Why Would I Follow You?

Having used Twitter for a month or two now, I feel am just starting to get the hang of it. I am not a great conversationalist but I enjoy the constant snippets of conversation that pop-up on my browser like a babbling brook of information.

Twitter is supposed to be about what you are doing right now, but it has moved on. It has several roles, it is a human information feed providing up to the minute news on the topics you are interested in. It is has an obvious networking role where you can make new contacts and create new business opportunities especially when used in conjunction with other social media sites such as Linkedin.com. It can be an advice line. It is a marketing tool and it is a reputation management tool.

I use Twitter as an introduction to  meet people with great ideas and skill sets in a way that would not be possible with email, or any of the other media we have. I also use it to find an an audience for this blog.

There is a school of thought which says that you should follow people if they follow you. While this may have been okay in the beginning when few people knew about Twitter, with auto-following robots,  spoof accounts for prominent people and spammers sometimes you need to filter people from your followers in order to maintain the quality of your Twitter experience. So Why would I follow you?

You have something interesting to say. It doesn’t have to be about SEO but it has to be interesting. I don’t have any hard an fast rules but in general, when I get  new followers the first thing you notice is their avatar. If you haven’t even bothered to change your avatar, chances are you are very new to Twitter or you don’t use it much so this is not a good sign.

I will go to their Twitter home page. I like to see that that person has made changes to their Twitter page, with a wacky background or made some effort to change it from the standard page. I also like to see that they have a web site or blog that is linked to their Twitter page. I will read their bio and visit their website and read an article or two.

I will normally also look at who is following them and see if there is anyone I know already. This is where your avatar is really important as it will allow you to stand out from the crowd and be easily identified. I will look at what they do, look at what they have tweeted in the past. I might  notice the ratio of  followers they have compared to the number of people that are following them and this can sometimes be an indicator that this person might be worth following, if it is greater than one.