Twitter Follower Schemes- Getting Them Quick

Ryan    Uncategorized     Pyramid Schemes, Social Media, Twitter

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.

Social Pyramid Schemes

Ryan    Uncategorized     Facebook, Pyramid Schemes, Social Media, Twitter

Found this NowSourcing.com image off of Google Image search: 'social media war'

So while I admit that I’m relatively new to Twitter, I feel pretty confident in some of my other social media platforms, mainly Facebook. By today’s standards however, if you took a look at my Facebook page, you might say otherwise. Maybe this is because I am one of those early adopters… those old fogies who don’t like change in what’s already a perfect system. Who knows.

When I first logged in, and submitted my first tweet on Twitter, I had already figured out that getting followers is the way to really make it in the twittersphere… (The more people who follow me, the more reach I’ll have when I want to say something really important. Good right? At the same time, I should also care about who I follow. Friends, family, role models, yadda yadda yadda)… For me, there was no agenda, no purpose for me to strive to gain followers fast, so I didn’t. I lived in the Twitter moment, and then at times, came out of the woodworks and sparked a little debate here and there. It was fun! Although I soon began to want more followers.

Although there were a couple weeks where I made hardly any tweets, I’ve tried to push my TPD (Tweets Per Day) averages since then, so that I could slowly become more relevant in the twitter aspect that is… ‘popularity’. The events that followed, however, soon began to modify my outlook of how Twitter is really making online computing communication different then what it used to be, or what we perceived it to be. Twitter is a great way to dumb down every day life. For example…

To follow the life of a new Twitter user, would look something like this:

1. Have a friend tell you how cool Twitter is.
2. Have another friend tell you how cool Twitter is.
3. Reluctantly create a Twitter account.
4. Make first tweet/twit whatever you want to call it.
5. Realize this is a waste of time.
6. Have people nag you and tell you you aren’t doing it right.
7. Realize that I should ‘optimize’ my tweets/twits for optimum searchability.
8. Reference someone in a tweet/twit.
9. Get in an argument with a tweeter/twitter(er).
10. Realize you are better then them.
11. Begin your quest to gain followers, in hopes to one day over take your antagonist in ‘follwers’.
12. Devise your own ‘get followers quick’ scheme.
13. Market it on Twitter.

Alright, so maybe that isn’t the way it works, but it might be close.. to some people.

In essence though, this could totally be a reason why Twitter is catching on so fast. Sure friends like to use it to communicate with each other(@noexample because they are my friends), companies and brands like to use it for PR and branding purposes (@starbucks, @zappos), or even news agencies will use it to broadcast each and every damn story they produce down to the minute (@nytimes, @cnn). What about everyone else? Maybe everyone else is just a Social Media Evangelist. “How can I show you the POWER of Twitter? Look at how many followers I have. I must be a professional at this SM stuff. I will show people that you just need to push garbage out of your Tweetdeck and sooner or later, people will think you’re cool and will want to follow you.

The idea I’m trying to convey is that a lot of what is happening on Twitter, is talk about Twitter. I’m not opposed to this! Don’t get me wrong. I just think that in order for this NOT to become the next big Pyramid Scheme… we should look at our actions on Twitter carefully. Hey, yeah I know I’m adding fuel to the fire, but look at the rest of my blog. I’m not a social media evangelist by any means. Although I do think everyone is an expert at it.

Peace.