I just received this question:
When is there an appropriate time to ask someone on twitter to follow you?
My quick answer is “never.” Asking people to follow you on Twitter makes you sound a bit whiny and desperate.
Following is a personal thing. People follow others that seem to provide them value. Value can be measured in any number of subjective ways: insights, humor, comments. Anything.
The best way to get followers on Twitter is to be interesting yourself and to be interested and interactive with other people’s tweets.
Your turn
That was my answer, do you agree? Let us know in the comments!
If you don’t see comments, click on the title of this post. Then you will.
Ordinarily I would agree with you on this one, Marc. But there are always “it depends” circumstances. The other day an organization reached out to me about grantwriting. However when I attempted to respond via DM, I learned that they weren’t following me. Not wanting my personal email broadcast over Twitter, I tweeted a request for them to follow me :).
Great point!
Another is when a person DMs you but you can’t DM back. Argh!
Argh is right! ‘It depends’ is almost always the answer in things related to fund development :-).
Always different reasons that you may want to contact them like Pamela shared. Most people will follow you if they are trying increase their reach or they like who is following you.
When I am building a new Twitter for a niche market I do look at other accounts of interest, many have their follow you back on automate pilot.
I agree Marc. I started getting more followers when I began to bring value to the various groups I belong to. Sharing good articles, grant information, useful programs, whenever I come across them. However, interacting in the social space can be time consuming and tedious. There are ways you can leverage your time with good technology to reach multiple social spots (Facebook, Twitter, etc.,) simultaneosly. If you have a blog – Feedburner comes to mind. There is a free video series I put together for the nonprofits that we work with – 8 videos. The series shows nonprofits how to use psychology to attract more visitors and encourage them to take positive action on their websites. It’s free and if you find it useful – feel free to share it with your community. http://www.globalvisiontech.com/Blog/tabid/59/PostID/173/Non-Profit-Website-Secrets-Revealed.aspx We’ve had some good feedback.
I disagree, sorry! I just joined twitter and spent 2 days in total obscurity. It’s very tough attracting followers when you know no one. I followed people i found interesting and got no follow backs.
I finally decided to ask the people i followed to consider following me back. Out of the 35 people i asked i got 15 follow backs in a single day.
People do follow back if you ask (not demand or threaten). You never get anything by not asking imo.
Thanks Aniruddha. Great to have a different perspective!
And welcome to Twitter. 😉