I Dance at a Pre-School Level and If Nobody Clicks your Link does a Tweet Make a Sound?

Today I learned:

1. I dance at a pre-school level:  I have never considered myself much of a dancer. Today I was presented with a wonderful opportunity to gauge my proficiency level.  With Mommy working, Daddy was on the clock for two dance classes this morning. The 2 year-old & parent participation class proved to be the most enlightening.

I rocked it.

Bunny hopping? Jumping on one foot? Rolling on the floor? Listening quietly to the teacher?  One class and it is clear I’ve got all that down cold. Maybe it’s not that I am a bad dancer so much as I have not been assessing myself against the correct criteria.

2. If Nobody Clicks your Link Does a Tweet Make a Sound? When I launched this blog I started a new twitter account (@twothingsblog) to accompany it. My initial intention was to experiment and try to see if I could engage an audience and bring them to the blog with a “passive” account. The strategy was simple:

• Tweet 1 time per day, posting the topics of the day and a short link (via automated WordPress functionality)
• Follow only a few random people initially
• Follow back anyone that follows me (aside from tweeps that were obviously porn fronts)

It didn’t take the MBA to know this strategy would ultimately fail, but I really didn’t think it would be so colossally unsuccessful.  One month in and I can report some statistics from my twitter account:

• 136 followers
• 34 tweets
• 13 re-tweets, seemingly all by bots
• Exactly zero people have clicked through

Lucky I was not trying to monetize this little blog experiment.

Based on my experience so far it seems I have located a colony of people that want to gain followers for no other reason than, I presume, ego-stroking. I don’t read their stuff and they don’t read mine. Seems a fair trade, but utterly wasteful for both of us.

This proved to me that, as I expected, a passive twitter account is not going to get you anywhere.  It might work for a few people with a tried and true message or those with a dedicated base outside twitter (e.g. @thisissethsblog), but if you are just starting out there is no substitute for hard work. Unless you engage others directly, and in a meaningful way, you are just another addition to the background noise.

It strikes me that the term “follower” is part of the problem. It seems relatively easy to gain followers, but that alone is not going to get you anywhere. If I was trying to promote a business via twitter I think I would try to redefine the term as “customers.” That might shift my perspective towards an approach that has more of a hope at being successful.

Time to develop a new Twitter strategy…or abandon the channel.