On Tuesday I gave you a brief rundown of Crowdfire and how it has helped me gain a lot of followers recently. And I am absolutely positive that some of you were thinking that you didn’t want to use Crowdfire or add 100 people a day because you are more concerned about the quality of followers rather than how many there are.
Trust me, I’ve been there. Truthfully, I’m still kind of there.
The reality is that you should not just blindly follow people on social media. If you are like myself and want to establish a brand around blogging and writing, there is not much use in following an electrical engineer. Unless there is some other kind of connection there, it doesn’t really benefit you beyond potentially (and it is a big stretch here) getting them to follow you back.
The thing that I have liked about Crowdfire is how targeted its following recommendations are. The people I follow are more often than not followers of similar accounts, and they tweet and talk about the same keywords I do. Thus, when I use the application to add those 100 people each day, I am confident that I am picking from a pool that has already been whittled down for me.
On top of that, I take a look at each of the individual bios to make sure that who I am following can actually benefit me. Again, I will happily follow indie creators and people who are all about my interests.
So even though I am following en masse, all those that I am following are relevant to who I am and who I want to be. That is one of the keys to growing your base so quickly, I’ve found: don’t just do it blindly.
But even then, even after making sure that those that you are following are relevant and appropriate, it would be impossible to actually get to see all the good content being pushed through by the hundreds, if not thousands of people that you have followed. So there are two more steps to make sure that the quantity of people you follow are still of good quality.
First, you should unfollow people after a view days. Don’t just unfollow everyone! But those who aren’t following you back or those who don’t add value in some other way are not particularly worth following. You are building a network with like-minded people out there. If they don’t see the value in doing the same with you, then you don’t need to follow them. It almost sounds mean, but it’s the truth. This is your passion, your brand, and ultimately your business, remember!
Crowdfire and many other applications have features that will tell you who doesn’t follow you back, so you can see exactly who should be cut from the list. Alternatively, come up with your own system!
The second way to get the most out of the large number of people you are following is lists. This is a Twitter feature that allows you to create or subscribe to groups of people and view their tweets and retweets. You can choose your favourite people and make a “My Favourites” list. My next step is to make “Dungeons & Dragons” and “Podcasts” lists. It allows you to curate topics and people for your viewing pleasure.
I didn’t understand the point of lists when I first joined Twitter. In fact, until a month ago I didn’t see the value in them. Now I am understanding more and more how important it is to have them once you start following a lot of people. Of the 2,200 people I follow, a lot of information will be coming at me all at once. But for those that stand out or those that I particularly click with, they can be added to a list so I can see them more often.
There is definitely a change that happens when you start gaining a lot of followers very quickly. Like most things, there is a learning curve to it. If you’ve blazed this trail before me, let me know how you manage the quality vs quantity debate of having so many followers. And for those who are worried about that debate, I hope I was able to help in some way!
Thanks for stopping by, see you on the weekend!