Like everyone who has spent a fair amount of time on Twitter, I have developed a system for amassing huge numbers of followers quickly*. For the first time, I am going to disclose the details of that system. Anyone can do it.

Why build your followers list?

In my book, SocialCorp, I explain why companies need to consider social media initiatives in the context of their objectives in order to get the most out of their experience. There’s no reason individual users shouldn’t do the same thing. I am on Twitter to communicate with people with whom I share common interests, attributes or objectives. I am there to learn, to share and to help others achieve objectives similar to mine.

How to find people to add

When I joined Twitter, I had to find people worth adding. At the same time, as my followers list grew, people found me and added me. Use the Twitter “Find People” function to find people of interest. Use terms like “books,” “attorney,” “beer,” or “Republican,” single words that people use to define themselves, as search terms. You can also use Twellow, Just Tweet It, or any number of Twitter directories.

The ideal person to follow

When you find someone you think is worth adding, check for the following:

An avatar (aka thumbnail photo) of the user or representing the user. Unless you personally know the user, an account without an avatar might indicate a spammer, or someone who simply hasn’t really made a commitment to engage on Twitter.

A profile. Twitter profiles are short, but should include the person’s name (first name at least), what they do, and a link to a blog, Facebook page, FriendFeed profile, or some other secondary source of content and authentication of the user. Use MS Word to compose yours so you can keep the character count to the limit. Use words that get you found. Take advantage of every character. I threw “Zamboni driver” into my profile and I meet a lot of hockey players and fans and people who are fascinated by Zamobnis and curious about whether I know how to drive one.

Balanced follower/following ratio. Someone who follows 1997 people and is followed back by 13 is a follower collector. They are on Twitter only to amass numbers to engage in spamming users. Some even believe they can amass enough users to make their Twitter account attractive enough to sell. It’s been tried, a couple of times on eBay even.

Celebrities, on the other hand, quickly cross over and become unbalanced in the other direction. (Most celebrities are unbalanced in other ways but that is not the subject of this post.) They will be followed by tens of thousands of users and only follow a few in return. These cases can be quite extreme, with people like Ashton Kutcher being followed by over a million and only following a handful back. These people are the most offensive of all Twitter users as they take advantage of their status to amass followers but seldom offer anything of real value in return. At least spammers and schemers are open about what they want from you. Witness this self-absorbed pap (via Tweeting Too Hard) from recording artist John Mayer:  “Hey, it’s weird. Know what else is? Two homes. Millions of fans. Getting to be an artist for life. I think I’ll jump on the treadmill. :)” (Note that John has over 1 million followers and follows 45 in return.)

Who not to add

As people add you, you will be faced with decisions on who to follow back. I follow back any user who follows me with the following exceptions:

Spammers. Yes there are spammers on Twitter. Check out the person’s timeline. If the tweets are all selling something, whether it’s cell phones, arts and crafts or colon cleansers, that person is a spammer.

Racists, extremists, hatemongers. I don’t follow anyone who hates a particular religion, race, nationality, political party, etc.

MLMers and get-rich-quick con artists. I really despise multi-level marketing schemes, aka network marketing. This country is suffering its worst economic hangover in 75 years because of get-rich-quick, money-for-nothing-and-your-chicks-for-free scams. These people are a scourge on Twitter and should be reviled. Often, they can be detected easily by their user IDs and profiles.

What to tweet

One of the most overlooked areas of how to use Twitter is kontent. I sometimes use the “k” form of the word to indicate my distaste for the notion of content. Information, perspective and analysis is hard stuff to convey to people. It has depth, meaning and thought behind it. Content sounds like some kind of generic commodity you stuff a pillow with. But I digress.

Here are a few ideas on what to tweet:

Links to your blog (if you have one). Link to new blog posts to drive people to your blog and encourage discussion, which will happen both on the blog, via comments, back on Twitter, and even on FriendFeed, Digg and elsewhere. The best thing to tweet is your original content. It shows originality, creativity, awareness of the world around you. It brings real value to the Twitter community. You’ve introduced something that wasn’t there before. Post these no more than three or four times over a period of days. After that, stop promoting your latest post and write a new one.

