I get asked this pretty often so, following the festivities of this weekend, I opened on my home iMac a few tabs of people I met who are “celebrities” but YouTube stars which is different than a real celebrity. Anyway, I gave it 48 hours. Basically, twice a day I refresh the pages of these guys and see if their accounts are of interest to me. There wasn’t too much going on really and these are interesting people but the past 48 hours of tweets weren’t incredibly engaging. Dom Sagolla wrote about an issue that happens when someone gets more followers or gains popularity as has happened with me and friends on small levels. The more people follow you, the more pressure you have to be reserved, respectful and act as if your Mom was reading each tweet even if your brand is vulgar and sexist, you don’t say everything because 200,000 people will see it.
I see that with a lot of guys and maybe that’s what I’m seeing here. Additionally, these personalities get so many replies that they rarely see even 1 out of 100 and maybe reply to 1 out of 500 replies so for me to follow them, I’d like to reply sometimes and I’d like a conversation to happen. If my reply is never seen or responded to, well I just need that interaction and celebrities don’t connect that way except for the 1:1000 ratio of conversation to amount of replies they receive daily.
So, the reserved personality of the tweets where they’re frankly pretty boring and the constant fabrication of interesting moments for the fans (trust me, not all of the stuff celebrities tweet out actually happens) and the fact that I’ll never have a conversation unless I send an average of 500 tweets to them a month makes the relationship hard and those reasons enough keep me from “following”
Then there’s the spam….
These YouTube personalities (3 of the 4 that I met) post links to their latest YouTube video at least 3 times on the day the video was uploaded and again 2 more times in the next day or two. Each of these tweets doesn’t say, “have you seen my new video?” or “a reminder that I posted a new video today. Like it?” No, the tweets are misleading in a way that you would think it’s something interesting not created by the YouTube person but by someone else OR that it’s a completely new video. Example:
Here is a link to 7 tweets from one person where the same video is in the URL: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
The guy tweeted the same video link within 24 hours. Today, I see FPSRussia (someone else who I was tracking debating on following) replied to someone with this:
He also has posted the same Glock destruction video multiple times and has helped me make up my mind on if I still want to follow him.
This may only apply to YouTuberz but it might apply to others as well like Bloggers and Photographers but you can’t treat Twitter Followers like they’re subscribers. If they want to subscribe to your RSS feed or YouTube channel, that’s fantastic! It’s a great feeling when someone opts in to a channel featuring your content. If you then abuse your Twitter followers just like you would a YouTube subscriber, you’re breaking the circle of trust. Here’s why I follow people:
- To be entertained / informed
- To interact and engage in conversations
- To keep up with friends and colleagues
I don’t follow people on Twitter that don’t meet at least 2 of those items. If you inform me and you’re a friend, that’s great. If you entertain me and we chat on Twitter, that’s great too. I don’t follow my Mom on Twitter. Why? She doesn’t tweet anything I care about and we don’t engage on Twitter. She only meets 1 criteria point. I don’t follow Twitter accounts for companies, blogs, celebrities, media organizations or loud mouths that ONLY tweet out links or ONLY retweet everyone or ONLY have conversations with others. You buy a DVR to fast forward through commercials. Why do you then follow a bunch of accounts who don’t interact with you and spam you with content you never asked for?
I believe that the YouTuberz I analyzed are great people. I say that because I met them and enjoyed their company for an evening. I also believe these people are talented and work very hard but I don’t believe in how they are operating their Twitter accounts. It’s nothing personal but I believe they’re doing it wrong or at least they’re operating in a way that doesn’t represent them as a person (censored tweets or overly sensational tweets about things that couldn’t possibly happen and spammy tweets that link to the same video).
@Hoppecomi is right. We follow you because we care about your content. Don’t spam us with the same link throughout the day. The reason I only follow 142 people and have 4,000 people follow me isn’t that I’m some psycho who gets off on that great friend follower ratio. It’s that I am very selective on who I follow because my time is valuable.
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