Question of the Day: Where is the Value in a Large Twitter Follower Base?

July 31st, 2009 in Entrepreneurship by Aditya Mahesh

Everyone seems to be abuzz over Twitter so even though I had created an account before and found it all but useless, I began tweeting once again. This time I actually spent time and effort on my Twitter account building up a following of around 2000 members. But my question now is this, what should I do with my account?

Sure I tweet my content and interesting links I find from around the web but the only effect this has is to drive minimal traffic to my blog. I can’t really use the account to actually follow certain people I like because I’m “following” so many people that any valuable tweets are hidden among thousands of others I receive daily.

Sure, I could have used Twitter as a communication tool only following a few dozen people that I actually have met and know, but as a marketing tool, it seemed sensible to accept all follows and follow back as common courtesy. This is what most marketers who build up large twitter follower bases do.

So, with this follower base what can I do? How is it valuable to me apart from the minimal traffic I drive to my blog and why are so many marketers obsessed over building up Twitter accounts with tens of thousands of followers?

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Question of the Day: Where is the Value in a Large… | AM Beat | Twitter

July 31st, 2009

[...] Question of the Day: Where is the Value in a Large… | AM Beat Everyone seems to be abuzz over Twitter so even though I had created an account before and found it all but useless, I began tweeting once again. This time I. http://www.ambeat.com/2009/07/31/question-of-the-day-where-is-the-value-in-a-large-twitter-follower-... [...]

Paul Frolov

August 1st, 2009

“the only effect this has is to drive minimal traffic to my blog”

Why is it minimal? The more followers you have on Twitter the more traffic you should get, right?
‘’sensible to accept all follows”
I don’t follow everybody who follows me ( “look at my naked pics”,” make 10k a month”- do you really think you need to follow those people?),quality not quantity when it comes to twitter.
Personally, I’ve been using T for about 2 weeks, and already find it to be a faster way to communicate, even comparing to email.

Success Professor - Danny Gamache

My situation sounds similar to yours. One thing that I have found is using TweetDeck allows me to actually follow some people. I have a group called “Favorite People” and I have people in there that I want to truly follow. It has been helpful.

It has resulted in some blog traffic for me, and in particular a few “stumbles” which have led to a lot more traffic.

I also have a new client for my business who I met using Twitter - search.twitter.com in particular.

Hope this helps.

David Mielcarek

August 2nd, 2009

Don’t have the ultimate answers for you but I do have one valuable tip that you are going to love. If you are not using TweetDeck it’s time to download. You can create a group within that extremely useful twitter program that will contain only of the people whose updates you want to see. They show up in a separate column. You can still see tweets from all the people you follow in a separate column. This is a perfect way to enjoy tweeter and keep thousands of followers/follows at the same time!

webbyishere

You have a good point. The traffic that comes from twitter to my blog is minimal. And alot of spam accounts are following me.. Still trying to get rid of them.

Benji

uh, good questions. think you’re gonna answer them?

Misha

Twitter is all about building your personal brand. «You-brand», «brand-of-you», «brand-of-your-name»… whatever. Brand building envolves «followers» (in a real life meaning of it). Forget about links, traffic and stuff. You need «clicks» yeah. But not those bringing two ot three jerks to your blog, or site, or what else do you have. Clicks in one’s head. «Whoa, that’s Gucci!» («That’s Aditya!») Whoa that’s her and all those folks who listen to her! Mmm… I need it too. It seems to be useful…

Srinivas Rao

August 3rd, 2009

I think you’ve made a great point here. I’m in about the same range as you on the Twitter followers. I get a min amount of traffic out of it. I’m not a big fan of using it as a communication platform. I use it mainly for promoting blog posts and getting a min amount of traffic.

James Kurtz III

August 14th, 2009

The reason some people want a super large following on twitter is because they are playing a numbers game. If you can count on 2% of your followers to click on any link you send out, then the logic is, the more followers the more page views, and now you can control traffic to your website or anywhere you so choose.