News stories and blog posts of interest to the people who follow you. Tweet about stories that you found interesting. Provide a link and name the source. Characters are at a premium. For well known outlets, like the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, WSJ and NYT are acceptable. For more obscure sources, name them in full. Don’t bother with the onerous “RT” (retweet) convention for stories from well known sources. The more people trip over themselves adding RTs to a tweet, the less useful information it contains. And statistically, there is no possible way your friend was the first person on the planet to read this morning’s Washington Post (or Huffington Post), and even if they were, it’s not such an important accomplishment that it needs recognition.

Tweets with cogent observations on the news and events of the day, humor, etc. authored by the person tweeting them. Unlike news items, these are your original thoughts. These should be reasoned, and not inflammatory. If applicable, link to the item you are commenting on. When passing on the thoughts of your friends and associates, you must provide attribution. You can use RT, or the much classier “via” with the person’s ID. Strip off the other people who RT’d to free up characters. They are unnecessary and anyone who really wants to track the progression of any tweet can do so by using Twitter search.

Trivial tweets. This is the subject of raging debate and subject greatly to personal preference. I’m not a cat person, so I find tweets about cats crawling across keyboards particularly annoying. Almost everyone needs coffee first thing in the morning. No one wants to know that you do. These observations are so common as to not be useful.

Other so-called trivial tweets have more utility. Even a mention of your current location, directly or through a service like Brightkite, is useful if you are hoping to find friends at that location. This is a way to let people know you are visiting their area, or to brag about all the exotic places you get to visit. Keep privacy in mind when you do this, though. Don’t tweet that you’re in the lobby of a competitor for example.

It is through these trivial exchanges that we come to know and trust people, but too much of it can be very annoying and grounds for unfollowing in some circles.

One word of caution. Tweets are permanent. If you tweet something you regret having tweeted, deleting it will not remove it indelibly. Unless you catch it in a few seconds, it will be picked up and cached (stored) in Twitter’s database and available on Twitter search even though the original tweet was deleted. (I once beat this game by deleting a tweet instantly after regretting it, and it did not turn up in Twitter search, but I have only performed this dangerous maneuver once.)

Direct Message do’s, don’t’s and please don’t’s (Those apostrophes look weird, don’t they? What is AP style for “do’s and don’t’s?)

Direct messaging is only enabled when two people follow each other. Most people dislike auto-DMs, messages generated automatically when a new follower is added. These can be annoying and mistargeted. I have often received auto DMs that say something like “Thanks for following me. I’ll be sure to follow you back.” This makes no sense as it is not possible to send a DM unless you are following each other. (Update: apparently, if someone follows you, you may then DM them even if you are not following them back. My mistake.) Other auto DMs say things like “Check out our system for making $5000 per minute online.” Still others try to be personable with offers like “Great to meet you. Let me know how I can help you.” I respond to these by asking that $100 be sent to my PayPal account. For these and many other reasons, don’t enable auto DMs.

On the other hand, if you get a new follower, you can make their day and foster a relationship by sending a DM that says “Thanks for following. I really enjoyed your blog post on corporate social responsibility.”

Grow!

Once you’ve figured out all of the above, you can start adding people. I recommend adding no more than 25 people a week when you are new. Be very selective. Mathematically, the first 25 people will do more to influence the quality of your experience on Twitter than the next five thousand (if you go that far.) This is because each of them will have a network of potentially interesting people that you will be automatically connected to. The followers of the people you follow will see your communications and will add you if you’re interesting. It’s geometric. A few hundred people can connect you to a million. The reason I recommend adding people slowly is to get accustomed to increasing numbers of followers and see if there is a point after which you have diminishing returns in your Twitter experience. For many people, just 10 or 25 people is perfect. It all depends on why you are there.

