So I recently started using twitter and you can follow me by going to http://www.twitter.com/cnizzdotcom. I had long been opposed to twitter because I thought it was useless. Of course I was initially opposed to myspace and facebook as well which I am currently using on or have used at one point. I guess I am sometimes a bit reactionary when it comes to knew things. Not just technology, but even certain technologies and methodologies in programming. This is a dangerous thing in my field, but I’m getting more progressive by the day. I laugh thinking about how years ago I stated to a co-worker “extending classes is a horrible idea.” Hey, if we were never wrong, then we’d never improve, right? So I take comfort in my opinions evolving as I become more knowledgeable.
So about a month ago I began using twitter. My use of twitter is really just an exercise in marketing my most important product across the internet, which is me! What I’ve learned in my month with twitter is that twitter is not much different than SEO blackhat, whitehat, and greyhat that you see with ranking in Google. In the SEO world you have scum that write bots (actually they are quite easy to write) which like graffiti in parks (the trashy kind) spam blogs and forums in an effort to win backlinks.
In the twitterverse its the same. You have twitbots, employed by twittrash that will follow someone for a few hours, maybe a few days (its hard to tell) and then unfollow them. All this is done automatically so the twittrash doesn’t have to do it manually. You’ve probably noticed this before. I noticed it right away and assumed it was some bot, but it was confirmed while reading a forum post over at DP. The poster advised another poster to “use a twitter automation program to auto follow then unfollow after time has passed and they don’t follow back.” The term twittrash immediately popped into my head.
There are legitimate ways of winning followers in twitter. It’s hard starting from ground zero and doing things legit (trust me I’m doing it now) but it can be done.
- Find people you know and start following them
- Use hashtags to reach a broader audience
- Write good twits and links to quality content
- Include links to your twitter page everywhere
If you already know the person and they know you are now following them its likely they will reciprocate.
When you use a hash tag such as #php or #embarassing it reaches everyone else listening for that hashtag. Of course spammers use these as well, but you glance over the spam and find the good stuff just like with anything else on the web.
This is a no brainer and its the exact same thing you do when optimizing for google.
Add a link to your twitter page on your facebook, myspace, blog, and to forum signatures
On the web and in life, when ever something good comes a long there will be [insert prefix here]-trash to try and ruin it. Twittrash is no different than snake oil salesman, politicians, and blog spammers. Thanks for reading.