I really do hate schemes and programs dedicated to making people pay a fee for learning how to make a living in an at-home career. From becoming your own affiliate marketer to reaping the rewards of Google AdWords… yeah I know there is money to be made, but come on. I should create a new get rich quick scheme aimed at creating get rich quick schemes…. I think they already have that (the infomercial to this program is hilarious). It’s called a fricken pyramid scheme people.
The other day.. more like 2 or 3 weeks ago, I stumbled across two sites dedicated to pumping up your follower lists. Like the naive person I am, I decided to check it out, so I logged in with one of my faux Twitter accounts. After a welcome screen, I was prompted that in order for me to get the followers I wanted, I had to follow ‘ALL of the VIP members’ as well as ‘40 of the regular members’. I know what this is.. I just mentioned it above! Any ways, wanting to proceed in my horrible experiment, I went ahead and followed pretty much every single face on that page. Did I have a choice? Sure! but I wanted to test this service/get followers quick, even though my mind was pretty much already made up.
After I was done, I did pick up some followers. In the process, I also picked up around 60 new people I myself was following… maybe 1 of them, worth reading. So what is my point?
Everyone wants followers right? Okay, well maybe not everyone. Many people want followers. In essence, many people want friends. Look back at Facebook. Do you remember when you needed a college/university email address to actually access the social networking site? Well back in the day, your friends were like currency. The more friends you had, pretty much… the more popular you were. You may disagree with me, but is that not the determining factor in popularity?
Twitter is no different. Followers means you are relevant. Popular… okay maybe, but mostly relevant. This is important because in our evolving view of social media these days, relevance in and of itself really means popular… and what does popular mean? You guessed it, money. How many new social media consultants have sprung up over the last year and a half? Your guess is as good, and as wrong, as mine!
In theory, followers are good, but those people who tell you to follow someone so that they may follow you back… they are dumb. Yeah there is maybe a 5%-10% chance they’ll follow you back, but do you really want them to? Let’s say for example I like to write and tweet about my ‘Get Rich Quick’ program. If I go out of my way and follow like crazy and get other people to follow me like crazy, am I really offering them content that they’ll want to hear about?
If you’ve got some time, do this simple simple game. 1. Go through your river of the latest tweets, and look for people who you do and do not recognize. 2. Now look at the content they are pushing. 3. If you think that they offer you no real value, please stop following them. However, if you do think they are offering you value, @ reply them and tell them so. But make it look personal. Have I told you yet how much I hate automation. We’re already building Robots for our social networks, because we’re too effing lazy. Does that make sense…. look up the term ’social’ in the dictionary, and make up your own mind.
Now that I’ve thoroughly gone off topic, I suppose I should come back to these ‘get followers quick schemes’ and wrap up this post about whatever. In a nutshell, if you want followers, lots of them, then create your own way of luring them to you. If you want to do one of these stupid schemes, go ahead. Just realize that the value you add and the image you are trying to portray in all your efforts, is probably going in one ear and out the other with these people. Not saying they’re dumb… just saying they aren’t interested. Try making that first engagement yourself. You might be surprised.
Peace.
Credits for the heading images go to: Follow-Train.info and TweeterFollow.com
