Picture yourself as a Twitter user. You’re in a “Content Discovery” state of mind, browsing around popular tweets. You stumble upon someone interesting. Do you “Follow”?
What goes through your mind: Who is this person? What have they written about themselves? How many tweets have they posted? Over what period of time? And most importantly: How many followers does this user have? Who are *they* and where are *they* from.
Now – back to the question that we originally asked: Should you buy twitter followers?
It’s all about moderation. And it’s got to be combined with a overall Twitter strategy.
For instance, if you’re really just starting out, paying $5 for a *reasonable* number of fake followers (1000-5000) makes sense. It will really help your traction at the beginning. People will be more likely to follow you if you have 1K followers already, than if you have 0.
That said, there are users who will take a closer look at who your followers are. If they notice a ton of non-existing people, they’ll pass on the offer to follow you.
The hybrid approach is to leverage a reasonable amount of fake following to start attracting real followers. Over time, the original fake ones will become a small percentage of your overall followers. At that point, the segment of the Twitter population that actually cares *who* is following you will be less likely to notice your original fake ones. You could even go ahead and “block” the fake followers down the road, once you do have that traction.
But how do you attract the real users once you do have the 1K fake ones? That’s a matter of writing interesting content on issues relevant to the user base you’re trying to attract. This may include topics in today’s news, your opinion on the latest gadgets, or links to other people’s blogs. It could be periodic retweets, or responses to what other people tweet about. Keep a steady amount of tweets rolling each and every day, and you’ll slowly but surely build the real user base of your dreams.
The author is a co-founder and CEO of http://www.couponroller.com