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Do You Follow the Most Popular Tweeple?
September 26th, 2008
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by Warren Whitlock · Filed Under: Blog Talk Radio · Coach Deb LIVE · Social Media · Twitcast · Twitter Tips & Tools · Twitter help · Warren Whitlock Live
I’ve been thinking about the Top 50 Tweeples to FOLLOW survey, and wondering what YOU think.
Do you follow people just because a lot of other people do?
I find that the number of followers a person has is not always the best guide. I’m leary of a survey that is just a popularity contest.
Don’t get me wrong.. I’m hoping you will vote for @coachDeb, @WarrenWhitlock and the cool Tweeple we have on the TwitCast… We’d like the publicity for the radio show, this site, and the book.
What say you?
Do you follow people that you know in real life? Those you meet elsewhere on the net? friends of friends who are saying cool stuff? Or just popular tweeple?
Leave a comment here. Then join me on the TwitCast tonight. We’ll be talking about “follow worthy” and answering your questions.
You can see what time the TwitCast airs by clicking here.
I think that VALUE is key- and the folks I would vote for is who brings value to the discussion in general. Obviously you and @CoachDeb are 2 of extreme value- popularity is great-but Value to the conversation is critical.
well, obviously I follow the most wonderful peeps and they are speaking right here on this page!
I follow different peeps for assorted needs, frankly. Some are the most knowledgeable I have come across, some loads of fun, some can teach ME things or learn some FROM me, mostly I find out things I would never hear about any other way and I am so glad I was smart enough to finally quit resisting this new way of interacting with fellow biz owners, WAHM’s, grand parents and the other categories or great friends I have made.
jantallent on twitter
I tend to follow folks that provide great information and insights. They also tend to be @the 4 front of Web2.0 activities. Both you and Coach Deb provide wonderful information and value, along with the a healthy dose of humor
For me, I love following people who bring VALUE to my twitter-stream…people who are full of information and tweets that are not my niche…because I’m always learning from other Tweeple.
I also tend to follow people that I’ve met through the various social media channels I’m active with. I’ve love the ease of connecting with people through Twitter. I’m a networker, social butterfly and love the tweet possibilities.
I welcome people to connect with me. I may not be considered top 50…but DEFINITELY TOP 100!
LOL
@TimothyCarter
I follow a ton of extremely cool people, and I really recommend following people in the same industry or yourself, or with the same interests because those are the people who will say the “smartest” most amazing things, to you. But what I am eternally grateful for is the ability to follow people – some of whom I have always admired, such as http://twitter.com/Guykawasaki and some who I have recently learned about and newly admire, like my favorite motivator http://twitter.com/garyvee. Getting a glimpse into their personalities and activities is what makes Twitter so priceless. If it ever costs to be a member, I’ll fork my money over gladly.
http://twitter.com/KrisColvin
I follow people who enhance my mood, give me great information, make me laugh, give me timely tips, or are funny. I don’t care if they are famous or unknown. Twitter functions as my background noise or quick wade-in to contact with the world when I have downtime, but don’t want to lose focus on the mundane task at hand. So for me, I have to have a lot of people so my stream is always on and interesting.
I follow people who have similar interests. I always look for people interested in the public domain, affiliate marketing, WordPress, Facebook, and similar areas of interest. I stop following them if they post all the time or post only political stuff!
Jeanne
It’s best that one does NOT follow the most popular people. They generally put out general, nice, fun things.
Better to be very selective and focused on who you follow. And then… actually Follow them, and learn from how they view the world.
While I’m following just over 100 ppl, only 25 are really active… and 8 of those are providing low-budge content, and, while 100’s of people follow those chatter-boxes, and growing… several of them will drop off my list soon.
Tweet good stuff, like @coachdeb – your followers are stuck to you like glue.
Cheers all,
@douglaslampi
I started following who I knew, then looked at who they followed to get more ideas in a broader range. It’s a cool web that way.
My favorite people to follow post regularly, helpfully, not overly self-serving but giving us links to their stuff as well as other cool stuff. Generosity, I guess, would be key, and like everyone else has said, VALUE.
Tweets from interesting people doing interesting things are the beginning of some very useful bunny trails, and also you can approach people through DM who otherwise have gate keepers and would be hard to get their attention.
@beckimaxson
Great comments by all above.
I like to follow people in my own areas of interest to learn and to teach others.
To keep tabs in a timely manner on current and world events.
I also like to follow people that are leaders in their field where I have an interest yet little knowledge of the subject.
And then there are the funny people with great posts to break up the day and who put a smile on my face.
I like to favorite good Tweets and ones that I’d like to follow up on later.
Twitter, tweeting and Tweeple are a great source of knowledge, humor and an efficient way to stay connected in this uber busy world we live in.
@MitchBaldwin
P.S. I nominated both @CoachDeb and @WarrenWhitlock because they provide value, timely, topical and interesting content.And heck, they are both really nice people…and did I say givers!!
Hi there…I had the same question and resulting conversation on Twitter…I documented people’s responses…all posted here, if you would like to see what they said… http://www.edgyentrepreneur.com/2008/09/twitter-to-foll.html
Thanks for the e-book!
@JeanAnnVK
I’m not influenced by whether or not someone is popular or has a lot of followers. Some of the people I follow are people I know in real life, but live far away, so it’s a good way to stay caught up. The other people I follow are people I can learn from and gain knowledge to grow my business. That’s about it!
Lot’s of times the people that win these contests win them because they have lots of followers, not necessarily because they stand out as people I’d want to follow. When I started following people, I followed a few of the “popular” people. What I found, however, is the little people, that is those with fewer than 200 followers, are often the most interesting people with the most engaging things to say. Perhaps because they actually have the time to read every tweet that comes in?
