This is a guest post by my friend Ted Prodromou. Ted is an expert in search marketing for business, and one of the smartest guys I know.
Are you mad at me for unfollowing you on Twitter the other day? Did you even notice? I bet you didn’t!
I decided to unfollow everyone and start fresh with Twitter. I joined Twitter near the beginning and experimented with it in the beginning. I’m still experimenting with Twitter every day but in the early days my testing was less focused. I tested some of the programs that autofollowed everyone who followed me whether I knew them or not. This was a quick way for me to connect with people who were interested in Following me. The consequence is you have the same number of Followers as the people you are Following.
I didn’t use the gimmicky tools for long because I didn’t use Twitter very much back then and lost interest. My account sat idle for a long time before I jumped back on the Twitter bandwagon. Today, most people still think Twitter is a waste of time because they haven’t taken time to master its power. Twitter is an incredible traffic generator and marketing channel if used correctly. It can be a big time waster if you’re just Tweeting pictures of your food or letting people know how hungover you are. If you create a strategy for Twitter, you’ll be amazed how powerful it is.
So how does it feel to not be Following anyone? It feels great, like cleaning out your closets! I was Following a lot of people I didn’t know so my Twitter Stream was full of noise that I didn’t care about. Now my Twitter Stream is so clean!! I still Follow people on Twitter using Lists which lets me see their Tweets but it’s in an organized stream on my HootSuite dashboard. I also started Following a few people that I want to Direct Message but I’m going to be very careful who I Follow from now on.
My next social media experiment is going to be with LinkedIn. I’m going to spend at least one hour every day on LinkedIn posting new content, connecting with more people, participating in Groups and experimenting with the new LinkedIn features like the enhanced Contacts. I’ll be posting my progress on this blog so stay tuned!
Feel free to comment below and let me know how you feel about Following people on Twitter and using automated Twitter tools. Also visit http://tedprodromou.com to learn more about my other social media experiments.