What is the Obsession with having More Followers?
Is reach more important than intimacy?
Checking my Twitter this morning I ran into a username, which looked familiar.
I was being followed by @kresspr, which apparently seems to be the Twitter name for local Kress Stores (local retail store).
Here is a Retro Commercial for Kress Stores for those of you who might have seen many years ago.
I am sure that their purpose is reaching out to everyone but are they really being effective.
After spending two very productive days at the http://inboundmarketingsummit it really bothers me that many people decide to force their online presence on you. Instead of trying to get in touch with people that are interested in them they decide to bombard people in the follow ways:
Email Spam – They sent you an email at least weekly about products you don’t really care much about. When you request them to remove you from their list they never do you end up moving them to your spam folder.
A good example is an email I receive at least weekly which I never subscribed too from the local Municipality of Caguas and have made multiple attempts to get myself off the mailing list. (click on following images for better resolution)
Message Sent to Spammer:
Emails Sent to “Spammer”
As you can see on the above image my last two attempts to get myself unsubscribed where in July and my second attempt was in the beggining of September but till this date I keep receiving the same email with no interesting content.
Following everyone on twitter – When you see the amount of followers they are following vs. the amount of followers it is completely disproportional.
They follow you & once you follow them back they unfollow you – Since some Twitter metrics software use the ration of Following/Followers to measure influence (which is completely superficial in most cases) some users have decided to unfollow people to make themselves seem more important.
They go on other Facebook Like pages and leave links and advertisements (spam) with the purpose of having users visit their website.
Creating personal profiles for business accounts. That is what Facebook Groups and Like Pages are for to create community.
Getting back to @kresspr I choose this one as an example for areas where they need to improve if they really want to get any benefit out of using twitter specifically:
More Followings than Followers: As you see at the time I wrote this post there where very few followers (9) including me since I followed them to establish private communication to ask them a few questions.
Tweets with no Context or Value to their Users: Out of the 4 tweets I read 3 where about the new website launch which still has not happened and the other tweet was about their store displays. I don’t see how you can relate to new customers by posting store displays.
Approached people without any relationship: The only few times I have gone into a Kress store was when my old high school friend use to work there.
What I would do to enhance @kresspr twitter’s presence?
Here are my following thoughts on how I would approach this!
Engaging people with established relationships. Kress is well known brand they should use there leverage with existing clients by doing the following:
- Adding there twitter username on a client receipt or even set up an area of their soon to be updated website for social media inviting people to follow them on the corresponding accounts.
- Making a special event or offers related to people that follow them. Make sure to be creative so many of these events fail because they are more focused on the company than on the followers.
Creating updates or Tweets with value to their followers: Create updates that bring value to prospective customers or people following you online. Examples are:
- Fashion tips related to the newest trends related to what they have in their inventory.
- On how to take care of items you purchase example: 10 tips for making your stuff last longer.
Focusing on Intimacy within the community. One of the key points I was able to grasp was on the importance of creating a better relationship with your followers and community and not focusing on reaching many followers. Once you have created a tight bond with your followers it will be easier and more effective to get your message across most channels.
Make sure to follow Platform Guidelines. Every platform does have guidelines for users to follow. If you use these rules you should be pretty much safe from engaging most inappropriate online behaviour.
I really wish @kresspr a lot of success with there new website and new media presence.
It would be great if they could improve on the following points, which might help them, take a different approach. I took the time to write this post because I does give me satisfaction when local businesses succeed but on the other side it worries (and annoys) me when I can identify many issues in a company trying to push there brand on myself and others.
I still have a few more ideas on how to help @kresspr I might discuss them on another post using other examples because @kresspr is not alone!
What other issues do you see?
What would be a simple straightforward solution into someone taking this approach?