Twitter does put up some barriers to surpassing 2000 followers. You must be followed by 2000 before you can follow more than 2000 (basically, it’s not exactly that simple, but close enough).

Don’t participate in “Follow Friday” or other pyramid schemes designed to randomly add users. You will find yourself with thousands of followers, and no idea whatsoever why you have them. Maybe you collect thumbtacks and you have three million of them. It might be an awesome way to spend your time but in the end, what’s the point? (Give me credit. It’s not often you encounter a guy doing clean thumbtack jokes.)

Each of the topics above could be expanded into a blog post of its own. Maybe I’ll do that, but of course, before I do, I’d love to know what you think about all of this. And please don’t rip off my patented scam for adding followers. I wouldn’t want the word to get out that you can build a network by being genuine, useful, kind and knowledgeable.

My usual disclaimer applies: Serving suggestion only. My strategy for managing followers is intended to serve my objectives for using Twitter. The extent to which you follow these recommendations depends greatly on whether you agree with how I use Twitter, and whether your use is for a different purpose. My views on RTs in particular are considered heretical by many. Oh well.

Tags: add, Twitter, followers, surefire, scam, thumbtacks

(Shout it with conviction, the same way Al Pacino cries “Attica, Attica!” in the movie Dog Day Afternoon.)

Lately, Twitter has turned into a mess. The whole Ashton Kutcher 1 million sheep march was a debacle, and spam’s finest hour. Among the other sources of Twitter noise pollution is Follow Friday, a custom whereby Twitter users tweet lists of favorite friends along with the hashtag #followfriday, so that others can add these fine folks. Unfortunately, what was once a kind and useful convention is now a spectacle that has made Twitter almost unbearable on Friday, and most other days of the week as well. (I wrote about this recently on this blog, and please also read this interesting post from Andrew Mueller on how Follow Friday is sabotaging your Twitter experience.)

Here’s the problem. Jesus had followers. He was special. The people who follow me are not literally following me, they are following my updates in the hope of learning something useful, or engaging in interesting conversations, not for my messianic appeal. Here’s the deep, dark secret of Follow Friday. It’s a link exchange scam. If the only goal is to amass large numbers of followers it works. Your value to Twitter, and to the world in fact, is not derived from the number of followers you have. It comes from your unique contribution. Although there is a network effect in an any social network which does “amplify” the value of the top contributors, it does trail off after a point. And while number of followers plays a role in this scenario, the whole thing falls apart when follower collecting becomes the primary goal.

Before you get too upset with me, if you happen to have recommended me previously on Follow Friday, I am grateful and honored that you did so, but I also hope you understand why I haven’t returned the favor. There’s nothing wrong with recommending someone on his or her merits with a tweet that says, “If you’re a web designer, follow @whomever, a really talented designer from San Francisco.” That’s valuable information. On the other hand, I have seen as many as six or seven tweets from the same person suggesting follows for endless lists of people with no context or reason for following.

There’s only so much noise the system can tolerate before it collapses, or before people move to another neighborhood, like FriendFeed for example. So take up the charge, step into the street and shout “No Follow Friday! No Follow Friday!”

Next…my surefire scam for adding followers.

Tags: #followfriday, follow friday

At exactly the same moment Ashton Kutcher and a couple of other people found out about Twitter from their marketing folks, Twitter stopped being cool. And for many, it stopped being even tolerable. Twitter has shown phenomenal growth this year, but at the same time, it is already in danger of becoming the next MySpace (synonymous with a moribund user base and questionable relevance). And when that happens, where will everyone go? While some have gone to alternate Twitter universes like Plurk, or microblogging clones like Identi.ca, FriendFeed, once thought of as a Twitter supplement or add-on, seems to be the most obvious place.

