Comments on: Engagement vs. Serendipity

By: Scott Hepburn

Scott Hepburn — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 21:09:49 +0000

You’re right about an unreturned follow turning some folks off. If someone expects a return follow as a condition of their continued “subscription,” though, I tend to question the sincerity of their interest.

Do I lose followers that way? Yep. Do I miss an opportunity to get someone more engaged? Yep. Alas, I’m only human — I can’t do it all.

If I play to my strengths and try always to create compelling content that meets the audiences needs, the followers and engagement will come. Those who stick around tend to become deeper connections anyway.

Thanks for stirring up this discussion. A useful topic indeed!

By: Aaron Strout

Aaron Strout — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 21:02:40 +0000

Scott – I love it. You are the first person to semi-disagree w/ my thinking here. And you know what, I like where you’re coming from. The one place where I’ll start to disagree is that if you don’t follow back, that can be a turn off to many folks (not all) so even though “engagement” is still a possibility, it’s diminished by shutting that door of reciprocity with certain folks.

Either way, thanks for stopping by to comment.

Best,
Aaron

By: Scott Hepburn

Scott Hepburn — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:49:53 +0000

I should start by making a distinction between paring down followers vs. those I follow. Twitter’s beauty is that a dead-weight follower is no burden to me. A missed opportunity, for sure, but not worth trying to block a follower.

The people I follow is a different story, though. As callous as it sounds, I think following too many people can be problematic. The likelihood that I notice your Tweets diminishes with each new person I follow. For that reason, slimming down my following list helps.

That DOESN’T mean, however, that I stop engaging with you. Many of my best conversations are with people I am not following. We can establish a mutually rewarding relationship using @replies, even if it’s not a mutual follow. And, if we have enough good conversations, I’ll probably start following you.

Plusses and minuses on both sides, but I’d rather have maximum engagement and minimal noise. If I’m following 5,000, it’s so hard to pay attention to everyone that I may as well be following 0.