Confessions of a desperate Twit
I’d hit virtual rock bottom. I begged Corey Worthington to ReTweet me. The Party Boy gave me a shout out and for a second there, I thought all of my social media problems had been solved. You see, I’ve developed an online inferiority complex as a result of failing to recruit Twitter followers fast enough. I’ve never had an issue making friends in real life and on Facebook, I frequently knock people back, I just couldn’t understand why it was so hard. When another erectile dysfunction spammer added me and I thought “Well, a follow is a follow”, I knew I had a problem.
My Twitter account was just over a month old and I had only 112 followers – following 164. These kind of statistics were really starting to affect my Tweego. Angelina’s right leg had more fans than I did, little known Chester Hanks (son of Colin Hanks) got 300 followers overnight just by posting shirtless photos of himself. Without taking off my top and 482 Tweets already under my belt, I endeavoured to go on a week- long Twitter binge to improve my following, trialling every trick in the book:
Following people – I tried to focus on people who would follow me back but just ended up adding a bunch of Major League Baseball players. Sigh. I also looked up a few friends, which made me a little resentful (and damaged my Tweego even further) when a few didn’t return the courtesy.
Trending – if people were talking about it, so was I, even if I didn’t have anything witty to say – from telling the world my #FirstWorldProblems to articulating #WhatAnnoysMe. Embarrassingly, I gushed about #OneDirection like a 13-year-old schoolgirl. I got my Facebook ‘Like’ finger out and rewteeted everything I could – even if I felt lukewarm about it.
Hashtagging – I #Hastagged the bejesus out of everything and this kind of got annoying. The habit crept in to my Facebook page and almost in regular speech #TwitterRookie.
Linking – I authorised my LinkedIn account up to publish my Tweets but this proved surprisingly high-maintenance. My potential future employers didn’t need to know that I ordered nachos to #GetInMyBelly last Thursday. There was a lot of back and forth editing. I also advertised my account on my Facebook page and gained an impressive five followers in an hour.
Word of mouth – I endeavoured to bring up Twitter in every conversation, not only to find out who I knew was on there, but how they gained their following. “Pass the stapler. Do you Tweet?” earnt me a strange look from my manager.
Publishing – I put out six articles during the week and published the links of Twitter, and directed them to certain people via my Tweets. This created more traffic on my website, and I think it scored me a few fans, especially when publications mentioned my stories on their Twitter pages.
After a week of putting myself out on the Twitter playground trying to make followers, I’d gained a solid 28. This isn’t including the five or so Ivana-Do-Naughty-Things-To-You spammers who slipped as quickly off my list as quickly as they had arrived.
I followed 42 people, clearly Sarah Silverman doesn’t realise how awesome I am, yet, however the gracious Tara Moss does and we all know a celebrity follow back counts as five ‘normal’ ones. The outcome wasn’t terrible but definitely not worth all that hard work; for now, I’ll just have to accept I’m no Twitter superstar, or Oscar winning appendage.
Note: Despite the revelations made in this article, @MissAnnaJames is still in fact, desperate. This article is her last ditch effort to gain a following.
