Too Much Twitter?

Follow the Pareto Principle (80/20) rule.  20% of the people produce 80% of your business. 

You are right you can't keep up.  It almost seems like a popularity contest.

Hi Louis~ I am on twitter but admittedly do not really have time for it.  Well, I guess I don't make time for it because I rarely use it.  But, eventually I may. 

Louis~

I'm nowhere near those numbers of following/followers, I'm still trying to figure out who is responding to what. It seems like a bunch of cross talk...

I don't just follow anyone who follows me. There is a lot of crap out there in Twitterville. Spammers, people who do nothing but beg you to use their services, etc. I see no point following them.

Can someone keep up with 9500 followers? Of course not. It's hard (if not impossible) to keep up with 100 followers if they are active on Twitter.

But I don't think that's the point. When I log on to Twitter, I don't go back and try to read what I've missed. Twitter is transient. When I log on, I pay attention to what's happening at that moment. Trying to scroll back and catch up is far too time consuming.

Using an Twitter application like TweetDeck allows you to group those you follow. I have a close friends group, a real estate agetn group, a Phoenix only group, etc. Some of those groups get more attention than others. It makes is FAR easier to manager your Twitter Stream,

Using Twitter to meet LOCAL, non-real estate people is a wonderful thing. The key word is MEET these folks - meet as in real life. I've grown my "sphere of influence" tremendously by doing this, as well as made some great new friends.

Louis -

TweetDeck won't seperate the tweets I *send*, it groups Tweets I *receive*.

So yeah, all my followers get all my Tweets. I don't push real estate very much. I do tweet links to RE related material (including my own) but the majority of my tweets are just interacting back and forth with followers.

The way I look at it, if someone doesn't like something I tweet, the solution is a click away -- they can unfollow me. I don't take that personally.

TweetDeck is great though for managing your incoming stream and makes it much easier to give certain groups additional attention. It can be downloaded (for free) at http://www.tweetdeck.com/beta/

What's interesting about twitter is that (like blogging) you can tell a lot about a person by how they do it.  Not just "what they tweet" but also how they manage their following and follower relationships.  There's three distinct groups:

1. I follow everyone and nobody is following me (spammers and losers)
2. I follow back most or all who follow me (I'm in this group)
3. I'm more of a rockstar. Everyone follows me and I follow very few (Mary:)

I'm like Pat Kitano in the sense that I tend to follow anyone who follows me -- at least for a moment :)  But, just because I follow you doesn't mean that I've made a commitment to actually keep up with what your tweeting.

I'll follow you back for a bit to see if you are interesting or annoying or what (kinda like what Mary said).  BUT, If you're annoying, then you get un-followed really fast!  Annoying can mean a lot of things, but usually it's too many tweets about nothing or too much spam.  It seems that the best people on twitter share a lot of useful links  (hhhmmmm.  helping others.  what a concept!)

There is also a major local component here (back to Jay's comments). 

Twitter is still a very new thing.  In Gwinnett County Georgia, I'm a twitter rock star!  If you are new to twitter in my local market, you're probably gonna follow me for sure because you can see that I have 1300 followers already.  Hey, he must be somebody!  (NOT).

As far as managing to "keep up", that's a waste of time (again, Jay's comment).  You just jump into the conversation happening at that moment and engage.  Engagement is everything.  Following is nothing.  Following is the equivalent of saying "it was nice to meet you".  Engagement is more like "lets have coffee and see if we connect".

I think the bottom line is this: 

Like any other business tool, you have to know what you are targeting and have a plan to hit that audience                                                                                           (like Mary & Jay and so many others)

Regards,

@mattfagioli

Louis,

I only follow people whom I believe I can have conversation with that's worth the time.  I don't care about the numbers so much as I care about the quality of the conversations.

It's about quality conversations, great connections, and the ability and willingness for people to travel from Twitter to your HUB.

Those that have a successful background in sales know that it's about the quality of the connection.  Sometimes that involves going through the big numbers to get there.  Sometimes it does not.

Predictions for 2009 is a shift on the emphasis of number to the emphasis of the quality of solid connections.

Again, salespeople know this is the secret to success.

Sherry, great explanation on how you've customized the use of Twitter for the goals of BHG.

I tend to ruminate for a few days before commenting. That's what makes me a poor micro-blogger (or Active Rain commenter), I don't react quickly. Anyway, I've posted a response to this discussion on Active Rain and Media Transparent.