Industry News

Update on my Previous Post “Twitter Me This”

Posted by Mike Filsaime July 9, 2009 9:23 pm

I just want to state that all my feelings on Twitter are mostly the same from my previous blog post… The big difference is the “Follow me and I will Follow you.”

I will no longer be following everyone who follows me. It is explained in the video Below. Other things not mentioned in the video are the fact that it is just so hard to deal with the 3000 DM’s I get. In fact, as echoed in my video, I am not ACTIVELY looking to make more friends. Most of us are not. That is why I have not logged into my FACEBOOK account in 4 months. That is why I HATE my MYSPACE account and will NEVER log in again.

As stated in the video, The owner of FACEBOOK wants people that use is system to use it to make it easier to connect with the REAL FRIENDS you already have, not as a TOOL to get more friends. And it is not friends, it is a STATUS or a metric of some fake importance of something I am not quite sure what it even means.

The bottom line is, if I want to follow @TonyRobbins, it is because I want to know what he has to say and I do not care if he does not “follow me” back… Nor do I feel upset or insulted that he does not care about what I have to say.

I like social media to allow me to connect with the people I care about. I am not looking to have 40,000 people trying to connect with me. It is not possible even if I wanted to as shown in the video.

Let’s face it, no one would want 40,000 people all trying to talk to you everyday (Even if it were possible)

I saw a video for a Social Media tool today that signs you up for 100 (yes One Hundred) Social Media sites at one time!

I thought to myself… “MY GOSH! Who the heck as the darn time to deal with all that crap.”

I want to focus on what is important to me. I want to follow and connect with the people I know.

People will say. Well Mike, that is not fair.. .How can anyone send you a PRIVATE MESSAGE. My reply to that is, that anyone that needs to send me a private message already knows how.

For everyone else. there is this really cool thing called @mikefilsaime. It is a public reply that I am most likely to see. And it is a great way to start a relationship that may lead to “Private” conversations.

Anyways, this is just my opinion. For more information see the video below.

Thanks to @JohnReese and @Ed_Dale for pushing me over the edge on this and John’s blog post here that was inspired from an email he sent me when I asked him why he did what he did. (The very move that pushed me over the edge.)

Click Play To See The Video

Keywords: Auto Follow, Autofollow, no auto follow twitter, Twitter

About Mike Filsaime

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http://link Crazy17

What is the historical value of all this? ,
http://seanbeardmore.com Sean Beardmore

Hi Mike,

Fortunately I do not have the amount of followers as you have, but here is some good advice you have shared…..how can anyone communicate with that many people?

Although my followers are a small number, I am making a concious effort to only follow people back who I beleive can share value and perhaps build a long term relationship with for future business not a continous stream of spam, which I hate.

Personally I have set up a group on tweetdeck to stay in touch with the people who want to stay in touch with, and it so much easier.

Thanks Mike.

Cheers

Sean
http://jorge-delgado.com/blog Jorge

Great post Mike…(I also read Jhon’s post)

thanks,
Jorge
http://www.marcuspassey.com marcus passey

Hello mike nice to meet you,

Cool post my friend I think I will have to look at my twitter account now,good advice.

hope to speak soon.

cheers

marcus passey
http://bit.ly/OL8hc InfoGuy

I couldn’t agree more. With all the followers who I really don’t know, and who constantly tweet about every little thing, it’s tough to sift through it all and find the updates that I really care about.

Too much clutter.
http://twitterfornewbies.com Clay Franklin

I always had a problem with auto follow. It takes me less time to review my new followers to see if I am interested in their tweets than it did to unfollow all the new followers that arrived with bots. Enjoyed John Reese’s blog post on the topic also.

I was a bit sad to loose you and Tom Beal as followers. Tom just started to follow me last week and I finally got you to follow me on one of your live ustream broadcasts.

Possibly after a few more marketers cruises we will get to know each other a bit better and become buddies. I sure love your products and use Traffic Fusion every day and my first Butterfly marketing site will be up this year.

@ClayFranklin
http://www.lestervelasco.com Lester Velasco

I totally agree with you Mike. I’ll say Amen to that!

This is a side comment, and I hope you see this. The May 2009 Issue of “MarketingDotCom”, in the Did you know? section. It said that you can skip the “middle” part when paying with paypal. Is this a script or a setting made in my paypal account?

LesterVelasco.com or twitter me @lestervelasco

Thanks!
http://www.twitter.com/superaffiliate @SuperAffiliate

Welcome aboard… ;) All it takes is a few big names to stop, and I think we’ll see a LOT of people stop.

