Skip to main content

Why Having Too Many Followers Maybe Killing Your Social Media Experience.

I have way too many Twitter connections. Let’s not delude ourselves that they are Followers-that’s a misnomer if ever there was one. Yep that’s the price you pay for accepting every request. What you say! How can you have too many? Isn’t the goal to have an infinite number of Tweeters in your tribe? Those with the most followers win-surely.

Ok perhaps I’m being overly wry. But have you considered the downside to building a large Twitter base?

  • Too many tweets from anonymous twits create a din, not an orchestra.
  •  The tweets that you actually see are completely random and virtually impossible to engage.
  •  Too many ‘followers’ assume that they now have an intimate relationship with you that justifies them sending you automated direct messages-that under any other circumstances would be considered spam.

Why bother then? Well of course it’s not ALL bad! A few minutes browsing especially following the retweets (those are usually the interesting ones) can be very illuminating, diversionary and lead you in directions that you’d never expect. 

There’s also that nagging feeling that Twitter is a social medium that hasn’t fully evolved yet and perhaps its better to be in it and see how it all unfolds than be a bystander.

Enough about Twitter. This Blog was originally supposed to touch on that nebulous concept called engagement. This is somewhat different to connectivity. Hook me up to your Facebook page and I guess we’re connected perhaps never to directly communicate. Engagement is immeasurably more powerful than a degree or two of separation. 

We may share an acquaintance, but that doesn’t mean we are now related. We do however have a reference point that gives us an excuse to become acquainted.

It’s ironic how much time many social networkers spend chasing people to add to their collection and then proceed to sprint off into the distance with barely a wave.

Here’s a thought. Not very original but I would suggest profound in its effectiveness. Make a decision to actively engage 10 or 20 of your connections per day for the next 21 days and be prepared to see a quantum shift in your online experience.

How? Sorry If I’m over doing the rhetorical questions!

Respond to comments. No I don’t mean copy and paste the same response all over the place like a poodle introducing herself to the neighbourhood! Check out someone’s Facebook profile and see if you have anything in common that you can make a genuine comment about. If you have nothing in common why are they in your social network? Not many people do this and when it happens it creates a much bigger impression than you’d think.

Check out people’s blogs-and yes you’ve guessed it-leave a relevant comment. I don’t mean something like ‘hey dude great Blog check out my GRQ affiliate program it’s awesome!”

Once you’ve built some genuine connections you can then ask them to visit your Youtube channel or blog and many will reciprocate. Imagine if just 1% of your social media connections popped by your site and left a friendly and supportive comment. You’d feel like an absolute celebrity. How come? Well work out how many people that is. More than likely 1 in 1000 will take the trouble to so unprompted.
Authenticity takes time to become second nature. Human nature has a natural default towards competitiveness, which alas is not great glue for social adhesiveness. 

  • Instead of trying to impress, try being impressed.
  • Be interested instead of trying to be interesting
  • Give compliments rather than chase them.
  • Tell people how inspiring they are.
You get the message. I know, you already know all this-we all do-but sometimes we kinda get sucked in to the vortex of following the crowd-shouting ever louder to get our message out there-only to realise no one’s listening. 

Hope this doesn’t sound too evangelical!

If you can be bothered leave a comment and yep I do practice what I preach and I’ll gladly reciprocate-of course if you think it’s all rubbish then feel free to ignore.

Hope your universe is unfolding well for you!


Cheers Kiaran

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Maybe You Should Just Quit!

Not a slogan Nike would advocate! Without some context words such as persistence, patience, endeavor and dedication suggest a noble attitude to life matters. They symbolize ‘the stiff upper lip’ attitude to struggle. "Never ever give up"; to paraphrase Churchill goes to the heart of most self-help and personal development philosophy. The danger of blindly following this type of perseverance without considering its context is that more often than not, triumph does not overcome adversity, at the first attempt. There is a massive industry peddling personal development material. Books, Seminars, Webinars and all manner of strategies that range from useful and inspiring to borderline extortion. Harsh comment? I don’t think so. We live in a society that reveres its celebrities regardless of their substance. The personal development industry has its share of super rich ‘leaders’ who have attained a status within their tribe equivalent to religious pontiffs. Some of thes...

How's Your Obsesion Working For You?

What a boring bland world this would be in the absence of mass irrational obssessiveness. There would be NO wonders of the world. Forget about the Guinness Book of Records or in fact any significant historical achievement. Why would anyone in their right mind set sail in a barely sea worthy vessel in the direction of the horizon with no reasonable expectation of navigating anywhere but over the edge of the world? We could argue that the Pyramids and ancient Aztec monuments were a response not to obsession but rather to a spiritual impulse. The appeasing of the gods as it were. Let’s not however meander in to that quicksand of philosophy. It would be all too easy to polarize most readers of this brief scribble by even hinting that Religion is an obsession. It’s hard not to be fascinated by the apparent crazy impulsive behavior of many collectors. I’m not referring to those with an eye on turning over a dollar, but rather those whose lives seemed consumed in a never endin...

Why Isn't The Law of Attraction Working for You?

This is a confronting and provocative question. It presumes there’s a gap in your life and that you are in some way failing, falling short of your own expectations. If The Law of Attraction does indeed work, how then do we explain how bad things happen to good people? How can we explain how the worst of criminals can win the Lottery? Indeed we can question whether this much-quoted Law is in fact a myth. The point of this article is not to ponder the riddle of this apparent phenomenon or get bogged down in the mire of attempting to define the intangible. Rather I would like to posit the following commentary. Let’s twist the above question. Imagine that despite your initial reaction to the topic, that you are indeed living the dream, but have failed to realize this fact. Perhaps your appreciation lens is clouded.  Perhaps you are with your ideal life partner but are blinded to this fact by virtue of your incessant fantasizing of some parallel universe where ...