Twitter Rant

Twitter is a great way to connect with fans. And I had heard on a horror writing podcast that it can be viewed as a sort of resume of sorts, by the publishing houses who will probably have someone research a writer that is trying to get a contract. 

The followers and the posts and how many interactions and with whom, and don't forget impressions, all work together to forge an overall image of the writer. But what if most of those followers are bogus, fake accounts? How do you know? 

Personally, I use an application called Crowdfire. This application lets you see who "follows" and "unfollows" you, and there are many other features that one may find to be useful. 

But then there is the feature, and advise, on how to hack a large following. And I don't feel that this is helpful to the person trying to build a real audience, or group of like-minded peers. 

Think about it: You have 10 thousand followers, but half of them are fake, created to make people think you are popular--the person to follow. What people don't realize is that just about all of those fake accounts were created just to fluff up your follower number. Accounts promise thousands of followers if you pay this, or do that, but in the end it is useless because those followers cannot buy a product you tweet out, or they can't retweet a new story you have out. 

Another thing I've read goes like this: You follow--lets say--a thousand users that are known to follow back. There are programs that can actually know which accounts do this, which is probably a algorithm dealing with how many followers you have to who you follow. And if you want to follow back people who follow you, that's fine. The thing is, when you start to follow back fluff accounts, it is not only doing nothing for you, but it is creating a fake authenticity for that bogus account. 

I follow back real people. Writers, readers. I have stopped following back "entrepreneurs" or "speakers," unless, of course, they prove to be authentic and a real person not trying to spam money from me. 

To get back to what I was saying before, so you follow 1000 accounts and you get 500 followers. Now a week later you unfollow the 1000 accounts. Some of the people may unfollow you, but you might retain half of that. And then you go on and on until you have thousands of unearned followers. 

I think it's ridiculous and makes no sense. 

I mean, maybe to some it might, but for an author it really doesn't to me, at this point in time. 

Now, even though I do follow back real people, it doesn't mean I'm going to just continue to follow just anyone in the future. Of course, after you've reached a certain level of popularity, and you are getting fans following you, you don't have to follow everyone who follows you. And of course, don't get me wrong, this can be different for everyone--it's all how you feel it should be done for your account, for your brand. But what I've seen on Twitter with these fake accounts and people offering to fluff up your followers just seems silly and unproductive. 

I don't understand how Twitter even lets these accounts get by. But, for now, it happens. 

So watch out, build your followers, peers and fans wisely and enjoy. 

And get to writing, because i'm going to do just that right now. 

WCM 

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