I’ve been getting a lot of questions about a service that promises to add a whole lot of unsuspecting followers on Twitter. There are still some marketers who think that all we need to do is build up a massive list of people and then they all will magically buy stuff.
I’ve been replying with “This is a chain letter.. what’s next? Will you have me send $5 to each person on a list?”
But one of them admitted he didn’t believe the claims himself, and asked me to explain why it might not work.. I wrote:
It’s never a question if the chain letter works.. in fact, they were banned in snail mail BECAUSE they were so effective.
Here they have removed the “you will have bad luck if you don’t” and “send $5′ part.. thanks to emails, you can blast this out a lot keeper and don’t need to twist arms.
So I’m not saying not to do it.. I’m just betting that the types of followers you get from automated systems will be like FFA pages and freebie list builders… short lived.
Social media does because it’s so easy to opt out of reading the over hyped messages. The average person looks at 19,000 follower in a month and thinks scam and wont want to follow you.
If you pay someone to follow you, they will be more loyal.. but it’s kind of like paying people to be your friends.
Think of Twitter like a party. You can pass out a lot of business cards.. but you’ll be known as “that guy” and shunned.
Don’t you want to be invited to the next cool party? If so.. make conversations, be helpful and build a real relationship.
Some people look at social media as a new way to build a pyramid scheme.
Fortunately, we know have control.. we just avoid following them or un-follow. If we don’t follow, they become irrelevant fast
Social media gives you the chance to meet people, build relationships and meaningful connections. No reason to be THAT GUY.. you will do a lot more business if you treat people right and listen to them instead of spend your time on scams and schemes
Well said. And I agree wholeheartedly!
I’ve been marketing online for 4 years now and I’ll tell you things happen naturally. I’ve always had great success from people following me. My advice is to just be real, engage with other people online, add them as friends, follow on twitter and tweet their articles. People have much respect for this from my experience.
Great post. I’ve been doing some research lately about twitter and social engagement. As an experiment I joined one of those services that promises to increase your followers. The results? Instantly I gained 10 followers on twitter and almost just as instantly I had those 10 followers un-follow me.
As far as I’m concerned, you’ve hit the nail on the head – the best way to create engagement is being genuine.
I wrote more about my experience with what I call ‘ social media prostitution’ on my digital humanities blog ivrytwr (http://ivrytwr.com/2012/04/18/how-to-increase-your-twitter-followers-the-wrong-way/)
Marketers have known for a long time that relationship selling is more effective than transactional selling, especially when it comes to large purchases. Alot of the core principles of relationship selling can be applied online–just in a different way.
Agreed. You’ve had a Twitter account for how long and have how many followers? Well said Warren.
Warren you hit it on the head with this post. You have been consistent for many years on this and it is great to share with the world again.