Chris Tomlinson: Never more popular than when silent
Dec 10 2010 By Chris Tomlinson
I have recently noticed a worrying phenomenon – the less I tweet the more followers I get.
I’ll admit, my profile picture, like everyone else, is a tad flattering and taken a long time ago, but I’m pretty sure it’s not my aesthetics that is pulling in followers.
Yet it can’t be my wisdom because whenever I actually open my mouth and tweet unfollows seem to result.
There are of course more traditional techniques to build your following, other than not tweeting.
The main three are:
* The ‘Follow-backs’ approach. Find people you want to follow you, follow them and hope they return the compliment.
Targets can be selected by geography, their interests or indeed the size of their own following.
* Using Twitter widgets on your other online asserts (websites, blogs and fan pages) to point existing audiences towards your twitter feed.
* By referral – getting mentioned or retweeted by those more famous than yourself.
This mandates having an opinion that others value and indeed creating content of worth.
And it helps if you’re especially witty, attractive or are already famous.
But sadly I cannot attribute my success to any of the above.
It is, in fact, the increasing relighting of brands on follow-backs to boost their followers, rather than having anything interesting to say, that is the cause of the phenomenon.
Essentially I’m being followed by those who would wish me to read their tweets yet have no intention of ever reading mine.
I have therefore decided to only follow people I have met in real life (or are especially witty, or attractive or play international cricket) as a protest.
In return the #PIMIRFs (People I Met in Real-life First) usually follow me back but often get bored if I over tweet or meander from my specialism and unfollow.
The solution is to tweet only when you have something truly interesting to say – advice which I often fail to follow.
* Chris is managing director of social media and online PR agency frienddigital.com
