One of the most controversial aspects of Twitter surrounds the issue of users who develop a massive Twitter network where they follow tens of thousands of people.
We’ve received several comments and questions asking how it’s possible to interact and keep up to date with all the tweets if you follow several thousand people.
So we’ve given it some careful thought and arrived at the conclusion that it’s impossible to maintain personal contact on a regular basis with several thousand people. In fact, it’s barely possible to maintain personal contact once you follow more than a couple of hundred people.
However, this doesn’t mean that your Twitter community becomes worthless once it grows beyond a few hundred followers. So here’s how to add value to your Twitter community once you’ve followed more than a few hundred people. If you focus on these vital issues, it’s possible to develop a powerful network containing tens of thousands of Twitter users.
1) Don’t Expect To Be Able To Keep Up With The Flow
Once you follow several hundred people, the messages that flow through your Twitter account will really start to speed up. Every time you refresh the page, dozens of new messages will appear.
By the time you follow several thousand people, it will become impossible to read every message. So it’s essential to recognize that you won’t be able to keep up with every tweet. That’s just part of the price you have to pay when your Twitter community grows beyond a certain size. We’ll get to the benefits in a moment…
2) Your Twitter Community Is Like Society
Your Twitter community is like the development of primitive society. It passes through a series of distinct phases. These phases are neither better nor worse than one or another, they’re just different.
As your community grows from several dozen, to several hundred, to several thousand, the nature of your relationship to it will pass from a series of direct, individual relationships to a relationship with the community as a whole.
Over time, based on the responses you receive to the content that you provide, you’ll get to know the character of your community. You’ll get to know the type of information that they want and the things that they’ll be able to help you with.
The best solution is to focus on providing your community with useful, relevant content and interacting as and when you have time. If you provide good info, your community will grow.
A small community will be more relevant and more personal. As it grows from a few people to a village, then a town, then a city, it will become less personal, but of the thousands of people, you will be able to develop closer relationships with the people who are most closely related to your interests and your personality.
But having said that, don’t become obsessed by the number of followers that you attract. Unless you’re a celebrity or a public figure you won’t be able to compete with the number of followers that they attract. A vast number of people will follow celebrities just because they’re celebrities and not because they have any relevance to their interests.
Ultimately, your Twitter community may be more valuable to you, than their Twitter communities are to them.
Why?
Because their Twitter communities are only of any worth due to who they are, rather than the sense of community that they’ve taken time to develop. Let’s face it, how many celebrities on Twitter will take the time to build rapport with any of their followers?
Remember, more followers doesn’t mean better, just different.
A smaller community is more personal. A larger community is less personal, but is more likely to contain people who are more highly relevant to your interests.
3) Be Careful Who You Follow
Focus on following people who are somehow relevant to your circumstances. Follow people with similar interests, outlooks, ideas and/or those who are based in a certain location.
This will help to keep your Twitter network more closely focused and relevant to the interests of everyone who is part of the community. Then it’s up to you to decide whether to follow people who follow you.
4) Don’t Tolerate Spam
Whenever you see a message in your stream that’s obvious spam content, unfollow that person. Following several thousand people will make your Twitter stream move quickly, but it’s even worse if there’s an element of your community who constantly send out low quality, self-promotional material.
5) Reward Good Content
When you have a community of several thousand people, it becomes impossible to maintain a personal relationship with every member of your community. However, there are three important things that you can do to maintain the sense of community within your Twitter network.
a) Add Random Value
When time permits, reply to random messages that flow through your Twitter account. Comment on things that interest you, reply to questions that you’re qualified to answer. Add value to your community by helping them at random.
b) Develop A Sub Network
Like a real world community, you will form closer relationships with certain people. Whenever you develop a closer relationship with anyone in your community, add one of their tweets to your list of favorites and follow all their tweets. As you interact with them regularly, you’ll develop a small sub-network of friends within your broader Twitter community.
Ultimately, finding these people from within your larger community will provide you with much more value than your main community. However, developing a larger network from which to discover these people is a necessary pre-requisite of building this sub-community of close friends.
c) Amplify Good Content
Whenever you find a tweet that contains good value that you know will be of interest to your community, give it the oxygen of publicity by retweeting it. This will provide your own followers with good content and reward the people that you follow for posting good content.
This transfer of quality information from one micro community to another, based on merit and your knowledge of the character of your community, will help to improve the quality of the Twitter network.
