A Quest For 1,000 Twitter Followers

Twitter. I have to admit, I never thought I would be a big tweeter. Until early in 2012, I didn't understand how it worked. A bit embarrased to admit this, but I know I am not alone. I had no idea what a hashtag was, and didn't know how to follow people or how to be followed. Mentions? Are you kidding me? What did that mean? Direct Tweets? Again- no clue. I was using so many other social media tools, where would I have time for Twitter? Facebook and Linkedin were the sites I knew and used most.

Linkedin. I could 10 years ago, and can still say today that I have met or talked to most all of my contacts. I am proud of that. I was a fairly early adopter to Linkedin and understand its power. As a recruiter, as much as I get frustrated with the tool, it is simply something I can't live without. It was and is my business black book. I have spent the past decade building my network.

Facebook, that is my personal space. Family pictures, what is going on in my life. I know where to draw the lines of what is appropriate to post and what is not. You will hear my rants about college and professional football, and Major League Baseball, but I won't be inappropriate.

So again, where does Twitter fit in? Over the past year I have fallen in love with Twitter. I can't believe I haven't adopted this tool sooner. Personal Branding. This is where the business blackbook meets your interests. It can be about whatever you want it to be. I love networking with other HR and recruiting professionals. You may love hearing about the stock market from the richest and most wealthy and start following them. You can get information quicker and in the format you want it. The best thing about it? It is a giving tree. 24 hours of information. It is like watching CNN tailored just to you and what you want to hear about.

What have I learned over the past year? It is ALL about Direct Tweets, Hashtags, Mentions! I scratch your back, you scratch mine. It is the napster of writing. Information at your fingertips and sharing with alike minds.

Sold. Hook line and sinker. This is the real deal. If you haven't bought into it yet, you are missing out. I am learning though, to get it's full effect it takes time. Read, write interesting information, share- repeat. Amazing!

So- I am just getting started. A year into it I have 480 folllowers, not great, but I had to start somewhere. It has been exhausting, but I am gaining momentum. My goal for this year is to double that and then double it again and again. So I truly want to hear how the early adopters did it and what they have learned along the way.

I am writing this to talk about my quest. My quest for 1,000 followers. I will write blogs quarterly marking my progress. I hope to share not only my information, but industry news and trends that people will find interesting and thought provoking. This is not for self promotion, but I would like to be a guinea pig and chronicle progress and hopefully guide others along the way through experience and conversations with super tweeters.

I would love to hear how you developed your following. Please share comments down below if you are a super tweeter. Tom Bolt, Recruiting Animal, Jeff Bullas, Greg Savage- I have learned so much from your tweets. Others, join me in my quest. We can do it together. Send me a tweet, let's get this thing started! @WThomsonJr

Comment by Will Thomson on January 9, 2013 at 2:08pm: Thanks Amanda, Jerry, and Darryl for your comments. The greatest thing about Twitter (like I said in this post) is that it can be anything you want it to be. I use it for 2 main reasons 1) gain industry knowledge, expertise & share news and ideas 2) attract candidates. Someone else may use it for completely different reasons. I don't have any desire to have Justin Bieber or Kim Kardashian follow me :) It truly is becoming one of the primary ways to communicate. I do enjoy the HR blogs, but I also recognize as a corporate recruiter the strength it has in having people respond to you. Great points from all. I will see how long it takes to gather followers. Thus the purpose of this blog.

Comment by pam claughton on January 12, 2013 at 8:04am: It's easy to get sucked into Twitter and waste a lot of time there. I've done it several times. When it first came around I was an early adopter and as an info junkie I adored it. I had a little widget on my desktop that would chime everytime a new tweet came into my stream. Well, as soon as you have more than a few followers that meant constant chiming and I found myself really distracted as I would investigate every interesting tweet/link. I had to shut down the widget and cut way back on Twitter.

I did find though that once you get to a certain number of followers, they'll keep steadily rolling in. As long as you are regularly posting new content. If you ignore your Twitter stream and just have automated postings, you'll find that your number of followers will stall, you'll get new ones, but you'll lose just as many.

A few months ago, I took another look at Twitter and started a new Twitter feed for a hobby of mine and quickly got sucked into the Twitter madness again. It can be fun at first! I strategically followed a bunch of people who are my target audience as well as colleagues in that space.

I also revisited my recruiting Twitter feed and started posting more frequently and doing a little blogging and linking to Twitter for that. Pretty quickly I added another 1000 followers to that account just by checking in once or twice a day and posting and retweeting, and replying to people in my feed. I've done the same with the other new account and am now a little over 1000 followers there in about four months.

The routine now is to check in once or twice a day....or honestly a few times a week, it depends on what's going on, but the consistent you can be the better.

That said, I've had a Twitter account for years now, whenever it started, and I've yet to make a placement directly from Twitter.

I think it's best for branding, and getting your name out there. I do get candidates from it and a lot of them have said they watched my feed for awhile and then reached out when a job came through that they liked.

I think it helps support whatever else you are doing for marketing.

At most now, I spend maybe 10 minutes a day on Twitter.

What I don't like about Twitter is that it often seems like everyone is talking, but no one is listening.

Comment by Will Thomson on January 13, 2013 at 11:03pm: Pam thank you for your response. This is exactly what I was looking for when I wrote this! You have some great data and information. Your last sentence really got me. I think a lot of people feel like everyone is talking but no one is listening.

Comment by Will Thomson on August 14, 2013 at 2:22pm: Twitter is a drug. 9 months after writing this I am addicted. Good thing? Hmmm.. I don't think so.

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