March 08, 2010

Why I seldom reply to Tweets publicly

A friend emailed me today, berating me because I don't use public reply on Twitter to respond to statements, questions, etc. with @sanderssays in it.  

He cited Tweeple I deeply admire such as Chris Brogan and Tom Peters, pointing out that they reply to people dozens or sometimes hundreds of times a day.  Chris Brogan refers to this style of tweeting as the public telephone approach - where his answers to questions help others (that might have the same ones). It's also a way to introduce his 100k+ network to people.

Here's why I don't do it: For me, less is more. Many of the people that follow me on Twitter are only following a few dozen or a few hundred people. If I replied to everyone that mentions me, then I will fill up my followings streams with out of context comments that require clicking to a profile and figuring out the point of my reply. It's like one of those email threads you receive that require a great deal of reading and scrolling to make sense of. 

I made this decision to limit my tweets to no more than eight a day last year when my son came over and told me, "dude, you are tweeting all the time, I may have to unfollow you so I can manage my stream and read my friends' comments.  At the time, I had just unfollowed some high profile people I like (Coach Pete Carroll for one) because they were doing the same thing to me too.  That was when I was only following three hundred people.  Today, I follow over 8000 people, so it wouldn't bug me nearly as much. 

Using a variety of tools, I've been monitoring my add versus drop count over the last few months. I'm retaining over 80% of my non spammer followers over time, which is an above average rate.  To me, Twitter is a platform for my ministry (to provoke good works and outbursts of love). I tweet ideas, thoughts, links and sayings to inspire and inform my followers.  No clicking to profiles required.  I'd hate to lose a single follower over volume or indecipherable posts that junk up someone's stream.  I work so hard to get them in the first place. (If you comment on this blog post, asking me a question, I'll answer it 100% of the time. It's not that I'm not interactive.) 

Independent of that, I am also not cool with "whale baiting" - a practice where someone asks a Twitter user with a big following a question, so when the 'whale' replies, the whale baiter gets more followers. (Note: Whale is an old school term used to describe landing a big fish in investment management circles) As you might guess, I believe that we should pick up followers online the same way we do in the real world ... by adding value.  

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Posted at 1:19 PM in Social Media  |  Permalink  |  Comments (0)  |  TrackBack (0)

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