When someone new follows me, I get an e-mail from Topify that includes the person’s bio, the number of people they follow/number of followers, their location and their last five tweets.
Although I don’t follow a lot of people back, this information is always interesting, mostly because it is intriguing about why these people are following me. Is it the tweets being posting? Is it keywords that are being picked up? Or maybe the fact I work within the social media world.
Another curiosity is looking at the industries in which these people work. This morning, for example, a dentist and Indian builder became followers. In the past couple of weeks, there has also been a healthy number of steak houses come on board, although invitations to come at eat their restaurants have sadly not emerged.
The reasons why people follow other people is another one of those Twitter mysteries. In some respects, it is likely no different than the variety of people who read newspapers. On the other hand, however, Twitter is a personal medium in the sense that you follow somebody as opposed to something.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s always nice to see the follower flock increase in numbers but sometimes you just wonder why they they decide to do so.
One Comment
I, on the other hand, don't have that many followers. About one every other day (sometimes week, lol).
But I usually know why they're following me. It's usually the keyword pick up. Love it when it got me what I call genuine followers, people with similar interest who I can talk to. Less exciting if it got me business accounts.
Participating in hashtag discussion also gets me followers. I don't do the meme though – that's where everybody just wants to listen to themselves.