Confessions of a Six Figure Professional Blogger

Twitter Marketers and Gaming The System

August 11, 2008 | Marketing, Social Media

Like a lot of people who use Twitter, I have been getting what seems like an increasing number of internet marketers following me on Twitter.

Now, I want to make a careful distinction here. Not all internet marketers are a problem. I know several internet marketers (a few personally) who use Twitter properly and are good members of the Twitter community. John Reese, for example, was attacked by Mashable a while back. It was a stupid, knee-jerk reaction on the part of Mashable because anybody who follows John Reese on Twitter (as do I) will clearly see that he is not using his account to pimp his products. Quite frankly, Reese is too smart for that.

Picture 4 The internet marketers who use Twitter to simply plug their products are the STUPID marketers. These are the guys who see their follower count as a statistic to increase however they possibly can. So, they’ll use some kind of mass follow script to mass add followers, hoping that a bunch will turn around and auto-follow. Twitter now has a 2,000 follower limit. So, the best way to detect a Twitter marketer is to see a follower count of 2,000, a low number of people following them back, and they just joined Twitter (meaning a low number of updates).

Is this a problem?

Well, it could represent a problem for Twitter, which has been famous for downtime. It would also be a problem for any of those people who use auto-follow scripts on Twitter (stupid, bonehead move, IMO).

There will always be some who will flock to a new social media site in order to game it for cash. They see it as a huge pool of eyeballs that need to be driven to their website. And, of course, Twitter is a good medium for that. But, it has to be used PROPERLY and with social tact. You need to be a good community member first, and marketer second.

Some ways to curb the problem would be:

  1. Do not use mass follow scripts. It just defeats the point of a social network. And, any real marketer would know that.
  2. Don’t auto-follow. These people who use bots to auto-follow anybody who follows them…you’re an idiot. Stop it. All you’re doing is making Twitter too noisy to deal with and you’re contributing to the problem.

Be selective in who you follow and your Twitter account will be a much more useful source of information.

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  • 2000 is a huge number! I used to think that they have many followers, but that number far exceeds my prediction. Twitter has proved itself good for internet marketers, really. Having valid and updated information is a must for anybody and everybody in the business.
  • Hey David, informative post. I was looking for the answer to this question. Am new to twitter, and was wondering why people kept following me. I figured it was because I was following some top internet marketing guys and so they found me that way. I also realized quickly enough (as you said), that the tactic is to get a person to follow back, and then show them a "thank you for following me free product".
  • Regarding your attack on the Mashable article - you clearly didn't read it if your defense of John is that he's not using Twitter to pimp his products.

    On the follow limit, there are a number of reasons why to auto-follow bots and why they work. There's something coming out on Mashable soon about this, but it boils down to an unpatchable hole in all social networks - ego.
  • My defense of John is that he is not using it to pimp ebooks. Reese posts stuff 99% of the time that has little to nothing to do with something he is selling.

    And I look forward to reading your post on Mashable.
  • My original allegation (and I think that John's taking my generalizations personally is where my communications with him went off the rails, too), is that if he introduces twitter to the ebook marketers of the world (which is a culture that I, correctly or not, saw him as either a part of or akin to), it'd end up being an unpleasant place for most of us.

    I hope to get this out tonight. Got a few interesting editorials I've gotta eek out.
  • Ian
    This is a great article with good advice for marketing on Twitter, but for some reason there is no opportunity to Digg it to share with and for my own future reference... until now:

    http://digg.com/tech_news/Twitter_Marketers_and...
  • Thanks for the Digg, Ian. :)
  • robmills
    Great post David.

    A lot of people overlook the "social" part of social media. What is considered rude behavior in offline social situations also applies online. If a stranger came up to a group at a party, introduced themselves and then immediately launched into a sales pitch would that be ok ? Probably not.

    Adding value to the community is the key to social media success.
  • I have noticed many lapses in twitters service in the past little while. I guess people are really abusing the system more and more day in and day out.
  • I didn't realize Twitter had a 2,000 follower limit. That explains why I'm stuck following 2,000. I say "stuck" because even if I tried to reciprocally follow new folks, I flat-out can't. I sent them a note saying I wasn't a bot, but if this is a new hard and fast rule, it's annoying.
  • Marc Vermut
    Louis, I don't get how you can follow 2,000 people, let alone 200, and really get a flow of information that wouldn't be otherwise available with a summize (oops, twitter) search or tweet scan. It just seems like too much noise for too little valuable signal.
  • And Marc, we actually agree on this. I use Summize/Twitter search more than I use the Web interface, so following or not following doesn't impact me a whole lot. Sometimes, the following is more out of courtesy than anything, and other times, there are actually people I might be interested in following to get their updates.

    I discussed the issue of Twitter following (or not) here, not too long ago:

    The Talk About Rules for Social Following Is Getting Out of Hand
    http://www.louisgray.com/live/2008/07/talk-abou...
  • Marc Vermut
    I remember reading the post and, while understanding your position, disagreeing with your thesis. Twitter and most of the "personal" social media platforms/tools are valuable to me because they provide me with a relatively low touch point of contact and communication with a network of people I am interested in knowing...not just being connected to. In fact, I've found that using Twitter and Trillian and GTalk and Facebook (to some degree) have allowed me to deepen relationships with people I otherwise wouldn't have. Not that I presume you would dispute it, just that this would get overrun or hampered for me if I drank from the firehose.

    For connections,I have LinkedIn. So, following a ton of people of Twitter doesn't allow me to really get a sense of anyone, the way I can by skimming through the scroll in Spaz or Twhirl.

    Perhaps, as is implicit in the build your own nature of these social tools, different people use them for different things in different ways.
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