6) Make Sure People See The Valuable Content That You Share
When a cocktail party gets busy, you have to raise your voice slightly to make yourself heard. It’s exactly the same with Twitter. As your followers begin to follow more people, their Twitter stream will begin to more faster. They won’t see/read all of the messages that pass through their account.
So when you post a valuable message, you may have to repeat a variation of your content a couple of times so that more people get a chance to read it.
Post your message on different days and at different times of the day. Just don’t go mad, otherwise your followers will.
7) Be Yourself
And finally, always remember that you can’t please everyone and that it’s bad to try.
In fact, the larger your community, the more likely it is to contain a few people who complain about your use of Twitter (too many tweets, too many links, too many followers, tweeting about the wrong topics etc).
However, if you modify your behaviour to please a small minority of your community, you won’t be acting naturally and your new style of behaviour may annoy as many if not more of your community.
So be who you are, do what you do, act naturally and if other people don’t like it, they’re free to stop following you.
That’s part of the beauty of Twitter.
But what do you think? How many people do you follow? Do you think there’s an upper limit to the size of a useful Twitter community, or do you agree that it’s possible to benefit from a community of any size?
Add your comments below to share your opinions with the rest of the TPS community.
46 comments ↓
Hi Guys,
Thanks for the great article. Everything you noted are things I am already doing…and I currently have about 2400 followers. It’s nice to know I am using Twitter exactly as you suggest…so thanks for the validation!
Pete
http://TheHealthyMinute.com
Pete´s last blog ..Chew Well to Feel Well
Though I’m still fairly new to Twitter I can see the advantages of a huge list of followers. Firstly what I have to offer to followers varies from day to day and week to week as I have a wide range of interests. Secondly, peoples interests change over time. What does not appeal to them today may suddenly fall within their field of focus a month or a year from now. Or it may be as simple as suddenly they acquire enough free time to read what I have to say. Loss of employment might be one cause and there are me Tweets offering one possible solution. Rare personal friendships which may develop from time to time are bonuses in my view.
Good advice.
Well said guys! This is a great article! I appreciate your hard work in helping us use Twitter to build community and network.
Great advice on managing a large following. I currently have 2500 + followers and will definitely benefit from your advice. I really do most of these things already, but can definitely perfect my technique. I’ve already found that there is a certain “circle of followers” who are more active and have more to offer. Thanks for sharing this info.
I’m following about 850 right now. I’m using TweetDeck to follow some groups of people more closely, but there is a risk of missing some valuable tweets as your network grows.
I wrote about that a while back in http://blogs.wcnickerson.ca/world-wide-web/social-media/twitter/2009/05/why-following-thousands-with-tweetdeck-wont-work/
If you are more interested in closely following groups of interesting people then there is an upper limit, but if you just want to catch interesting stuff whenever you can then there probably isn’t a limit at all.
Excellent overview and some good tips. I don’t follow a lot of people yet, but the list is growing and I can see a natural division of Tweeters emerging such as: well-known experts, friends, media, local practitioners (in my field), and work colleagues. I think I’ll eventually have to divy them up in order to continue getting the most out of their Tweets.
AL
A lot of useful informations can be find here, in your Twitter Power System Blog. Congratulations for your great effort to offer for Free so valuable content!
At this time I have a little more than 2200 followers, I`m grateful to them. I still don`t use nor one paid program to increase their number, only manual or free methods I used until now.
In my personl opinion I thought as 10000 followers from where with 10-30 friends it would have close relationships represents the optimum number, but of course here any of us know well how it`s better for him.
I wish to contribute with a Big Thank You and with a desire of a Great Success for All of You.
Sincerely,
Doru
Hi,
Another great article. You guys keep putting out great quality content for people who are learning how to market themselves the correct way on Twitter. I recommend your site to all my members. Keep up the good work.
Thank you,
Ryan Bessling
http://twitterconferencing.com
Finally someone admits the fact that this is impossible, and then tells how to make something out of it.
I am grateful for your sound advice.
Yep, lots of people think getting a gazilion followers is “all-that” when in fact (as you pointed out) quality bests quantity in the Twitter game too!
Great insights !!
Roseli A. Bakar´s last blog ..Blog Contest – Win Membership To Premium Wordpress Theme Club
Great advice (as always).
I currently have just over 10,000 followers and agree wtih everything you’ve written here. I’ve certainly found that “I can’t please all the people all the time” but by being myself, I’m enjoying the cyber party at Twitter.
Off to link this article to our blog.