What has FriendFeed got over Twitter? Better integration and the ability to cross post to a multitude of services like Facebook, Flickr, Google Reader, Digg, StumbleUpon, etc. Real time updates to the feed without requiring a “refresh” button.” Real time search of all updates or just your friends’ updates. Actual image and video embeds. Friends’ lists, aka groups. What does Twitter have over FriendFeed? More users. And that’s not necessarily a good thing. FriendFeed also has a very clean interface and thus far (though they haven’t had to scale like Twitter) no indications of IT “anomalies.”

Have you noticed any of your friends’ tweets starting with “Liked”? Chances are, they clicked the FriendFeed “Like” button, indicating they liked something they saw on their feed. This single click also (optionally) autoposts this to Twitter. (That’s the integration and cross posting I was talking about.)

Like Facebook, FriendFeed’s user interface recently went through a major overhaul, and among loyalists and newcomers alike, it’s getting high marks. “Follow the money” emerged from the Watergate story and the movie All The President’s Men to become a popular expression. I propose we update that for social media to read “Follow Scoble.” Scoble mastered Facebook almost the moment it was open to the public, then joined Twitter and amassed a huge number of followers before shameless follower amassing was chic. He has been a FriendFeed booster since its introduction.

One thing I haven’t figured out yet is how to see who has subscribed to my feed, but for whom I haven’t subscribed in return. (If you’ve subscribed to my feed and wonder why I haven’t returned the favor, that’s why).

Right now, FriendFeed is relatively free of spammers. (I haven’t seen any yet, but just wait until Business Week reports FriendFeed has jumped the snark or something and we’ll all need to find another place to go to escape the noise.)

If you want to try out the next big thing, or you’re a social media snob, sign up for FriendFeed. It’s really worthwhile and you might find it more productive and useful than that other brand of microblogging/status updates.

NOTE: I just discovered (after publishing this) Jesse Newhart published a post about FriendFeed on April 23 and used both “cool kids” and “jumps the shark” (although I used “jumping the snark.”) I just saw Jesse’s post on FriendFeed, so I wanted to set the record straight. (I had not seen it, at least consciously, before posting this.) I apologize for any appearance of impropriety and bow to Jesse.

Tags: FriendFeed, Twitter, Robert Scoble

There are hundreds of posts (some of them mine) on the Twitter follower/following dynamic, how to find people worth following, etc. Less has been written about strategies for not following/unfollowing people.
So here’s mine. I’ve decided to start unfollowing/not follow back certain classes of followers.

Celebrities
I first started following celebrities a couple of years ago when Twitter was relatively new. There was a novelty factor. I was interested in learning about the latest celebrities on Twitter, their behavior, their reasons for being there, and of course, whether they were real.

I’m not big in celebrity watching. It’s hard not to be fascinated by celebrities, particularly by their achievements in their respective fields. But I don’t subscribe to People magazine. Or Us. Or Them. Or Those. I don’t even watch TV. And it’s becoming increasingly harder to be fascinated by the latest celebrities who show up on Twitter, so that’s one category I am whacking right away. (MC Hammer stays. He has class, responds to people, has been on Twitter since back in the day, and unlike most celebrities, is there for reasons that may include self promotion, but are not limited to it.)

Seriously, Ashton Kutcher is a dork. Twitter has become the latest hip shiny object for celebrities. Here’s a hint: When you go in search of hipness, anything widely recognized as “hip” is no longer so. And remember, it wasn’t that long ago that Hummers were big with celebrities.

On the other hand, fake Twitter celebrities can be really awesome. My favorite is Chuck Norris.

MLMers
I hate multi-level marketing (MLM), network marketing or whatever it’s called these days. When I can detect it in a follower, I will opt out. MLM is just another way of saying “Ponzi scheme.” BLOCK.

Strange Stuff
I’ve had a couple of weird followers. I was followed by Berchtesgaden, which was Hitler’s summer home. (The account was later suspended, so my suspicions that it was not “legitimate” were confirmed.) I’ve had several followers promote colon cleansing products. BLOCK or NO FOLLOW depending on how offensive.

Follow Schemers
I’m so not interested in people who are in any way involved in schemes to amass Twitter followers. NO FOLLOW.

