Twitter, I get you. It took an enthusiastic teacher (Michael Brito, @Britopian), and a grade predicated at least partially on my use of the social media service to get me to get you.
I tried it in the past, and I've tried different methods in the goal of gathering followers. Some to less success, some to more success.
Like any brand, I do believe that a twitter account requires a story, a brand message. And I believe that certain topics and stories and methods are more successful than others.
My first method was comedy. Straight up jokes contained within 140 characters. I'm a comedian, I'm a writer. Why wouldn't I be able to attract followers with my hilarious hilariousity? Well, it didn't work. Just about all of my first 40 posts on Twitter were jokes. I got 6 followers. Mostly people that already knew me in real life. Not a success.
Then I tried local relevant news. My first two weeks on campus here at SJSU, I took a journalistic approach to covering on-campus events and other things affecting the SJSU student body. During that time, there was even a bomb scare. A BOMB SCARE!!!!!! And I covered it from the very beginning to the very end. From the first ribbon of yellow police tape, to the arrival of the bomb squad, to the final explosion. Yes, apparently, the way you find out if something will explode is by blowing it up. I posted real-time updates, building closures, and even got an exclusive picture of the San Jose Bomb Squad unleashing the San Jose Bomb Squad Robot!
I did not gain a single follower, nor a single retweet, or even a message from the school to stop using #GhettjoseStateUniversity.
Finally I decided to try being a whore. No, I wasn't selling my (pristine, super-sexy) body via tweet. I mean selling my brain and my posts to hot trending topics in the hopes of gaining followers by tweeting near-meaningless tweets about their favorite subjects (in this case, usually trade related: tech, advertising/marketing). This worked. Almost instantly I was bringing in all kinds of tech bloggers and journalists, even some dude named Christopher Rizzo who works for Edelman. I was also bringing in the trash, Twitter accounts owned by small companies selling shit software, scam artists, and random foreign people looking for a hot hand in America.
So if you're not a hot chick who posts a lot of bikini pictures, or an already established content-creator/actor/musician, the best way to gain followers is to be a Twitter whore.
-Chris Phillips
__Post-Script_
Other things I learned about Twitter:
- Positive tweets are more popular than negative tweets. Even if the positive tweets are completely meaningless, they are more likely to be retweeted.
- Unless the picture contains cats, food, clothes, or nudity, nobody cares.
- I'm good at Twitter fights.
- I'm not very good at being a Twitter whore.
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