Yes, you heard right…I think I am over Twitter. Why?…well for a number of reasons actually but read on…
When Twitter first started to become popular I went in and created an account for one of my niche blogs but at the time I really couldn’t understand what it was all about let alone what the point of it was. But Twitter got even more popular so I persevered and created Twitter accounts for most of our websites including this one (@affiliateblogon).
But even after using it for some time, for the life of me, I really can’t see the appeal of Twitter in terms of a form of communication. It really is both clumsy and inefficient…BUT it seems to work for a hell of a lot of people to promote whatever it is they are promoting. So the inefficiency of this networking tool is forgotten in the rush to get as many followers as possible in order to make as much money as possible.
Okay I can accept that…I am in the business of making money online too so I understand the thinking here. Unfortunately however, in my view, Twitter is starting to become one big spammy piece of junk.
Just take my own followers for instance which, as I write this post, are up around the 1150 mark…not too bad I suppose except when you consider that a large number of people are getting tens of thousands of followers with some having followers numbering in the millions – my 1150 followers now starts to look a bit shabby in comparison.
Of that 1150, I follow about 800 or so and out of that, probably a handful actually Tweet live – the rest have preprogrammed Tweets in place that go up on a regular basis throughout the day. Some even repeat the same posts over and over so they might have the same 10 tweets go up every day. The majority of those tweets are 140 characters of promotional garbage…the rest are quotes or retweets of someone elses garbage , so that only a small number of those left are actually worth looking at.
I also find that once you are following more than a couple hundred people it is almost impossible to keep up with the number of incoming tweets so it becomes almost redundant if you truly want to keep up with what someone has to say.
Now some of you are probably thinking why I just don’t unfollow them…and I’d have to agree with you. This has been in my thoughts for the past week or so but I also have this almost warped thinking that says if you unfollow them, they will unfollow you and then you will be back to only a couple hundred followers…and as it appears that everyone is using Twitter I might get left behind by not keeping up with it all.
I mean, a celebrity can afford to not follow anyone and still get thousands of followers but anyone else needs to work for it. This means following people, tweeting appropriately, retweeting and generally just chatting to people you are interested in chatting to. It’s not difficult by any means but it can take up a lot of time and I am wondering is it really worth it…maybe I need to get to 10,000 followers in order to answer that question.
Others reading this might also say that I should be following those in the same niche – in other words, grab people who are interested in what you have to say…stick with quality not quantity. Actually, that is what I have been doing but unfortunately my niche is all about making money online and that does tend to attract spammers. So what looks like quality ends up being someone who just sends out promotional tweets to get you to sign up for something or go to their recommended site if I want to get more followers!
When it comes down to it, and to be totally honest, I am really only following someone to get them to follow me…that is my total motivation for using Twitter. It doesn’t sound right does it? I am not sure whether my thinking needs to change or whether I just need to go with the flow and do what the majority of people are doing and just keep working at getting more followers.
Now you can see my dilemma – although I am over Twitter I can see the potential in this rather clumsy system.
So despite this blog post I am not giving up on Twitter and I am trying to stay positive about it. I am going to see where it goes – my thinking is that it can only get better with more followers and I hope to come back in a few months time and say how wrong I was and that Twitter made a real difference in my affiliate business.
Even so at this point I am more disullusioned with the amount of spam on there than anything else and I know that at some point I am going to do a mass unfollow and stick with a handful of people whose tweets I really want to read…in other words, use Twitter as it was intended to be used.
Stay tuned…
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I think there are a lot of people in a similar situation. I feel the same way. I have around 150 followers, but most of them have no kind of interaction with the account.
I don’t follow everyone, but if i dont follow some of them, i wont be followed myself. So my growth has been very slow. But i am getting a little interaction with the one’s that interact with Twitter.
Yep that’s right Josh. To make Twitter worth its while you really need followers but to get them you have to follow them. It’s kind of a catch 22.
I am getting very close to doing what I said in my post and do a mass unfollow and start from scratch – just following the ones I really want to hear about.
I some how agree with you, a big percentage of my followers doen’t belong to my world!
http://mrtweet.com
A nice firefox add-on that let’s you look at someones Twitter profile, see how many posts they do per day and what % of overall tweets contain links.
It’s a free service and has allowed me to help determine some spammers and such.
Personally I find three Twitter accounts effective.
1 for getting lots of followers and advertising and such.
1 for following the few bloggers and such I care to hear their tweets
1 for personal friends/family.
Don’t give up on Twitter, as you said everyone has a different way to use it. Find your way and become efficient at it.
Well I am still plugging away at Twitter – I haven’t given up on it yet. Feeling a bit better about it all lately. Will see how it goes.