Spammers
Yes, there are spammers on Twitter. They don’t email you, they follow you. Forget all the disingenuous crap about how “you don’t have to follow them back.” If you’re on Twitter to meet liked minded people, learn, share, and carry on conversations, then you have to validate your followers, so spammers are just as annoying on Twitter as they are anywhere else. BLOCK or NO FOLLOW depending on how offensive.

That’s it for now, though I am sure as I work my way through 5000+ followers, I’ll identify other categories worth ignoring. I just wish I had become more selective a long time ago.

Tags: twitter, celebrity, celebrities, ashton kutcher, follow, unfollow, followers, spam, block, mc hammer, chuck norris

You want rants? We’re blowin’ ‘em out the door! I was just cleaning out my “Twitter rants to post” folder and decided to do two at once, one on the subject of #followfriday and the other on the subject of hashtags.

Rant #1 - Follow Friday

People use the #followfriday tag to post Twitter updates with the names of people they recommend others follow on Twitter. I guess it’s helpful to newcomers and it’s a nice gesture to the people who are recommended. When I signed up for Twitter I found new people to follow by doing searches, reading profiles, reading blogs and finding people with similar careers and interests.

I’m going to reserve judgment on Follow Friday in general, but several habits have cropped up in relation to Follow Friday that bother me.

First, while it’s good manners to thank the person who gave you a #followfriday thumbs up, I dislike the practice of responding to a #followfriday recommendation by tweeting “@soandso Thanks for recommending me for #followfriday!” The intent of this is obvious. It is a “clever” way of saying thank you and at the same time, shamelessly promoting yourself.

Second, Friday begins at 12:00:01 a.m. or thereabouts wherever you are. For some reason people start posting Follow Friday recommendations on Wednesday and they trickle well into Saturday. Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday are not Friday. Stop it.

Rant #2 Hashtags

While hashtags have been useful on Twitter so far, I think they should be seen for what they are — a workaround for missing features, an annoyance to people not involved in the hashtagged conversation, and a pain in the a** for users.

There are many useful and interesting conversations occurring on Twitter, and certain specialized ones, like Sarah Evans’s “journchat” use hashtags so users can “watch” the conversation with a tool like Twitter search or Twemes. But the tags, and in some cases the conversations themselves, can be annoying to those not participating. If Twitter supported “groups” like Presently and Yammer do, specialized chats could be done within a specific group. This has multiple benefits.The first of these is that people can participate in a coherent, continuous conversational stream without having to know a thing about hashtags and without interruption.

If no hastags are required, users are freed from the tasks of including, properly formatting and understanding hashtags. This not only makes conversations more fluid, it frees up space in the constrained world of 140 characters. A side benefit is that other users, who enjoy Twitter but may not want to observe these conversations, do not have to watch them in their timeline. (There is a very interesting dynamic in connection with certain event hastags, like #sxsw. Many people who do not attend the events see the hashtags and feel they are being snubbed.)

Hashtags are, in a general, very hard for many to understand and use. Central repositories either don’t exist or aren’t used, and one can often see debates on Twitter about which is the correct hashtag to use for a certain event or chat. Boolean search, such as that used by Twitter search, does not need the “#” character, so adding it should be unnecessary as long as a unique string is used, like web2.0. If Twitter supported groups, the capability of sending updates only to a select group of people, hashtags would be unnecessary.

Alternately, Twitter could add a couple of features to mitigate this. One feature could be what I call tabbed channels. Users would tag their various followers as friends, colleagues, music, news, whatever, and segregate them into tabbed timelines for more coherent viewing. Another feature, my favorite idea, would be to allow people to opt out of a certain tag, so for example, if I didn’t want to observe a certain conversation, I could add its tag to my Twitter preferences and tweets with that tag would no longer be included in my timeline.

Thanks for letting me rant. I feel much better now.

Tags: #followfriday, follow friday, hashtags, twitter, groups