Have an Awesome Day - Zoe
Hi fellow tweeters - yes good advice I like the way you placed in order these suggestions - once you build a decent following it seems life will never be the same in Twitter Land so much buzz going on there’s hardly room to tweet - POSITIVE QUOTE OF THE DAY - “The smallest good deed is better than the grandest good intention”
My best 2U
Wilson Cowden
This is a great article! I appreciate how you teach us to use Twitter to build community and network serious.
Great post! I found out about this on twitter.
I’ll be retweeting this one!
@christinahills
Great information, and I’ll retweet for sure.
If anyone here wants more specific help on creating chocolate covered tweets, be sure to check out my upcoming twitter tweet telseminar on July 30. I will record it. See http://www.bookcoaching.com/twitter-learning.php
Another great and powerful articles,
Congrats on fresh and compact content,suitable on my mission on looking for the most effective tools/contents regarding Twitter - “very unique machine”.I will share and retweet this articles to track the effectiveness.
Thanks..
[...] How To Use Twitter When You Follow Several Thousand People Shared um 23:27 Uhr via Delicious One of the most controversial aspects of Twitter surrounds the issue of users who develop a massive Twitter network where they follow tens of thousands of people. [...]
[...] How to use Twitter when you follow several thousand people http://is.gd/1cu6A# [...]
[...] This post was Twitted by Success4Newbies [...]
Thank you, this is very useful. I was just thinking about the 3 different levels of network.
Twitter for width, variety, stimulation and marketing. Facebook for a smaller group of “friends”, in which I prefer some slender thread of personal connection, and then, for the more deep and meaningful connecting,
I started a community on Ning.com. That will be fairly much invitation only and will probably never be bigger than 200 women. You just get to do a totally different sort of networking with the small number.
Sandra´s last blog ..Welcome to my Wall. Thanks to everyone who is following me. Unity in Diversity! Looking forward to hearing from you..
Great post. I’m only following about 400 at the moment, but it seems that the same principles apply.
The only thing I’m not so good at is unfollowing people who post just pure marketing stuff. I only remove those who are really over the top. Perhaps I need to get a little more ruthless!!
Peter Day´s last blog ..What do we have to do to get the glory back?
Thank you for this page of info! It’s hard to respond to everyone’s direct messages….is there a way to create an automated, direct message?
@Goldendoodle — PLEASE don’t use automated DM’s. They are useless. If you don’t have time to answer them yourself (and if you don’t, why are you using Twitter?) then just ignore them.
Most of the DM’s that you are getting are automatic DM’s from people you follow — see how annoying it is!
@Peter. I’d say don’t worry about unfollowing anyone unless it gets to be bothersome for you. If you are using TweetDeck you can unfollow people right from their tweets and I’m sure that DestroyTwitter, Twirl and Seesmic all have similar functions. When you find yourself getting annoyed with a person you can unfollow them right on the spot.
LoneWolf´s last blog ..Where has LoneWolf Been?
Great article - very helpful and very practical..thank you
Thank you for great advice… The company I co-founded, Office Divvy, is a great example to validate every bit of the advice you are giving here.
Growing from 0 followers to few hundred took us about a month, and getting from few hundred followers to few thousand another two months.
Now at over 17,000 followers within 4 months of getting on twitter, we hear every bit of the words of wisdom in your article.
Using twitter for business has been exciting, intriguing, challenging, frustrating, and even questionable at times.
As a company, we are big believers in peer-to-peer information sharing. Twitter certainly provided a wonderful tool for us to share what we have learned, and are still learning with our members and the business and professional community at large.
Collaboration and the sharing of ideas happen in real-time among our client base on a daily basis. Twitter has provided us this platform to allow us to enlarge our community.
Now when we read an inspiring article or discover a great business product or service, instead of sharing it with a few dozen or even a few hundred professionals, we share it with thousands, and now over 17,000 people on Twitter, without even leaving the office.
We are still learning about best practices and best way to interact with other users on twitter as we mature and grow as twitter user.
Thanks once again…
Ky Ekinci
Co-Founder
Office Divvy
—————
on twitter: http://Twitter.com/OfficeDivvy
on the web: http://OfficeDivvy.com
Thank you for great advice… The company I co-founded, Office Divvy, is a great example to validate every bit of the advice you are giving here.
Growing from 0 followers to few hundred took us about a month, and getting from few hundred followers to few thousand another two months.
Now at over 17,000 followers within 4 months of getting on twitter, we hear every bit of the words of wisdom in your article.
