They're Still Following Me! And Now There's More of Them! (A Twitter Update)

Someone on LinkedIn contacted me because they were going to follow me on Twitter (they have) and wanted to know why I don't follow anyone.

I've been meaning to write another post on my and NextStage's use of Twitter, so thanks to the person who contacted me and here goes. Their questions are in italics, my responses in normal text.

Hi Joseph,

I saw your comment on the Intelligent Social Media group, posting your twitter account. I thought about following you on twitter, then I noticed that you don't follow anyone. I'm curious, do you use twitter mainly as a one way communication model? Are you finding benefits from it?

Hello, thanks for reaching out and asking a good question. You can get more on my thoughts at A Twitter Social Contract and They're Following Me! (More on Twitter). Several people have written to me thanking me for those posts as it helps them understand where to put Twitter in their business and personal lives.

I don't follow anyone on Twitter because my time is precious. People who want me to know what they're up to either call, skype or email me. The people who do so always provide me with information that benefits me and hence causes me to benefit them.

That noted, there seem to be people who find me worth following for some reason. As one person wrote me, "Lots of people believe that if they don't follow you, they'll miss something very important." Definitely odd as I don't twitter often.

Is it one way? Not at all. I don't follow anyone however lots of people contact me due to what I write there. Example: Membership in the NextStage Members area has been increasing about 20% per week since I began mentioning the NextStage Members area on Twitter.

There are benefits, definitely, and I defined the benefits I and my company wanted after experimenting to determine what Twitter's limits are. Example: some companies have contacted us about improving our social impression/footprint. My response is "Can you beat these numbers and how much will it cost?" They all back away. My guess is because we (NextStage) base what we do on good, provable and repeatable science, not just the latest fads.

Hope this is helpful...and thanks for helping me write my next blog post.

Joseph

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Know How Someone Is Thinking in Ten Seconds or Less

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Reading Customer's Minds (presentation, booksigning, etc) at the 11-13 Apr 2011 Ad:Tech San Francisco
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NeuroAnalytics and NeuroMarketing as it applies to other analytics at the 17-18 May 2011 Text Analytics Conference, Boston, MA

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