You are correct in your assessment–this is a fun article, written (in Internet terms) a long time ago, when Twitter marketing and account management tools were MUCH less sophisticated than they are now. Obviously today, marketers have many more options for not only reaching people on Twitter, but filtering out those who are creating the most noise.

Thanks for writing!

- Eric -

Most of the the reasons above apply only if you’re indiscriminately following everything that moves. Following people is *not* the only way to gain Twitter followers – offering interesting content that people will want to follow and retweet, and building your reputation, are the more natural ways to grow your Twitter followers. In addition to getting more solid follower base, this will help you avoid spambots entirely.

One of the things I love about Twitter is that I can choose whose messages to see – I have about 4,000 followers, but follow only about 260 people on a daily basis, as I simply can’t ingest more information without it effecting my other work, and making my Twitter presence impersonal. (Twitter lists are a great way to categorize & reward other followers whose tweets I might not want to see every day, but feel are of value to me or my followers. So is an occasional retweet from a timeline of a new follower.)

Don’t like Twitter-talk? Simply don’t use it, and don’t follow others who do.

As for the conversion ratio, while we did not get too many direct sales, we did forge quite a few alliances, had made new friends in our industry, and have received a significant increase in traffic to our web site (which *is* our main goal). Direct mail and other marketing methods are a wrong model for social media. You can liken it much more accurately to a live cocktail party – you don’t make sales on the spot, but some of the business cards you doled out do eventually come back as customers.

Of course, it’s slower, and it actually takes time and effort – something that can get hard for a marketeer with many clients and products to sell. Alas, in social networking, there’s no shortcut to… socializing.

And thank you for commenting! Follow me, and I’ll follow you back

Thanks for sharing!

I sometimes wonder if we’d feel alone without them.

“If someone runs a pyramid scheme, and no one is around to Tweet about it, would it still lure in highly-impressionable people?”

Think about it

This post was mentioned on Twitter by TSCB: [ Monday Article ] 17 Great Reasons Professional Marketers Hate Twitter … http://tinyurl.com/lw2by9...