I'm not following you - you snob!

Since I specialize in sales recruiting I'm always looking for good blogs on sale and sales pros to follow on Twitter. Today I found a great list - "25 top sales blogs". Yippee! I'm a sucker for the top 5, best 10, 15 most, etc. type of lists. I'm a headline writer’s easiest target.

Well, I click on the list and pick the very first one of the 25. Checked out the website….hmmm, pretty good. It was loaded with tips and techniques for each and every situation a sales person could ever imagine. There was also a pretty good selection of current & past blogs. I could easily see that the site was loaded with excellent business psychology content and advice.

So my next step was to follow the author on Twitter. Time saving way for me to know in 140 characters or less if there was anything interesting to read on the website. This Tweeter is not a "whale" but he's doing pretty well. He has 444 followers. His bio was short but okay. Nothing to dissuade me from clicking on that "follow" button.

Then I checked out how many Tweeters he follows. 32 - HUH? He didn't find any other of his 444 followers interesting enough to follow? I checked out the stellar 32 and found one that specialized in Tweeting about home remedies for your health. Once again I said Huh? I checked out his followers. Some pretty interesting people. In fact I followed a few of them myself. But his choice to not follow 412 mostly interesting followers got my nose out of joint. In a snarky mood I said "Sorry pal, you just ain't that good."

I wonder how much attention he’s paying to things….or does he just not have very good judgment?......or does he have help with the website and has to do Twitter on his own. I questioned the value of what he has to offer. I can't listen to someone who doesn't listen to anyone else!!!

I'm not following him - the snob!

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Ryan Leary on October 21, 2009 at 10:46am

Intersting article. A lot of this stuff happens becuase of the auto follow bots. Another thing I'd look at is how active is he on Twitter. I wouldn't discount him becuase of this. Twitter sometimes doesn't tickle everyone fancy...but "home remedies for your health"? sounds like an MLM guy waiting to spam you! :)

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by pam claughton on October 21, 2009 at 12:10pm

Honestly, I wouldn't consider him a snob or write him off. Everyone uses Twitter differently. I have something like 1600 or so people following me and set up an auto-follow because I couldn't keep up with it. But, I recently canceled the auto-follow and am only adding people who really do interest me. When I have the time I may go through and weed out the MLM types and others that I followed automatically because they followed me.

It's ridiculously hard to really follow a large amount of people. I think 32 is a nice number personally! I see lots of people with large amounts of followers and small amounts of people they follow. The smaller the group you follow the easier it is to manage keeping up with tweets. I am following so many that I've pretty much given up and just check in periodically. So my usage is mostly outbound, posting new jobs as they come in and random things that might interest someone. When I first started using Twitter I was spending a lot of time on it...and realized I just don't have the time to spend!

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Fran Hogan on October 21, 2009 at 12:31pm

Ryan & Pam,
Okay so maybe I got a bit too snarky.

I do realize that everyone uses Twitter differently and lots of people think it's a waste of time. I am personally getting value from it because I follow interesting people. Quite a few of the ones I follow are way out of proporation in followers & following. But, they have 10's of thousands of followers and I don't expect them to follow back. They really are on Twitter to deliver their messages and not to have conversations. Their messages are usually valuable so lots of people follow. Actually, the number of people I follow in terms of real 2-way conversation is about 32 Ryan.

So, maybe I'll push my nose back in joint and go back to look at this guy. But if he doesn't follow me back and he's still following that health remedy guy, he's out again!

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Ryan Leary on October 21, 2009 at 12:55pm

Ha! In the end if the candidates got the backgorund, contact him and place him. Don't forget that leveraging social media like twitter is just a tool to get a name and contact. Never rely on the bios or resumes of candidates. If they have a relevant backgorund you can use them, weather it be for networking or other reasons.

A phone call or email takes jsut a few moments but could pay dividends.

good luck!

Fran Holm said:

Ryan & Pam,
Okay so maybe I got a bit too snarky.

I do realize that everyone uses Twitter differently and lots of people think it's a waste of time. I am personally getting value from it because I follow interesting people. Quite a few of the ones I follow are way out of proporation in followers & following. But, they have 10's of thousands of followers and I don't expect them to follow back. They really are on Twitter to deliver their messages and not to have conversations. Their messages are usually valuable so lots of people follow. Actually, the number of people I follow in terms of real 2-way conversation is about 32 Ryan.

So, maybe I'll push my nose back in joint and go back to look at this guy. But if he doesn't follow me back and he's still following that health remedy guy, he's out again!

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Barbara Ling on October 21, 2009 at 2:12pm

Interesting take! When I follow someone on Twitter, I generally do NOT check who the person is following; I figure I'll uncover that from the their inclusions in the original Twit stream.

Some people use Twitter JUST to showcase themselves, while others use it to build networks. Both ways can work; I myself am happy to follow anyone and everyone (I use Tweetdeck to manage the tremendous amount of data my followings produce).

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Fran Hogan on October 21, 2009 at 4:02pm

Thanks Rayanne,
Our recruiter sourcing and "digging" skills are pretty second nature aren't they? I'm always looking for the motivations behind what someone says or does without even realizing it.

Barbara, It makes sense that you would not need to do the same type of checking on followers for your business. You are using Twitter to build a different type of network and it works for you. I use Tweetdeck as well.

I'm using it to 1) build a trusted network of recruiting industry friends and 2) build trust with the people in my industry specailty (sales-building products).
I need my recruiter friends for moral support and advice and I hope my industry speciality pros will do business with me someday.

I check out everyone!!!