How do these things start? I guess out of boredom. I guess out of fascination by all of the people twittering all around me. It’s like a massive neural network that I just can’t see. And I like to put it to the test. Here’s how I did it on Sunday.
I casually tweeted something about going to a baseball game. A short while later, I noticed that I’m being “followed” by someone. I turn around to look and see who it is and I see a man lurking in the shadows. He’s a Super Sports Fan and he’s following me. He’s not really interested in me because I check his tweets. He tweets links all day long to sporting goods stores.
Now I don’t know if there is really a guy out there that sits at his computer, finds people that might remotely be interested in sports, and then follows them in hopes that they will follow him back. With his captive audience, he can start spewing the links to sports deals everywhere online and we, followers that we are, will just magically click them and everybody’s happy. Right? Right.
So my experiment on Twitter (or Twexperiment, because I like to make up totally bogus words) started with a few tweets with keywords that I thought would surely grab the attention of search bots. Then the fun began. I had some of my legitimate followers tweeting me with the best keywords to use based on their experience.
Regardless of my non-scientific results, it was at least fun to see the perception of the topics and resulting followers that make our skin crawl.
First, a recap of my #twexperiment tweets:
And so it began. I kicked it off with the easy ones:
Then the suggestions started pouring in and I had to do a few more tweets.
I was pretty sure I had covered all the key bases. And now, I’m ready to deliver to you the real time results of this #twexperiment. I had 54 new followers between the start of the project and the date of this posting. Having been a former scientist, I must disclose that I gain new followers every day regardless of this experiment. I can’t discount that. And I did participate in Mack Collier’s #blogchat (which I highly recommend) which always garners me a few new followers as well.
So, I’ve pared down the results to provide you the most obvious followers as a result of my tweets. I won’t give their Twitter handles because they aren’t important, just their bio:
Follower #1: Internet Marketer, Alex Jeffreys Student,Computer Programmer
Follower #2: watch series online here http://www.mytvxy.com
Follower #3: VALoans.com helps veterans and their families take advantage of one of their most important military benefits–the VA Home Loan.
Follower #4: I’m interested in learning about other home based business opportunity’s, and sharing my experiences.
Follower #5: I am a consumer Justice attorney helping consumers with traumatic injuries and defective products and Social Security Disability claims.
Follower #6: Looking and writing about Trendy stuff for over five years. Top writer for Trendhunter.com and working my way to the top for Examiner.com
Follower #7: The Professional Paraphraser A producer and presenter of seminars, workshops and webinars. An Expert and making you an Expert
Follower #8: Sou filósofo naturalista e acredito em Deus !
Follower #9: ดูทีวี ดูทีวีออนไลน์ ช่อง3 ช่อง7 ช่อง9 Itv Thai PBS NBT
Follower #10: Office Exchange proudly serves the Eugene Springfield market with new and used office furniture. (I think this one was from a tweet I wrote about Oregon)
Follower #11: OFFICIAL twitter for Rince chacko
Follower #12: We help Small Businesses. Accept credit cards within 48 hours. Install our ATMs. When the Best Banks compete, this is where they meet.
Follower #13: njoying role of Financial Analyst in LA.Open Networker, Part-Time Student Full-Time Professional. Notorious for Out-of-Box thinking.
Follower #14: A Syrian Writer, I write reviews of books,especially Russians, I’m also a jewelry specialist, and a lute player.
Follower #15: (no bio) (this one blows me away as this user had ZERO tweets and over 6000 followers)
Follower: #16: Watch 4 gr8t deals from advertisers here for clothes, cars, babysitters, air travel, legal, tax, software, computers, didI say everything?
Follower #17: Growing business by helping them find new clients and new people. It’s about referring business to one another.
Follower #18: Social Media Coach 4 Ducks & People
Follower #19: expert advice for UK contractors featuring IR35, umbrella companies, starting a company and much more
Follower #20: Gonna Take A miracle!
Follower #21: I really dont know what to put in these silly things. How can i say what im all about in this little space lol
Follower #22: Sharing the #1 Positive Decision Making, Problem Solving and Productivity Tool. The 80/20 Rule aka Pareto’s Law, and its 1001+ Applications!
In conclusion (clearing throat and sounding all scientific), I put the followers above on this list because: I had no interaction with them on #blogchat, they don’t seem to have much in common with me, they use a rather, um, provocative photo, they don’t interact with their followers, they tweets the same links repeatedly, and/or they only retweet. I actually had an additional 5 followers that would have fit into this category but they stopped following me before I wrote this post. Impatient, I guess.
And now for your part. What do you do with these unwanted followers? Do you keep them or block them? Do you just ignore them? And what do you think were the keywords that got me most of these followers?
I have my thoughts but I want to hear yours.
