I follow lots of people on Twitter, many of whom I followed reflexively after they followed me, before it got infeasible to do that.
I’ve noticed there seem to be a few different kinds of twitterers:
- Redirectors. People whose tweets mainly serve to point me to other interesting articles, videos, and websites.
- Tipsters. People whose tweets actually contain tips or useful information.
- Personalities. People whose tweets reveal something interesting about them, so I get intrigued by them as a person, and possible also intrigued by their content.
- Marketers. Lots of self-promotion and/or product promotion.
- Randoms. People who tweet random facts about their life that are not revealing or interesting. “Am walking down Street.”
- … have I missed any Twitterer types?
My podcast is where I share tips (let’s get real: the amount of content I have to generate to keep two newsletters, two blogs, a podcast and a book going is unreal. I can’t add Twitter to that load, too).
On Twitter, I’m trying to be a Personality, more than anything. I tweet about things that interest me, and also that affect me in emotional, personal ways. It’s been an interesting journey, since I started on Twitter purely as a way to stay social with my friends. Given the podcast and upcoming book, my presence has evolved into a complicated mix of trying to stay personal and yet build a community that can become the basis for some kind of career (workshops? media presence? information products?).
Since I have no grand plan, I’m just meandering on my own trying to connect in a personal, rather than informational, way.
Do you have any thoughts on my Twitter/Facebook presence? Is there anything you would like me to do differently that would make me more worth following, and/or build a stronger connection of whatever type between me and the Get-it-Done Guy/Stever Robbins community?
I’m a fan of tweets that are interesting, informative, funny, offer insight into the person behind the blog, and not a fan of the serial RT’er or the overdosing self-pimping tweets.
When a twitter stream becomes a commercial I unfollow. When a twitter stream becomes “Look what HE said” just all RT’s I unfollow. If I wanted to know what those ppl say, especially the A-listers, I’d follow them. The occasional RT is fine, but if it’s constant it’s no longer added value.
I have a blog and tweet when I have a post, but I tweet once. I don’t hammer ppl with it. If there’s an update to a program I am a super fan of I may tweet once, but not every 2 hours in case someone missed it.
So far I think you’re doing fine and striking a good balance between all the stuff above. Building the community by being an interesting person – person being the key part of it, is so much more important than reading like a free advertising stream. People see through that sort of thing and I think they get tired of it. On the other hand, Random tweets “Ate a french fry and it was black on the end” leave me wondering why I’m reading them. I’ve done that sort of thing once in a while, but they tend to be inside jokes that my RL friends will get the reference, and not just blathering.
Asking for feedback like you do for blog/podcast food is an engaging way to get information from your readers and appears to work. I came here from twitter. If I had to guess I’d say if it starts to feel like an advertising campaign it has felt that way for a while to your followers.
I’d like a twitter metric that showed not just followers, but active followers. Some adopters drop off right away, but they still show as live on my list. It’d be interesting if I had some way of knowing who hadn’t used twitter in the past 2 weeks. Knowing how many real followers there are/were would be interesting I think. Not that I obsess about it. I don’t. Just curious about how sticky my followers are.
I started following you because I thought there would be useful GetItDone tips. Of course, that’s not the case, but I keep following you because the commentary is interesting/thought provoking/entertaining enough and you don’t broadcast excessive noise.
I’m glad you’re spending less time on twitter and more time on your book so you can hurry up and finish it. (Hurry up and finish it!)
There is ‘effective’ for each type of twitted you identified. So I think how ur using it to connect on a more personal way is very good. It’s good to the inner machinations of some one who you admire.
Stever,
You pose a great question. It’s hard to know if your followers really want more of the same, such as product, advice, tips, etc. or if they want to get to know the person behind them.
I tend to get bore with, “I played WW til 4 AM last night.” Who really gives a s*** about that. Some people do, I don’t so I tend to not follow people when that’s all they have to offer. Even the time I waste is too valuable for that!
But you are a witty guy. Everyone here has covered how I feel too. I enjoy reading your tweets because you’re interesting. There’s a lot of thought behind your tweets. It’s not always what you say but how you say it that makes it interesting.
I resonate with your over-analytical mental processing peppered with bitterly ironic humor. So, I say, thumbs up on how you use Twitter.
Cheers,
Scott
I enjoy all kinds of tweets, although I tend to care more about randoms if they are from people I already know and care about personally.
I listen to your podcast because the information you provide is always interesting and useful, and usually also something I’ve not heard before–but also because of your funny and charming personality. The latter leaves me feeling positive and able to implement said good ideas.
I follow you on Twitter for pretty much the same reasons, so the posts I like best are the ones that lead me towards some useful information I didn’t know before and/or the ones that are funny and charming. That includes a little self-marketing, such as alerting us when you’ve posted something new, or even when you need opinions on something.
The tweets that aren’t quite as riveting, for me, are the ones where you’re sharing your irritation with some facet of society or corporations. Often I even share the feeling–but I prefer your podcast persona where you approach those topics with more humor and less overt judgment. It helps me to do the same. But that’s just a personal preference.