Sometimes I wonder if I’m using Twitter right, or rather, if my current number of followers is limited by the way that I use Twitter.
Basically, I typically don’t follow people back when they follow me, and I know that this is sometimes a big issue for people when they follow someone and don’t get followed in return. My reasoning for this is two-fold: frankly, and I don’t mean this in a bad way, but I don’t necessarily care what every Tom, Dick, and Nancy who follow me tweets on a day-to-day basis, and even if I did, there’s no way in hell that I would be able to keep up with them all anyways.
It kinda baffles me when I see someone who either follows a zillion people or is complaining about people not following them back because I don’t understand how they could manage keeping up with 30,000 people or even millions like some of the bigger celebs. My best guess is that they treat Twitter as a stream that they dip into from time to time, whereas for the relatively few people who I do follow, I actually like to read just about everything that they tweet. That’s why I follow them.
As a result, unfortunately, I have to wonder if my follower count stays roughly the same because people follow based on a single tweet that they see and when they don’t get a reciprical follow a week later, they unfollow me. Then again, this could be more of a bot issue and the actual people just unfollow me because they don’t like my content, but still, it’d be interesting to know where the problem actually lies. As of probably the last six months, my followers float right around 110 people – right now it’s up to 123, but my assumption is that it’ll drop back down eventually.
I guess realistically I shouldn’t care how big the number is, but it’s an ego thing, really … plus, more followers hopefully translates into more people reading my columns, too, which is good for business. I think ultimately I’m just looking for validation on my use of the service because in my mind, I’m using it in the same way a lot of the people I follow myself use it (i.e. fan service for writers, artists, etc…). I don’t necessarily expect some of them to follow me back for the exact same reasons I listed above, and there’s always the option with Twitter to keep up on @replies so that you can still interact with people who specifically address you or comment on one of your tweets – I’ve done this from time to time myself when someone comments on a funny thing that I’ve recently tweeted.
Maybe I’m just musing about nothing. I think I need to get back to work!