

Could it be they are looking to cut out the competition?  

You see if they convince you to following a small number of people, and they are on this small list.  Then they effectively are creating a captive audience.  They know their tweets stand a better chance of getting your attention if you are following a small number of people.

Isn’t this really a tactic to lockout the competition?  You don’t think so, well consider this:

For years email marketing has been the darling of the online marketing world.  Open rates, click through rates & conversions were high.  It was awesome!  Write an email, push the send button & watch the PayPal account balance soar.  They didn’t even have to provide content in their emails.  All they had to do was blast a pitch, and it worked like gangbusters.

But, over the last couple years the luster has started to fade.  Email marketing numbers have been steadily falling.  And many marketers are scrambling trying to find something to bring the good old days back.

Twitter is kind of like email, and at the same time very different

Twitter has some similar characteristics to email.  You get to build a list of followers, you have the ability to send them messages and you can also include affiliate links.  It still gives you the opportunity to earn income from your marketing efforts.

However, there are some things that make Twitter better than email.  You have control over who you follow.  You can unfollow, and even block people from following you.  You also get to see who other people are following, and who are following them.

With Twitter, the Gurus no longer have a captive audience

Anybody can take a look at their follower list & follow them.  This gives you the opportunity to easily find people interested in the same things you are.  Much to their dismay Twitter has leveled the playing field.  

Also, because of the ease of following/unfollowing, blasting out nonstop sales messages doesn’t work on Twitter.  It’s a quick way to loose followers in a hurry.  The control has shifted into the hands of the people.

No wonder they are angry & attacking!