Don’t just blind follow a ton of people!

Wednesday, March 18th, 2009
by Mark Carras

Don’t just blind follow a ton of people!

Now there are some bands like Queensryche that just don’t get Twitter. They follow no one. Not even other bands they have toured with. Of course that is super lame and one of the reasons Queensryche will always rank lower than unsigned bands when I rank rock and metal Twitter users. However, there are some people you should not follow. Now this may piss off a few of my SEO and internet marketing friends, but if those people read this whole article I think they will agree.

First off you really need to keep your ratio at least even. It’s even better if you can have your “Followers” number way higher than your “Following” number. A total newbie mistake is to just follow a few thousand people just to see if you get a follow back. This is a horrid mistake because your Twitter needs to be more about quality than quantity. Blind following may bring your number up but will those people respond when you announce a new song available for download on your site? Will the people you blind follow want to buy that new merch you just released? Will they want to talk about your band’s music with you? Then why should you care enough to follow them back?

Now there are a few services coming out that will recommend people you should follow. The way they do this is an automated algorithm. If you follow a ton of SEO types (the spammers and the quality ones), they will recommend nothing but SEO types. In fact, for you bands, I would even go so far as to say to not follow back the tech types. I follow Robert Scoble on Twitter because I’m a geek. You are a band, so you have no reason to follow him. Follow bands, fans, and music journalists. Then when Mr Tweet recommends Twitter users for you to follow, he will give you people that fit that type.

I know it is tempting to just start following people like crazy on these social networks. It takes less time and you are short on time. It takes less thinking and your brain is spent from your day job and creating music. So I understand why a band would get lazy about things like this. All I am trying to say is to resist the temptation no matter how tempting it is. You will get out of Twitter what you put into it. If you make sure you are only following the highest quality of people it will be well worth it for you. Keep it very strictly to your target audience. Never forget that it is about quality and not quantity.