Mike MacLeod

Why Twitter Followers Don’t Matter

// January 19th, 2009 // Comments // Journal

Twitter is not a broadcast medium.  So, there is no need to make an effort to gather as many followers as possible.

If you try to broadcast your marketing message via Twitter, a few things happen:

• Only a small percentage of your followers will see an individual message.
• Some of those will be turned off and stop following you.
• To account for the above, you could broadcast more marketing messages and increase the frequency.
• You’ll reach some more followers and some of them will again be turned off.
• You will be seen as a 24/7 commercial. Followers will see less benefit in following you and stop.

Twitter is best used as a conversation agent. As in any conversation, it’s better to listen than to speak. You learn more that way.

Use Twitter to gather information. To do this, you will need to focus on following, not gaining followers.

Use Twitter to share useful information. “Buy my product” is not useful.

If you do this, followers will come on their own (I REALLY wanted to use a “build it and they will come” quote here, but deemed it too cliche) and your ego can be satiated.

Why Put a Limit on Making Money?

// January 3rd, 2009 // Comments // Journal

Seth nails it.

When running digital ads, you should be able to determine their success or lack thereof. You know what you pay for them and you should know what each one generates.

So, if they don’t result in a profit, why are you running them?

If they do result in a profit, why aren’t you running them to infinity?

As Seth says:

How often do year the marketing person say, “that’s a neat idea, but we don’t have the budget this year”?

Shouldn’t she say, “We have an unlimited budget for ads that work”…