Comments on: How (and why) to auto-follow people on Twitter

By: John Haydon

John Haydon — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 04:08:34 +0000

You have to set up the filtering a bit better.

By: frank barry

frank barry — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 02:22:11 +0000

That was a useful response John

@bearsonpatrol …. search for things that you or your nonprofit are interested in, programs you run, events you put on, ways you help people, etc. That should get you off to a good start. Refine from there.

ps. nice info John. I'm checking out SocialOomph right now … but 30 bucks a month to use all the most useful features … not sure if it's worth it? What's your take?

http://twitter.com/franswaa

By: Lucas

Lucas — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 01:03:24 +0000

Nicole – I'm really interested in your thoughts about automating tools for Twitter. I think your concerns about auto-following are reasonable in theory but think the advances in Twitter technology have provided numerous ways for those concerns to be assuaged. Twitter lists, for example, provide the perfect solution for keeping up with the people you follow. I use multiple columns with TweetDeck, with my first one being everyone I follow and the others being various categories. While I've never used any auto-follow tools, I've followed way too many people to remember them all. Every so often, I sport a good tweet on my “everyone” list that results in me moving that person into another list. I could work the same way when someone's suing auto-follow.

I'm also curious about your thoughts on scheduling tweets.

By: John Haydon

John Haydon — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 06:07:04 +0000

By: BearsOnPatrol

BearsOnPatrol — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 18:23:16 +0000

I'm trying the trial version of SocialOomph right now. It's easy to use, except that I'm not sure which keywords to use. I'm getting a lot of recommendations for other nonprofits, and (unfortunately) people named Charity.

By: John Haydon

John Haydon — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 20:38:41 +0000

Nicole – absolutely! SocialOomph has a vetting process you go through where
you manually pick who to follow out of the ones that were automatically
found. You can, of course, automatically follow based on a series of rules.

By: John Haydon

John Haydon — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 20:36:01 +0000

Looking forward to that day! Compliments like that from you make my day!

By: Nicole McCleaf

Nicole McCleaf — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 01:46:27 +0000

I'm not a huge fan of auto anything on Twitter (auto follow, auto DMs, or even scheduled tweets to some degree), though it can be convenient. I think knowing who you are following is important in building relationships with the goal to cultivate a more in depth relationship over time. Also, a concern is auto-following folks or organizations who may not at all be aligned with your organization's mission or may be too political.

If folks decide to use an auto-follow tool, I suggest checking often to see who you are auto-following.

By: JonAston

JonAston — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 23:19:57 +0000

Johnny… You are such a wealth of valuable information. This is the most useful “How To” post I've read about using twitter in a long time. One day, I'm going to have to buy you a beer.