3 reasons why it’s a bad idea to follow 2000 twitter accounts just to get noticed

Everyone has seen one. Most often, these are companies who are just starting out on twitter and just don’t know better, but in some cases these are individuals who are desperate for attention. Here are my three reasons for not doing that:

  • It’s a miserable call for attention and looks exactly like one. Follow a few accounts you know could be interested in you or even people you know, who would be happy to help you out and retweet your tweets a few times- to help you get your message across and get noticed by like-minded people.
  • You’ll miss the conversations you should participate in. If you choose to follow people who have the same interests as you (if you are starting a private account) or people who are acknowledged experts in your niche (if you’re starting company account), you can participate in conversations they are having and add a value to them. By showing that you care and can help someone, is the quickest way to reach your target audience in a meaningful way. That’s how relationships are being built.
  • At one point you might decide to start using twitter more reasonably and that means that you’ll have to un-follow a bunch of people. If you actually do something else during a day, it’s impossible to read tweets of 2000 people. In that bunch of people will be some users who use services which notify about people who unfollow them. And when they notice, you’ll have created negative sentiment towards you. Some of them even might tweet about that. It can be compared to being friends with someone and after a while saying “Actually, after I have learned more about you, I actually have realized I don’t like you. You’re not interesting”.

These are mine. What’s your argument for talking someone out of following 2000 accounts?

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