Today I announced I'm getting DROdio-ized - technology entrepreneur Daniel Odio has written a number of articles with a great mix of strategy and tactics. His instructions are clear and straightforward, but how often do people look at good and clear advice and do nothing?
I didn't really get Twitter when I signed up. I'm @sebastmarsh over there, but as of this writing nothing is happening so interestingly on my account. The issue is a bit of a chicken and the egg problem - I'm not connected with like-minded people on Twitter, therefore I'm not having interesting conversations, therefore my Twitter feed isn't interesting for like-minded people to sign up for, therefore I'm not connected with like-minded people. How to break this cycle?
Well, this is where Mr. Odio's counsel comes in - he wrote a very clear and straightforward piece: "Massive Twitter Secret: Get 2000+ Followers"
He recommends two services:
Twollo which lets you auto-follow people of shared interests, and Twitter Karma which lets you unfollow people who haven't decided to follow you back.
I signed up for Twollo's free account, which says 2 keywords up to 200 followers. As of signing up, I'm following 106 people with 24 followers. Twollo asked me for two keywords - I hadn't thought it through carefully, but I wanted like-minded people. I put in "bootstrap" and "funding" - I figure those are going to get me business-minded people, and ideally won't have too many mindless spammers. Something like marketing, strategy, business, or history would probably be too generic. I put those terms into Twollo and hit "quick stat" - we'll see what happens now.
Twollo didn't seem to work right away, but they also have "Twollo Groups" which I joined, and now my counter seems to be rising. I'm at 402 following and 119 followers now a few hours later. Interesting stuff, will play around with the tools more going forwards. It'd be fun to have a big group of travelers, entrepreneurs, business people, writers, adventurers, etc to swap short ideas and links with on Twitter.
Once Twitter following stops adding correctly I'll try Twitter karma to cut down and repeat the process. We'll see if this has any long term utility, but it's fun to figure out how the tools work at least. Day 1 has been enjoyable.