Dishonesty Hits Twitter
Twitter is a wonderful community as you should know by now. There are lots of interesting people to network with and learn from. But just like every other social networking site on the planet, marketers are finding ways to monetize this community. There is nothing wrong in making money online. But there is something wrong about claiming that you have “unlocked” a Twitter formula that allows you to gain thousands of followers fast when you are just gaming the system. There are people who have a lot of followers. Some of them have grown their followers’ list organically, while others have used gimmicks to get people to follow them. Not all of these people have unlocked a hidden formula for success on Twitter.
There are many ways to gain followers on Twitter. The easiest way is by following lots of people and hoping for them to return the favor. You can then use a service such as FriendorFollow to remove those folks who are not following you and go at it again. There is nothing wrong with this approach as long as you are not following just about everyone. If you truly want to follow super interesting people in your niche, this is the way to go. But, this is not a tactic that should be monetized. It’s dishonest for someone to claim they have unlocked a winning formula on Twitter when they haven’t. It’s one thing to have 20,000 follow you when you are following only 1000 people. It’s another thing to have a 50K/20K following to followers ratio.
Another dubious tactic used by marketers on Twitter involves them abusing the website URL section on their profiles. It’s one thing to enter your site and have a landing page about a product you are hoping to sell. It’s another thing to follow thousands of people and hope for them to check your affiliate link and get you some passive revenue. As long as you are providing value to others, the community may not mind you making some money in the process. But it’s really hard to tell what your intentions are when your profile link is a Clickbank affiliate link!
Ultimately, the Twitter community is very smart, and it rarely falls for aggressive marketing tactics. If you provide value to the community, you are going to get value in return. But if you just want to go in there, and promote affiliate products, you are going to lose your credibility. And that is something you can’t get back that easily.
Your take: what’s frustrates you the most about Twitter?
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