I’ve not been on twitter long, like many people I kept putting it off until just a few weeks ago - and now I’m really into the twitter phenomenon.

I recently doubled my followers within a couple of days using a very clever little idea called tweet success (a way to automate this process - but in an ethical and non spammy manner, it just vastly speeds up what you would usually do manually) and I’m gaining many new twitter friends on a daily basis.  I’m making lots of connections, I’m learning from people - I’m helping people, it’s fantastic.

There’s one thing that I see people doing quite often with twitter, that always confuses me - and that is, holding back on following, in an attempt to build an account which is far heavier on followers than following.

Why?

As far as I can tell, most of the people that do this, do it in an attempt to demonstrate a large perceived profile - Ego, basically

But It doesn’t make sense, does it?

Surely the only way you’re really going to make connections, new allies, new colleagues, new friends, new customers - is with relationships, and you’re going to find it difficult to build relationships up with people who follow you, who you don’t follow back.

I’ve seen evidence of quite a few people with high profiles who don’t do this - and it appears to do wonders for their popularity.

The best example : Barack Obama.

Is twitter the reason Barack Obama won?

Well, look at this :

Senator John McCain Following :31| Followers: 146,756 .  Doesn’t follow back.

Barack Obama Following: 352,614 | Followers: 372,592. Does follow back!

So, John McCain didn’t build a relationship up with his twitter followers  - Barack Obama did.

Barack Obama won, of course -  So what does that tell you? Did this help Barack Obama to become president?

When you follow Barack Obama, and you see a few minutes later that he is following you, what does that do? Doesn’t it make you feel that little bit more connected to him - even though you know that the chances are he’ll never see a DM or @reply from you personally (he might, you never know), just the act of following you back does something to your perception of the other person & your relationship to them. If they follow you back then you feel more connected than if they don’t follow you back, wouldn’t you agree?

According to some of the articles I’ve read in the US media, I think some American twitter users are feeling slightly let down by their president at the moment possibly, seeing as he was quite prolific with his tweets right up until winning - and then has gone completely quiet since then, hopefully though most people will let him off for having a bit of a break from twitter while he gets settled in the new job, I’m sure he’ll be back tweeting again soon.

Or maybe he’ll take a leaf out of our PM’s book & employ a team of staff solely for tweeting.

Seriously, check it out : No 10 Downing Street

You’ll notice that, like Barack Obama - Gordon Brown follows back, in fact they’re following more people than they have followers. Following: 182,706 | Followers: 179,878

What’s very clever, is that the twitter staff who refer to themselves as “No10 admin” are very active on twitter, even replying to people quite regularly, and these tweets aren’t authoritative or condescending, they’re very humble, and even funny at time, for instance :

No10 admin sitting in a big black van outside Congress trying to upload pictures of PM’s speech. Grand white walls and a clear blue sky.5:36 PM Mar 4th from web

The day is done for No10 Admin. Good night all and please follow tomorrow when the PM will deliver a speech to Congress.12:44 AM Mar 4th from web

@MattSTKC Actually the PM also met John McCain and Hillary Clinton at Embassy in April and then Senator McCain again in London.11:56 PM Mar 3rd from web in reply to MattSTKC

@samsw68 Hey it’s hard to snap, edit, upload, twitter and dash about all at once. Some more pics now available: http://tinyurl.com/b79v8x11:11 PM Mar 3rd from web in reply to samsw68

No10 admin just uploading some pictures to Flickr of PM’s visit to the White House - go to http://tinyurl.com/b79v8x to check them out.7:59 PM Mar 3rd from web

@Scott217 Thank you for your welcome. No10 admin has been the beneficiary of US hospitality on a number of occasions - a commendable quality4:35 AM Mar 3rd from web in reply to Scott217

@presentsqueen Apologies, it is of course the White House. No10 admin too busy watching the character count…10:17 PM Feb 21st from web in reply to presentsqueen

Can you see what they’re doing?

They’re connecting with people on a whole new level, not through their normal channels, but be OUR normal channels!

They realize now that in order to really connect with people, they need to connect to us using the media that we use to connect to people, such as twitter - & if it was just a one way connection they wanted, they could do that via press releases, newspapers & TV - but it’s not, they want us to feel connected to them, which is why they follow back.

So -  personally, I’m following as many people as the twitter follow limit will allow me to, and over time - I’m unfollowing anyone who hasn’t followed me back, so that I can make sure I’m only following people who do actually want to build relationships.

It worked for Barack Obama, it’s working for no.10 downing street, I’ll work for us too

Tags: 10 downing street, barack obama, barack obama twitter, followers, gordon brown, popularity, senator john mccain, twitter, twitter followers

This entry was posted on Friday, March 6th, 2009 at 4:37 pm and is filed under Misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.