Enough has been said about Twitter being the most effective medium for brands, celebrities, business and communities to interact with their audience. It is concise, enables link sharing and is absolutely simple to use with not too many features. But there is one question that every twitter account administrator(s) must be asking himself time and again, “Should I follow back people who follow me?”
Courtesy Follow: A vicious downward spiral
It happened to Barack Obama, Yoko Ono and Britney Spears. Despite being some of the most widely followed on Twitter, these accounts are following an insane number of people. Naturally, they are not bothered about who they are following, it is just an image they want to portray to the fans. The basic idea behind Twitter is that you follow people of interest to you. You are not meant to follow back, the concept of ‘befriending’ people on social networks is done away with over here. You follow people who interest you and get followed by people who find you interesting. When people look at the Twitter page of a brand, the higher the ratio of followers to the people following, the more attractive they look. Once you start following back, you start losing out on the brand value.
Isn’t Twitter supposed to be an interactive medium?
On a website, the whole point of providing an email address is to allow followers to privately contact you. On Twitter, recent policy changes meant you could receive direct messages (DMs) only from people who you follow.
Therefore, it only makes sense to follow back your followers so that they can interact with you. Many social strategists have put forward their point that not following back followers has a discouraging undertone to it. For a business, it is important to interact with followers and make them feel important.
Twitter Interactions are more important than following back
Eventually, it depends on business to business whether they should be following back or no. There are some sectors that need more people involvement than others. These obviously need to follow back people. However, there is one thing that is common and administrators for all kinds of Twitter profiles should do. Interact with followers. Periodic retweeting and replying to tweets takes just a second but it goes a long way in convincing your followers that they are actually following actual people, not just a social page that is robotic.
Sharing useful content and material that helps your business grow can really make the decision to set up a twitter profile seem like a great one. Also, having interactions with followers also helps in directly promoting your product in the most straightforward way possible. Moreover, by interacting with people on Twitter, you appear on their timeline and they act as a secondary source of popularization for you. This keeps the follower meter ticking.
Ultimately whether you decide to follow back or to not, it is a decision that is your own. However, it goes without saying that keeping an interactive profile is very important. It is only then that this social endeavor can be a successful one.
Smith has authored numerous blogs on SEO and continues to give healthy tips on it. He helps provide Press Release Submission through his website including many other benefits and services.
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