Three Twitter Delusions
Whatever may be your motivation to post a short message on Twitter, do not delude yourself about three issues. These three delusions about Twitter reveal themselves repeatedly in my reading people’s Tweets, and in my email.
Two of these misconceptions show up in my Tweet stream, the list of messages from people I choose to follow. The last one appears in email from Twitter about people who have seemingly chosen to follow my messages.
What are these delusions? you ask, and demand, would I please get to the point?
The first delusion is that you are Tweeting to an audience, your own personal audience of followers. This is not true, due to technological and personal reasons.
What is the technology behind someone reading your Tweet? Won’t all your followers see it?
You don’t know how many will see it. The person who sees your Tweet must be in front of their computer, must be online, must have a browser window or software app open to Twitter. and must refresh the window or app right after you Tweet. Otherwise, for technical reasons, they may miss it.
It is not like sending an email. It’s more like a message in a bottle. To extend the Twitter metaphor, you are a bird in the forest. You make a meaningful chirp. Only those birds flying by will hear your song. They may respond to it or not.
The second delusion is that you can make money with Twitter. Here’s the dream: you post a Tweet that has a link to a page that sells something and pays you a commission. Your followers see your Tweet, click the lick and buy the product. Voila, ca-ching!
This dream is hyped by people who have just the software and/or training you need to make it a reality.
Here’s what really happens, in my opinion. You post a Tweet with a link to a page that offers something to purchase that pays you a commission. It is not hard to set this up.
A few of your followers see this Tweet. A small percentage click the link. None of them buy anything. Instead, they just lower their estimation of your value. And, by the way, they know how to unfollow a jerk.
Perry Belcher has a Twitter marketing method that is more elaborate than this. It’s way more complicated, and probably more realistic. If you can afford it, let me know how it works out for you.
The third delusion parallels the second. This is the belief that it is worthwhile and a good thing to use an automated program to get followers.
I confess, I’ve only read about these and seen some evidence of how they work. Since this has no appeal to me, I haven’t looked into it.
This is what I’ve gleaned from reading a little about it. After you buy the software app, you set it up to look for certain keywords that are important to you. The app will look on Twitter for posts with those key words. When it finds such a post it automatically follows that person.
Since many Twitterers have an automatic follow back set up, many of these will follow you after you follow them automatically. You might get 1000 followers after following 1500 in just a week or so.
Now you can really make some money, right? BRRRRMMMP!
Wrong for delusion number two, and….wrong because these follows are meaningless.
It looks to me like there is a large cohort of people who are automatically following each other. Their interconnection is artificial, not organic. They are engaged only in creating noise for each other.
There is a right way to do all this. Find out by doing a little study. Twitter Power and The Twitter Revolution are good books to get high quality information. They will steer you right.
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