How to follow thousands of people on Twitter (and live to tweet about it!), part one

Earlier this week, one of my favorite authors and Twitter extaordinaire Guy Kawasaki penned an article about how to gain more Twitter followers.  An interesting read.  Beyond the obvious vanity of it all, we all want to try to reach as many people as we can, and make sure we're being effective with our platform.  In the article, he recommends following everyone who follows you.  Since that article, I've noticed quite a few people who are trying this philosophy on for size.  Since I've been doing just that for a  while now, I figured I'd share a couple of notes from my journey.  Maybe you'll find something that will be of use...

A few weeks ago, I was at a party talking to Carlos.  He was saying how he was going to trim the number of people he follows on Twitter to a more manageable number.  Being the general smart aleck that I am, I said "I'm going the other way - I'm going to follow EVERYBODY who follows me."  We laughed, but then I got to thinking.  Why not?  The technology's there, and there are several Tweets with a lot more followers than I who follow this very policy.

@fussypants follows just under 900 people. @mufan96 follows almost 7000. @guykawasaki follows TENS OF THOUSANDS of people on Twitter... 

So without giving it much thought other than "I'm crazy," I took the plunge.  And I've never looked back.

As we speak, I am following 1189 people on Twitter and I love it.

Let me give you a little philosophy, then a couple of ways you could do it (and survive!).  Finally, I'll give you my secret spy way of pulling it off.

The philosophy, part 1: We don't give ourselves enough credit when it comes to reading 

Try an experiment for me.  Go to your Twitter home page and click on "Everyone".  Skim the first page.  It's a little daunting at first, kind of like turning on a firehose.  But you'll find something useful there, I'm sure.  As fascinating as I'm sure they are, you'll skip over all tweets in other languages.  You'll also skip just about all the @ replies.  And you'll skip over all of the "eating lunch at McDonald's" because, well, that's kind of boring, as well as all the "I hate my job - I can't wait til 5:00" kind of chatter.  In between, you will find SOMETHING of value.

Done yet?  I just did it and found out that carpooling's illegal in Canada:
"                                                    annieatthelake                                                         Retweeting @RobLane: No carpooling in Canada. It's illegal http://tinyurl.com/5r4wql

The philosophy, part 2: Twitter as your personal concierge
OK, now that you see that it can be done and that it's useful, how much cooler would it be if you had that same kind of experience, only with a bunch of people that are only one or two degrees of separation from you?  Think of the ramifications.  You're already using Twitter to get movie and restaurant recommendations, and you love all the links you find from your friends on there.  How much more valuable of a tool can it be?  Loads.

Since I've done this, Twitter has become my primary way of following the news, of finding cool links, and of seeing what to watch on television.  It's really quite unbelievable...

I've found that there are other people out there (with only a couple degrees of separation) who love Georgia Tech football like I do.  I have found others (again, that are "friends of friends") who share some of my same musical tastes.  I can not begin to tell you how many cool articles, online interviews, gadgets, and other cool links I've found through expanding my Twitter community.  Just this morning, I found out that a radio interview I did was being broadcast.  And there was still time to let all my Twitter followers know about it. 

OK, since this post has already run on so much further than I had intended, why don't we just break it up into two posts?  Hopefully, you're starting to see how cool this concept can be.  Or at least you're starting to think I'm less (more?) of an idiot.  In part two I'll talk about how to use technology to pull it off, then I'll let you in on a little secret...
            

Comments

[Lindsey]

That is great advice.. I want to network more for my Graphic design/illustration business and Ive heard twitter can be a decent too.

www.link-creative.com

Passionate about doing Ministry/Christian design work.

[Dawnifer Gomer]

Glad I made your blog today! I always love the days leading up to Third Day concerts because I always love to hear the interviews you guys so graciously grant to radio stations. I just heard Bill or Dave of the JOY FM announce it so I just wanted to let my morning Tweets know about it so they could listen! Had no idea you would see my tweet and give me a shout out! Glad to be of service. I think both Florida shows are sell outs! I'll be at both.

@DawnGWTW

[Evan Courtney]

mark.

this is @mufan96.

here was my theory.
i actually followed almost 9000 people at one time, in hopes of people returning the follow.
it worked to a degree, because ive got like 3500 followers.

but since twitter put a limit on only following 2000, i can't follow anymore. (I was grandfathered in. ha)

because i can't follow 9000 realistically.
i just subscribe to people twitter rss feeds.
so, i basically follow 50 people's feeds.

still gets the job done.

[becki]

Great post - I'm very new to twitter - and still trying to figure out why it might be useful and why I might care that my friend Ralph is having a burrito in Chicago at this very moment. I don't - but maybe if he posted a link to the great burrito place I might.

Looking forward to hearing about your setup.

[Christopher]

I have twitter send direct messages via email.

Since they include the twitter username in the message I have created rules in my mailbox that if the twitter username does not match my "close friends" list usernames it moves it to a folder. If the name does match. it forwards onto my txt email address [10-digit phone number]@txt.att.net

Maybe that will help you guys

[jan owen]

Well I have to say i was thrilled when you started following me. haha. Now I know why. If you're in northern Bama, message me and we can tell you all you need to know.

I have experienced much the same as you have - learning new things all the time!

[JanetRN]

I can't wait for the secret part! Now if you can just help me organize my life so I don't constantly have a mountain of paper yet I can't find that ONE piece that I'm looking for!

[Mark]

Brody,
That is actually the one thing I have not figured out yet. I'll get to my setup in part two, but I don't get any Twitter updates directly through text anymore. I had to do that because of exactly what you're talking about - an onslaught (sp?) of direct tweets.

This is the one downer about the "follow everybody" strategy, at least for me. I use texting as my primary way of communicating, and Twitter was and still is a great way to text people you don't have contact info for. B/c I had to turn off Twitter on my iPhone, I can't see direct tweets as they come in.

Like you said, maybe they'll address it one of these days...

[Adam Riggins]

It really is like crack. And, the odd thing is, I feel like I am "friends" with some people on there. I'll probably never meet them, but darn it, we have some good tweets together!

[Brody Harper]

How do you handle the fact that anyone you are following can 'direct message' you? Doesn't that kill your phone?

I'm waiting for Twitter to come up with something that gives the option to turn off the direct message.