Why Buying Twitter Followers is Like Wearing a Toupee

Buying your Twitter followers is like wearing a toupee – anyone paying attention knows. I’ve started multiple new Twitter feeds and know it’s really hard to get off the ground. You need followers to get followers, but buying followers is never going to get you very far. Two followers that care is better than 2 million that don’t. Even if you find it’s working for you now, in the future it won’t, because followers without genuine interaction have little to no lifetime value.

Twitter is an amazing way to keep in touch with customers, build loyalty, develop a brand and experience real reciprocity. The more you put into it the more you’ll get out of it. Put your heart and soul into it and you’ll reap the rewards; put your money into buying followers and you’ll look like the guy in the toupee.

The majority of people I see on Twitter are just pushing content and that’s fine if you are well known or a thought leader. For the rest of us, we’ve got to connect and work it. I’m certainly guilty of falling off the Twittersphere and just using it to push/curate content, but when I’m looking for returns I know I’ve got to work it.

Here are three real strategies I’ve used to successfully get some new Twitter handles off the ground quickly.

1.  Follow the leaders in your niche. They might not follow you back in the beginning. Interact with them to see which ones you can get to follow you back and the others will come later. Pay attention to who in your niche is doing Twitter really well and follow their lead.

2. Find and follow your peers. Your peers are those like you who are trying to build a following and get their name out in your niche. If I don’t know who they are how do I follow them? Easy! They’re the people that are also following the leaders of your niche. Dig through your niche leaders followers and see you who’s interesting to you. Who’s got your favorite niche leaders on a list? Who tweets a lot? Who talks to others? Who is doing things other than just pushing out content? Who is someone you can connect with? Chat with your peers a lot. Build real relationships with them. Help each other out. These are the future leaders.

3. If your peers don’t follow you back after 2 to 4 weeks unfollow them. Why do I suggest doing this? Because the metrics matter. It’s why this is hard in the first place and people feel they need to buy followers. People want to follow people that are being followed. When it comes to peers you want to follow those who also want to follow you.

Note: If you are finding it hard to get peers to follow you then maybe it is you that isn’t providing enough value.  Before you go through with unfollowing, try interacting with that peer a few times. Retweeting and favoring are good interactions, but, to me at least, replying to add feedback or value is the most sincere form of trying to communicate with leaders and peers via twitter. Think of Twitter as a chat platform versus a bulletin board.

I love the site Friend or Follow. It tells me who follows me that I don’t follow, who I follow who doesn’t follow me, and who follows me that I also follow. It lets me sort by how many followers they have or even when their last tweet was so I can see who’s active and who’s leading my niche. If someone hasn’t tweeted in a year, I unfollow. If a peer who once followed me stops following, I unfollow. The only people you want to be following that are not following you are the leaders of your niche or someone providing a lot of value. This might be a controversial step but since the metrics matter it’s an important one.

Does all this take a lot more time and effort than buying Twitter followers? Absolutely, but it will pay more dividends in the end.