The lamest Twitter trick ever?

Thursday, March 12th, 2009
by Mark Carras

I have noticed something about the Twitter elite. You know who I’m talking about, the people that have thousands of followers without blind following ten thousand people in a desperate attempt to be relevant? If I have only a few hundred followers why should I care that they are “only 50 followers from 3,000.” Why should I help them if I am thousands away from 3,000? Honestly no one should care. Will they help you get to that same goal? Probably not. The sad thing is though that it works! They get these lap dogs that jump as soon as they say jump. So all their little lap dogs re-tweet the message and the person gets to their next follower goal in seconds. It’s lame, but it works.

So how will this help you? Well, keep percentages in mind. If someone is 200 away from hitting 100,000 people will pay attention because it would be a small percentage of the total goal. Plus, they are sending the request out to way more people than you will be. So for example let’s say in a few weeks I get 20 followers away from hitting 400 followers. If I sent the message out to 380 people I will probably get those 20 extra followers because of their contacts. If you are at 90 followers I would send out a request to make it to 100. It will work!

Now keep in mind that this will not work as well if the goal is not a number you round up to. Keep it to goals that end in a few zeros. If I sent a Twitter message that said “I need 9 followers to reach 340 followers I might not get the impact I would if I waited until I was to at least 375 and only asking for 25. Sure I’m asking for more that way, but the goal is a rounded number. The human brain loves easy rounded numbers.

Now why should you care about how many followers you have? Well without making this article twice as long, let’s just say that when you send out a Twitter message to promote your band (or anything else) you will always get a 1% result. So for every 100 followers you will get one person responding. This is why people are trying for thousands of followers. This rule has been the same since the word marketing was invented. Email lists, clicks on a website from your visitors, paper flyers you hand out at other shows, or even midgets you hire to go door to door. Your return will always be about one percent.

I know this can sound depressing, but remember when you first tried to learn how to ride a bike, drive a car, jump into the working world, or even learn to play your first instrument? Important things take time and you will get out of Twitter what you put into it. Good luck and make sure and follow me, because I’m about to rank the top 100 Twitter users in Rock and Metal to follow up my top 50.