SEO / Web Marketing Articles:

Twitter Marketing – To Auto Follow or Not to Auto Follow?

In university I studied physics and math. I did so-so in my physics courses but aced my math courses. I think math appeals to me much more. That’s part of the reason that my approach to web marketing and twitter marketing has been a mathematical one. With 1000 followers each tweet brought 50 visitors and with 2000 followers each tweet brought 100 visitors. Very simple math and seems to hold true. So my approach to Twitter marketing has been to build a mass following, targeted when possible, but more focused on the numbers game. Auto follow makes the process easier because you can build followers fast because there is software that you can run that follows people if they follow back within 1 hour then you maintain the follow if not you stop following. So I can find followers that way and generally for each 2 people I follow I receive 1 follower. Its automated so doesn’t really matter if that ratio stays true.  I know that since I using auto follow too that when there people using the same software that they will maintain their following of me because I followed them automatically within the required time frame. This I imagine all sounds reasonable but we don’t live in a perfect world and here are some of the negative sides to auto follower on Twitter:

  1. The larger the following the more you follow
  2. Knowing who your are following
  3. Your followers knowing you
  4. Is Twitter auto-follow spam?

The larger the following the more you follow

I currently have about 2 thousand people I’m following. In all honesty it would be a full time job to track all of the Tweets and I already have a full time job. So as I build my following and as a result follow more people I must constantly go through a process of cleaning house to sort out what I need to watch and I don’t need. There really needs to be a build in system within Twitter that allows people to sort out the people they follow based on why they are following them. For example I follow some for their ideas about Twitter others because they are funny. The only software I could find online has been to sort following and followers based on whether or not they are following you if there’s a mutual following relationship.

Knowing who your are following

To continue the above point, there is no possible way to sort through thousands of Tweets. By following lots of people you loose the point of what Twitter was really meant for, which is to follow only people who are of an interest to you. If we all just follow each other then we are no better than lemmings. Watch out for that cliff.

Your followers knowing you

If you do something like use auto-follow, it is likely your followers are doing the same. Your tweets are getting buried and people aren’t following you necessarily for the right reasons. The best type of followers is: loyal ones, who are fixated on your every Tweet. Probably it is better to have a group of 100 followers who respond to your every tweet rather than a group of 1000 who are not responsive. A following built via auto follow software is more likely to fit into the second group.

Is Twitter Auto-follow Spam?

In March of 2009, Twitter decided to discontinue the auto-follow features from its own site. It had allows been a limited offering to select Twitters. Now it’s completely removed from Twitter and begs the question about how Twitter sees users who use third party software to achieve auto-following when they personally removed it. Will Twitter crack down on it in the future, I do not know.

In summary, I sit on the fence on this issue. I am currently using auto-follow but wonder if I should continue using it.

Retweet this article retweet this article

By the way, if you follow me on Twitter I'll end up following you ;)

Any questions about Twitter Auto-follow software, please feel free to contact me at 905-417-9470 or by email at allanp73@gmail.com