How to waste my time on Twitter
And anyone’s else for that matter. It’s not hard, you just have to ignore the most basic common sense rules of web-sharing and communication.
Be an ‘Internet Marketing Guru’
Yes, a guru, a ninja or a rockstar. You choose your title. After that, add me on Twitter. I’m a trusty fellow and allow Twitter to announce me when I’m added so that I can check everyone out and see their beautiful tweets. But not you Mister I.M. Rockstar. Let’s see how your profile looks:
- Following: 65.000 (roughly)
- Followers: 64.000 (roughly)
- Tweets: 5000 (roughly)
Out of all these people you’re following or follow you, you TALKED to how many? You retweeted how many links from them, or from other accounts/websites? Why are your last 5-6 pages filled with links to your amazing schemes to make money online fast and online sales pages to obscure ebooks for which people have to pay to learn that they can use AdSense to monetize their blogs? Come on! Add me! See if I care!
Twitter is about communication. About states. About the moment. Twitter is about friends and great content. Twitter is not about “I’m a guru in my own backyard!”. Twitter is about “I’m an Internet Marketing ENTHUSIAST, and I want to SHARE some amazing content with you!”
Make me click… and click… and click…
This happens so often lately. Way more often than it should (aka NEVER). These days folks share link on Twitter that send to Digg or some other obscure Digg clone. And as if that is not enough, the link posted on Digg leads to another “news” aggregation website that rarely has an excerpt listen, and in its turn links to the original post. So, to access that content that YOU PROMISED me within your tweet, I have to go through 2 websites that I don’t give a c**p about. I’m definitely not going to vote anything before I read it. And surely, if I vote, I’ll vote for the original website, not the news aggregation website!
But it’s cool. People need to pull their page ranks up, their traffic levels. Domains can be sold later for a better price. We know. We were not born last week.
So, the next time you do that, think of it as if you were actually spamming the Twitter flow, cause that’s what you are doing. Don’t expect Twtter love back, RTs, and followfridays.
Yes, I’m venting
Why do I care about it? Because I enjoy the tweets I get from my followers. Because I trust them with my “follow” and expect the same respect back. If you wrote a GOOD article and need votes (if that’s the case), just state it. Link to the original article and give me a voting link so that I can vote if I feel like it after I read it. That’s SOCIAL. That’s MEDIA. Not what so-called ‘gurus’ understand. Time to clean up my Twitter account.
Happy and smart tweeting folks!
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Well said! I’ve been meaning to address this for quite some time. It’s the reason why I recently started to use Twitter in a less conventional way:
1. I only follow a select few that I cycle from time to time. Got something interesting to say? I’ll hear you! You don’t? Maybe I’ll check you out later.
2. I block not only the obvious spam and “marketing gurus”, but also most accounts that don’t have a person’s name and bio, as well as people who have nothing in common with me. I’m just doing them a favor.
From time to time I check followers and see what they are saying. If they aren’t saying much lately or they’re talking crazy stuff, they might get blocked.
It may sound like I’m being an ass, but I like to rule my twitter account with an iron fist and I got no complains so far!
I totally agree with your point! I started off using twitter with the goal to get as many followers as possible, but found I got overwhelmed and couldn’t communicate with anyone (and wasn’t getting any results). Then I really trimmed the people I was following to about 200 and have had amazing results and good communication.
I also agree, however I’m not a major fan of twitter. Sure it’s the latest craze for networking etc, but it’s been to abused and there are way to many nonsense accounts being created for the purpose of backlinks. Personally I prefer Youtube.
I for one am simply amused by how easy it easy to become a guru these days! You just say you are and if you’re lucky, there will be hundreds and hundreds of people to believe you beyond any doubt…
And those landing pages? C’mon, the only urge I feel is to get out of there, and do it fast!
@Adrian – I don’t thing anyone with a clear mind would thins you’re an ass for taking care of your account.
@Tom – My Twitter cleaning is long overdue and I’m sure communication will improve on my side too. Glad it worked well for you!
@Dan – Social Media has been abused by so many people that forgot about the “social” component, no matter the channel.. Twitter or YouTube.
@Alina – Let’s all be Gurus and reach IM nirvana!
Thanks for your comments folks!
Talk about a personal touch.
Even with the venting, I really enjoy that post.
OMG! I’m LOL’ing at the “let’s play nice” comment underneath the submit button.
I never noticed it until now. duh!!!
OMG! That is freaking funny!!!
@Sylvia Hahaha! If you didn’t mention it, I probably wouldn’t have noticed either! I’m really loving this blog!
Sylvia, Andy, for regular people it’s funny. THe sad part is that even with a comment policy certain people fail to abide some common sense rules of conversation. It’s why that is there.
Thanks for stopping by and adding your comments folks!
Nice one. The celebrity tweeters get ‘the followers they deserve’
Then there’s other clusters like the one you propose
I like the idea of a self-managing system for Twitter now I’ve done a few ‘hair cutting jobs’.