Using twitter for business has been exciting, intriguing, challenging, frustrating, and even questionable at times.
As a company, we are big believers in peer-to-peer information sharing. Twitter certainly provided a wonderful tool for us to share what we have learned, and are still learning with our members and the business and professional community at large.
Collaboration and the sharing of ideas happen in real-time among our client base on a daily basis. Twitter has provided us this platform to allow us to enlarge our community.
Now when we read an inspiring article or discover a great business product or service, instead of sharing it with a few dozen or even a few hundred professionals, we share it with thousands, and now over 17,000 people on Twitter, without even leaving the office.
We are still learning about best practices and best way to interact with other users on twitter as we mature and grow as twitter user.
Thanks once again…
Ky Ekinci
Co-Founder
Office Divvy
—————
on twitter: http://Twitter.com/OfficeDivvy
on the web: http://OfficeDivvy.com
Only thing I don’t agree with is posting the same thing more than once. This is a noise vs signal thing to me - usually it makes me unfollow. I feel like my time isn’t valued, don’t have time for someone who’s going to be posting the same thing more than once.
Other than that, I agree with your comments
You said that twice!hahaha Just pointing that out.
You got this exactly right, on ALL points. I have about 19,800 followers and as you said, I have developed a good relationship with maybe 30 or 40 of these. I tend to post random funny things that enter my head, or funny stuff I find on the web and it seems to generate a lot of RTs, so some people seem to like my content. Not too many complain either as they have the option to unfollow me and have no need to moan about Tweets they don’t like. As the saying goes, you can’t please all of the people all of the time.
Carliona Trocina´s last blog ..Manchester United Call Off Far Eastern Tour Matches After Bomb Blast
[...] How To Use Twitter When You Follow Several Thousand People (tags: socialmedia twitter) [...]
I like your ideas. I do most of what you say. I’m here for ilustrating my skills as a acoach for biz writing books, articles, web sales letters and compelling tweets. @Coachjudy
[...] for the power-user, how about a guide to how to use twitter when you follow several-thousand people? Around 300 I felt hopelessly lost, and started searching for an external app to sort people into [...]
[...] When You Follow Several Thousand People [...]
As LoneWolf mentioned, TweetDeck makes following a large amount of people much easier, also with the sync capabilities you can get the same columns between any number of devices. I have to admit, I don’t follow (or am followed by) the number that some of you do, but the ability to see news and topics flow in and out of specific groups of people make following a seemingly unmanageable number of people worth it.
Dez´s last blog ..Drew’s Cancer: A study in blaming
Being someone that has a large follower count on Twitter I have had this debate about a large following a number of times. The fact is I am an engager that does interact with the people that show an interest and I’ll go out of my way to interact and engage. I think one of the best points is create a sub community from your large following and when someone shows and interests bring them into your sub community. Add value to the community as a whole by becoming a resource that others can look to for quality content and guidance.
Gerald Weber´s last blog ..How to Free Your StumbleUpon Inbox From “SPAM” Shared Messages
[...] How To Use Twitter When You Follow Several Thousand People [...]
I’m fairly new to twitter and only have a couple hundred followers, but it’s already getting hard to keep up with the messages. If I have a lot of time, I try and read a lot of tweets, but on days like today I just don’t have the time. Your post is therefore really helpful in that sense that it made me realize that I don’t have to keep up! Thanks! Time saver! Guilt saver!
Verena Fischer´s last blog ..There is no “I can’t”!
For keeping up you need to use http://www.search.twitter.com and enter your handle like mine –coachjudy. Then see who wants to communicate with you. I check this every 2 days to keep up and I have 2600 followers.
Cheers,
Judy
[...] via le billet How To Use Twitter When You Follow Several Thousand People de twitterpowersystem.com (que je traduis et adapte librement ici pour [...]
I’m really new to twitter but enjoy the quick interaction format and have met lots of great people. Thanks for the tips, I’ve filled my note pad…now I have work to do:)
Good ideas. I haven’t gotten thousands of followers yet but I will still use your tips. This just makes sense to me. Thanks a million.
Don’t forget to use Twitter lists. They’re a great way to keep track of folks without following them.
Bill Sodeman´s last blog ..Speed up your Windows 7 upgrade with PCMover
Thanks for the tips - just starting to be in great need of these - appreciate it!
Joan Kelly´s last blog ..Oh How We Lust for Getting It Now, in Health
Thanks for the information.
Could you please make a post explaining how to fix the miscounted tweets problem? I’m still having it.
Leave a Comment