Twitter Follow Strategy

Yes, you are right, it is temporary and God has provided beyond belief.
Thanks for the encouragement.

Lack of money... I feel your pain. :-) Thankfully that's a temporary problem. You're smart. God's your advocate. You best days are ahead, brother.

dang

A good friend of mine has adopted these two rules of thumb for keeping Social Media involvement healthy and well balanced. (1) Take a regular tech "Sabbath." Once a week, unplug. It helps keep your online life in perspective, and it keeps you in the "master" position over the online community and the response of the community (which can become an addictive ego-builder that puts us out of sync with our God-given worth.) And (2), break bread together. Significant relationship building happens over meals. It's biblical. And if you intentionally make regular time in your schedule to be eating with other brothers and sisters (and lost souls and family and needy people and mentors and...), then you have some measurable degree of BALANCE on your media/live relationship spectrum.

Interesting guys. Thanks for the conversation.

-joshua

Good stuff there.
I have been working on taking a sabbath once a week, usually on Saturday or Sunday.
I have not completely unplugged, but I do hardly anything except for check email once and look at twitter on my phone a couple of times. Usually though, my computer is turned off.

And the breaking of bread thing is great.
I try to do this as much as I can.
The problem for me is that I have no money (I do not have a paying job) and so it is hard for me to get out and go to lunch but I can still have others over to the house.
Good perspective and advice though. Thanks.

To both Joshua and Kyle regarding your interaction above... thanks for your honesty. It's one of those times when I can see this from both sides of the coin. Joshua, your caution is good for all of us involved in Social Media. If we spend an "unhealthy" amount of time building up social networks, we can shortchange real life relationships. However, I understand Kyle's response. The two are NOT mutually exclusive. Self discipline and BALANCE are required, and the Holy Spirit gives us what we need in the self-discipline department... And the Church gives us feedback by way of wise counsel. (continued...)

I had to let my response sit for a bit there. Partially just because I think what you are calling me out on is an assumption that is just not true. In regards to getting out in meeting people I have indeed done that and have continued to pursue relationships in this area.
I understand what you are saying, but I think you misunderstood why I was bring this up. I am strictly talking just about online community and communication. And really in all honesty some of these online friends have turned into face to face conversations, I actually met with a guy last week and we met through twitter.

I feel it very necessary to connect with people over twitter because that is a way for me to spread my network not just in STL but over the US. No I am not going to meet everyone. But I do hope to get to meet and talk with some of my new followers down the road when i have a chance to do a lot more traveling.

How do you think your life would be different if you decided to meet 100 new people in person over a month's time instead of trying to add 100 "followers" on a social media site? Get out from behind your computer and meet people face-to-face.

How fruitful will the relationships be with 100 new "friends" via Twitter every month?
Yes, you may 'talk' to 100 new people each month, but how much more fruitful could a face-to-face relationship be with just one person vs. the 100's that you'll never see light touch their skin? I mean, sure, you may have some networking or some interaction on your blog with a few people, but at the end of the day, what have you truly accomplished? So you can 'tweet' with people who you aren't able to talk to face-to-face because they live 100's of miles away...big deal!

I would take one single personal relationship that is face-to-face over 1 million twitter followers any day.

Over the next year, you are setting a goal of gaining 1200 new "friends" who you may never have a face-to-face conversation with. Yes, twitter can be a great social media tool to use and learn from, but I honestly want to call you out...I love ya man, but your social media habits have seemed a bit ridiculous.

Been very successful. Over the last month I have grown to about 50 more views a day and I think a lot of that comes from twitter friends.
Needless to say, if people do not know about you then they are not going to know about your blog.

I think business should follow the idea that they are trying to help others out with their product. Not just following people to have followers.

Now that is what they should do, but most of them just follow you because you mentioned something close to what they sell. I get very annoyed by this and do not pay attention to them. But if I tweet something out that I am looking for an answer about or something relating to their product then i would love for them to @ reply me and let me choose to follow them.

I go at it the same way. I want to find people that are having the same discussion that I am and then see what can come from that. Not just adding a bunch of people to get more followers and send them spam by telling them to go to my blog.

I like growing your follower base organically. Do you think that businesses on twitter should follow this method or is it okay for them to grab a ton of followers?

Completely agree.

How successful has this strategy (or goal, as differentiated below) been at growing the community of your site?

How has this strategy worked? Were all 100 followers worth it or have some proved to be less than stellar when it comes to talking with 'em?

I'm curious just because I've considered doing something similar but I don't wanna add more noise than signal to my feed.

So far it is working great. Thanks for stopping in.
Looking forward to more conversation.

I love this strategy and the potential for growth in the conversation. Freakin awesome!

Yeah, Funny thing is a bunch of my friends get annoyed if i tweet at other people too much. But yeah, I love having conversation, and I love my phone updates, makes me feel special when my phone goes off. :P

Nothing wrong with that at all.
Part of the reason why I am working on a strategy and goal is to increase the conversation.
Especially for my mentor me project I am working on.
Twitter provides me that opportunity.

But I would say 80% of twitter users have the same strategy or goal that you do, stay up with friends and follow a few people that you do not know.

Good point. In deed it is a goal and not a strategy.
one way that I add "meaningful" followers is through twitter search. This helps me see what I am talking about as well as what others are talking about and then start to follow each other on twitter.
I also like the list feature that is out now. That helps as well.

But I think where it is at is blogging and comments. That is usually how I have interaction with people and in turn start to either follow or they follow me.

What about yourself, what is your strategy or goal?

Glad you do this. I have not made it to that point of having two accounts...actually glad it is that way.

I can get pretty OCD about reading all tweets from all people that I follow (which I think is about 348) which in turn can be overwhelming and a big waste of time. So a big tool for me is being able to separate people into groups.
If I have had any interaction with someone on twitter, blog world, or phone conversation I usually put them in a friend category and am able to interact with them that way.
It has helped a ton.

It actually has worked really well for me to be honest.
I have probably connected with about 25-30 of those people and I would consider that I have made some kind of relationship over twitter with them.

I think one thing about this strategy is that I am working to push them to my blog or to have conversation with them on their own blog. I think twitter does a good job of buffering that and then in turn can lead to more conversation on the blogosphere.

I think our friendship has come from twitter and blogging. Good example of that.

I don't really have one, Mostly just follow people I know. and i follow a few celebrities, and a few pastors., and bloggers. But no real strategy.

Kyle-

I have also been trying to find a workable strategy to add followers on Twitter, and was excited to see the title of your post. I would propose, however, that your "strategy" to add 100 meaningful followers a month is actually a goal and not a strategy. Your strategy would be your plan to accomplish your goal.

With that said, I'd love to create a dialogue with you to share ideas on how to accomplish your goal.

Traylor

i used to only follow my neighbors and close friends - about 50 people. now, i actually have a separate account to do that from that i only use on my phone when i travel (because loading 1900 people takes forever!) so, i follow people who @me or engage with me in some way. i figure if they are listening, i should be too!