You won’t get as many followers. Fact. You WILL get a lot more people who actually read your tweets though.

In essence, you end up getting more out of Twitter my straining it less.

For the win!

-David
http://www.kiosk.ws Joel Therien

Hey Mike,

What you said in your video is exactly why I think I could just not get
my head around Twitter.

It seems in my mind, like a big sms safelist. I only follow some 700
people and it is still impossible :D

I think the problem is Twitter has become too much of a Marketing Tool
instead of a social media tool

Joel Therien
http://www.marketleveragetv.com MLDina

Glad to see so many respectable people in the industry following the same line of thought. I don’t mind if social media users want to randomly follow anyone who follows them, that’s their headache to deal with. I personally am not a fan, though and can completely relate.
http://unclebrice.com Uncle Brice

I’ve never used auto follow, either. I do, from time to time, post a link to an article I’ve written or to an article someone has written about me. And I do get a little traffic from Twitter according to Google analytics.

I’ve found forums to be far more valuable than social media.
http://www.online-sales-secrets.com Andrew Koblick

I never knew how much I didn’t want to know about people until I started using twitter. I mean people are pimpin out pictures of their kids just to have something to say. that said I have created a new system for guitar tabs on Twitter I call Twitter Tabs.
http://www.crobertdillon.com C Robert Dillon

I have various Twitter accounts and not a single one of them ever has used autofollow. Sadly, there is an entire cottage industry built around the auto follow and many Twitter marketing guru’s recommend following huge numbers of complete strangers in order to let their auto follow build your followers list. The true potential for utilizing Twitter as a marketing vessel is in trust based transactions. Every single auto follow, every single blatant spam message, erodes that trust.
http://stopautofollow.com imrat | stop auto follow

Fantastic news to see you make this step. Couple of days ago John, and now you.

Clearly – internet marketers are leading this movement and soon auto following will be something off the past.

I’ve linked to your post and video from my stopautofollow.com site.

Anyone doing the same as Mike & John >> show your support by tweeting #stopautofollow.
http://www.pretavendre.com Sylvie Laflamme

You’ve seen the light Mike ! :-)

Twitter is only a funny tool… Marketing tool ? Not sure…

The next business generation will be a friendship relation with business flavor.
As long as people will try to “make money with each new tool” they will not find their way to success… Find the feeling, find the friends and the way will be more comfortable.

Congralutation Mike. You’ve open your mind to the real use of this great tool named Twitter.

Sylvie
http://DCincome.com Matthew Loop

Mike… obviously your video makes a whole lot of sense. You are not one that needs inflated social proof since you’ve crushed the IM niche for awhile just like JR. MacPhearson and Dale have been saying this stuff since the beginning of the micro-blogging era.

Why not just use Tweetdeck to really follow and pay attention to those select few you want? You can keep track of them very easily with this. One of the only reasons I would think that successful marketers follow many is simply to build their list that much more.

I think what’s going to happen now is that those that have inflated social proof are going to copy what you and JR are doing by dropping their counts. Unfortunately, you’ll be left with many people that don’t really have anything of value to contribute but appear as leaders.
http://www.globalevangelists.com/ Jeremy Young

Totally Agree 100%, In the time I read your post I received this in my email
@Namewitheld
3599 followers
433 updates
following 3882 people

When is this going to stop, In all reality about 5% of the people who follow me actually read my tweets.
Charles

I am totally in the same place. I made the change a little differently in that I created a second account on Twitter with the goal of following no more than 75-100, maybe 150 people at the most. People I know, work with, or just find have great value to offer.
So far I’m following only around 33 people, and I have to say the whole Twitter experience is way more enjoyable. I’ll be cleaning house in my Facebook account and using it for what it was meant for..to keep in touch with the people I already know and new people I have come to know and want to communicate with. Thanks for the great video, on the same page all the way.
-Charles
http://facebook.eddieperea.com Eddie

Congrats on seeing the light. While I certainly have nowhere near the number of followers you do, I never was a believer in the auto-follow. So many people are using twitter in the wrong fashion of spamming via auto DM that they are missing the point of building relationships of value. If what you have is valuable to someone, they will do business with you. If all your tweets contain nothing but marketing spam, you will find it hard to build an income and properly monetize your efforts.

Peace.

-Eddie
http://www.michellemacphearson.com Michelle MacPhearson

Congrats Mike on joining the club – Twitter will be SOOOOOO much more enjoyable now, I promise!!!

-Michelle

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Update on my Previous Post “Twitter Me This”

About Mike Filsaime

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