Neil Shearing’s Internet Marketing Strategies

Did you lose a substantial number of Twitter followers overnight?

I did. Down from 150ish to 76. I noticed that Ed Dale is down from 7,000+ to under 5,000. Joel Comm was almost at 2,500 and is now at under 2,000.

Searching Twitter found these recent comments…

“i went from 71 to 27 followers and im only following 17 now instead of like 30 somthn”

“I guess I’ve been a little boring recently. My followers has just plunged from 44 to 35! ”

“I lost three quarters of my followers/following. Added a few back. Will now wait and hope twitter will resolve problem. ”

“I shed more than 350 followers, including some real people.”

Twitter officially say,

“We’re still in the process of recovering from the missing follower/following problem that occurred earlier today. Over the next several hours, you may see inaccurate counts or timeline inconsistencies as the correct data is propagated to all parts of the system.

One thing to note: Even after this recovery is complete, your counts may appear lower than previously. In almost all cases, this is not due to missing data. The counts we display on your profile page are not always up-to-date. For example, when we remove spammers from the system (which we’ve been doing a lot lately), the follower counts are not updated in real-time.

As we push out the changes to fix this afternoon’s problem, the counts will be updated to reflect the latest numbers.”

I think it’s an interesting question… Do You Want To Be More Connected?

First there was snail mail, then the telephone, then the Internet and email. Unfortunately, spam ruined email (mostly) so people migrated to “closed circuit social websites” such as Facebook and Myspace.

Now there’s Twitter, where people are constantly exchanging notes… it’s much more personal and immediate than email.

Another service that’s immediate is video streaming via sites such as Ustream, where you can continuously broadcast your webcam feed, and if anyone wants to see your empty chair, they can!

The overall goal seems to be to facilitate quicker, real-time connections to many more people without the drawbacks of spam and other email deliverability problems.

With “live” services such as Twitter and uStream, you have the ability to let millions of people know that you’re available instantly and respond, in real time, to their contact… which helps connect people and build relationships.

They say that people can only maintain a maximum of ten close personal relationships, but how does that apply to social networking? Can you have hundreds, or thousands of social contacts and keep up with the volume of messages such a network will naturally generate?

Do these “live” services scale?

I guess not. Ed Dale says in this movie that he simply can’t follow all the people on Twitter who are following him.

So, services such as Twitter and uStream allow you to reach many, many people… but after a certain number of subscribers is reached, people have to follow, without reciprocation, because otherwise you would drown in the sea of messages.

Using new, “live” technologies to reach as many people as you can, while also limiting the amount of exposure you have to a manageable level, will be the balancing act of the next few years.

What do you think…?

In my opinion, Twitter is rubbish for Internet marketers.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I can see how Twitter is great for groups such as “friends and family” and “work colleagues” who just want to keep each other informed of what they’re doing.

BUT, for marketers, this constant information is just a distracting noise, right?

Let me give you an example… Michael Campbell’s Twitter page … his “tweets” as they’re called.

What is the point of me viewing that page? I see that Michael is having conversations with people and at the same time other people can leave comments such as the guy who wrote, “Wonderful quote from an old Earl Nightingale audio. “The secret to happiness is freedom. The secret to freedom is courage.” ~ Thucydides”.

Huh? What’s the point of that?

Twitter is like watching a stream of comments with very little direction or moderation. There’s no “blog post” to direct the conversation around a topic. There’s no forum thread to direct the conversation around a topic. I’m guessing there’s very little moderation of comments because nothing can be “off topic”. The signal to noise ratio is very poor.

If I want Michael’s tips, which I do because Michael always provides wonderful information, I’ll read his newsletter, or visit his website where the real information is.

But I don’t get why I should visit his Twitter page.

I’ll give you another example. I just created a Twitter account to see if I was missing the point. When I started my account I found that some people were already “following” me, and my page filled up with comments such as, “Relaxing by the lake, smoking a nice cigar. Finished my prezo” and “Putting boat cover on before storm hits; looks like a day of TV and poker”.

What the heck?

It’s NOISE.

It doesn’t help me market to people.

It’s for the Web2.0 generation to tell each other when they’ve put the kettle on to make a cup of tea.

It’s just inane “bird chat” for people with ADD, right?

What do you think? Is there time in your daily schedule to make, read and reply to comments on Twitter… or are you too busy already? Will it help your marketing efforts, or hinder them by taking away time from more productive projects?