Often the “big guys” will tweet back only when it is in their interest to. And certainly they never become real people. There are a few exceptions to this rule. I’ve had interesting tweets with @coachdeb. And there’s @problogger. He might have 10 zillion followers tweeting at him all day long, but he will tweet back at a surprisingly high rate and on a personal level. (How he does it all — real people tweets, travel the world, write an insanely good blog AND be a new dad is amazing!)
Bottom line: I follow people because they have something interesting to say AND they engage with me.
Hi CoachDeb,
(probably the BEST reason for following someone so popular)
One source wrote, “follow and ye shall be followed”, and to some extent it’s true. I say “follow indiscriminately and you’ll have an inbox full of “stuff” you don’t want”.
I’d agree with many here that I look for content, quality, and similar interests, but not in that order and not exclusively. I also like variety. Not everyone I follow has lots of followers mostly because I liked what I saw or read. On the other hand those with many followers are also worth listening to because of the “draw factor”, and because of their experience in marketing.
Also one other thing.
If they tweet about a new blog post, and IF you’re quick enough with a worthy comment, you also stand a good chance of having curious viewers click your link
To success!
Click my link for the BlogNet Awards and Win!
I’m a mother of twins and the author of 5 parenting books, so I follow people with whom I have something in common, as well as those who might be interested in what I write about: parents of twins and multiples, and just parents in general. Also, being a writer, I follow other authors to try to get some tips from them on writing and marketing books.
I started to use Twitter after seeing many of the people at Ken McArthur’s Impact workshop in Langhorne, PA actively reading and posting to it. As a result, I started to follow a few of the Impact Team members and have slowly been adding to that list. It’s a great source for tips and tools that I might otherwise have missed, and an excellent daily update on the Impact Team activities.
I started following more people, but how many “good mornings” and “getting more coffee” or “stuck in the terminal” messages can you read? The more people I followed the more online diarrhea I had to wade through. As I cut out the useless content I’m getting down to… following no one.
The number of followers makes no difference to me. But the ratio does. If I see people who follow like 2.000 people but only have 50 followers, they’re usually spammers or at best, very self-promoting and of little value. Those who have equal or positive follow ratio usually are much more fun to follow. When I decide if I should follow, I look at name, picture, bio, blog and follower ratio as well as last ten tweets.
When I was following about a 100 I thought it would be impossible to follow thousands. I’m at over a 1.000 now and still manage fine. Sure, I might miss a few good ones, as I don’t read every single tweet (it’s not far from it though), but I catch more good ones than if I was only following a few.
I try to keep me twetwork as broad as a I can, following people from different countries, cultures and branches, to broaden my horizon.
Hjortur
http://twitter.com/hjortur
A few of my tweeple are recommended. Most lately are purely my interests.
C.
I of course follow you guys for the wonderful content you provide. I like to pass many of your messages on to my followers
I follow local tweeple, tweeple in my industry and others that I feel I can benefit from. It is amazing what you can learn and who you learn it from.
I don’t follow all followers, I check to see how many followers they have and how many they are following but more importantly I look at the frequency they tweet and the type of content they tweet. You can spot those spammers easily!
I don’t follow for the sake of following.
I connect with people craving ‘attention’, to grant them support irrespective whether they’re God, Saint, or Sinner.
Personally I follow online contacts and friends I’ve known and sometimes met, offline. I look for quality tweets – the likes where emotions are blended with a savoir-faire and knowledge cummulated experiences.
People I follow:
1. Are personal friends, colleagues or relevant superstars in my field.
2. Include a biosketch or link to a website that reflects my interests.
3. Have useful, substantive tweets beyond “I need coffee” (though some of this is okay). Their tweets help me in my work or clearly demonstrate expertise.
It REALLY helps if people include a website, their real name, and a profile image. If people aren’t willing to configure their profile, they give the impression that they do not take twitter seriously.
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Hopefully the most popular people are the ones delivering the most value and humor, but those things vary depending on the audience. Some people like Dave Taylor, Coach Deb and Guy Kawasaki are obvious choices because they provide information that drives interesting and helpful Twitter conversations. There are a lot of quality people on Twitter so I vote for expanding it to the Twitter 500! The more fun, cool and interesting people we connect with the better.
If people only followed the top 50-100 twitterazzi, chances are most of them would be Americans and much of it would be in English, which basically turns all of Twitter into much of what is already ‘popular’ or ‘cool’ on the Net. I bet you’ve probably not considered this at all. I say this as a French Canadian living in the Netherlands
I have two Twitter accounts, @jonimuelelr and @pixelitadesigns. One is personal and the other is business. Some peeps I’m following are on both lists. I tend to follow others in my same industry on my biz account, and people I know IRL on my personal account. I do follow a few of the popular Tweeple (love that term) on both blogs (e.g., Dooce, Dan Cedarholm, Eric Meyers, etc.). But I don’t follow people just b/c they follow me. I have a lot of SEO and Marketing Tweeple following me and this is disconcerting. Are they just stuffing their follow blocks? I don’t know them so … what’s up with that? Just like on Facebook and Last.fm I’m very picky and choosy about who’s on my list.
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When you find someone of interest, that you would like to share, you can hashtag your tweet with #TopTweeple. This will flag you tweet announcing to the twitterverse that is someone of interest.
To share, send a Twitter Status Update including the @Username of the nominee and our HashTag #TopTweeple. It is also help full to squeeze in some info about this user in your 140chars to let people know why they are being a TopTweeple nominee.
You can also check out http://TopTweeple.com so see incoming Tweeple, plus those ranked.
Well..
i dint follow anybody ,,but i do follow interesting people Who sign in to there twitter .. i mean Whats the point of Follow people that they left there twitter 3 – 5 months?!
If you want to follow me ,,Here is my twitter account :@ronesha_rawan
byez xoxo