How To Get Followed On Twitter
April 13, 2010 at 9:29 am
Apart from the obvious – quality tweets – here’s what I look for when perusing follow lists and deciding whether or not to follow someone on Twitter:
- Location - fill it in, tell people where you are.
- Your last tweet will display when browsing lists of other people’s followers. I just followed someone whose last tweet was “can you tweet from prison?”! It kind of grabbed my attention. Similarly, if your last tweet is “duuuuddde…..” it’s unlikely you’ll get followed (by me).
- When was your last tweet? If it was more than a couple of days ago I don’t want to know you.
- Avatar - I’ll glance at. If your avatar is a default Twitter one or a potential porn merchant I won’t follow.
If I’m looking at you on Tweetdeck, I’ll click ‘view profile’ and have a look at all your recent tweets.
- If you use hash tags all the time, I don’t want to know. Useless filling up of space and irritating for your followers.
- If you only Retweet others I might think you’re a bot, so no thank you.
- If you only ‘open the conversation’, ie. do not reply to people or generally chit chat, then I’ll think you’re a PR company tweeting on behalf of your client (but one who doesn’t really get it… ) – then I’ll choose to just take your client’s RSS feed. After all what’s the difference?
Generally I’m looking for someone who has something to say, is there and is not hawking a product.
If this sounds like you, and I’m not following you (check it out here) - please tweet me using @maryrose and I’d be delighted to meet you! The only reason I’m not is because I turned off the ‘alert me when someone follows me notification’ a long time ago, so I fear I’m missing out on lots of potential new Twitter friends.
Tags: get followed on twitter, twitter followers strategy
More Wheel Spinning on Facebook
April 7, 2010 at 7:21 pm
This time from Yellowtail Shiraz. While we ran our very successful ‘spin the wheel’ app on Facebook for St Patricks Day, less than a month later (about the time it took us to develop our app), Yellowtail have their own spin the wheel app on Facebook. I guess imitation is the most sincerest form of flattery. I will be interested to see if they manage to up their fans from the current 425 to 18,950 (like what we did!)
Here’s our Spin The Wheel app:
And here’s the other one:
Design wise they are not the same (our brief was to be ever so slightly tacky – and we achieved that!) – but conceptually it’s one and the same. I wonder is this an example of collective consciousness? Where certain motifs, images, and things just enter into the public consciousness without us knowing where from? Or maybe I’m just being generous and it’s more like imitation? Who knows.
Tags: imitation is flattery?, tourism ireland facebook app, yellowtail shiraz facebook app
Robert Winston in the Science Gallery This Thursday
April 1, 2010 at 5:14 pm
I have a science hero and he’s coming to Dublin’s Science Gallery next week. Whoever comes up with the talks and speakers down there needs a prize, they’re always interesting to a wide and varied audience. You might know Robert Winston not as a gangster actor but as the mustachoio’ed gentleman who presented “Child of Our Time” on BBC TV around 2000. He’s in town next Thurs (8 April) giving a talk about:
BAD IDEAS? An arresting history of our bad inventions
Professor Winston will take a fresh look at man’s greatest discoveries and innovations and asks whether our dependence on science and technology has led us into a precarious situation which is doomed to become worse before it gets better? As well as tracing the history and fall-out of our very worst ideas, he also advocates the merits of scientific progres.
Professor Winston has an international reputation for his researches into human reproduction and has pioneered advances widely used in fertility and IVF treatment. He is committed to scientific education and regularly writes or hosts popular science programmes for the BBC, Discovery and ABC networks.
I’m personally interested for two reasons:
- I am surprised that it’s not possible to save stem cells from the placenta when one has a baby in this country. I would have thought that if the technology is available that people would go for it. I see it as an insurance policy against awful diseases that mother nature can throw at your little one, but it seems I’m alone in my thinking. I wonder what Robert has to say on this subject – I shall listen carefully.
- I love learning about child psychology and when Prof Winston’s “Child of Our Time” was on BBC some years ago I watched it religiously. I’ve even been known to quote some of the experiments! Now that I’m about to have my own child, I’ve been trying to get a hold of a copy of this DVD – but have not been able to. Not even Dublin City Library has a copy – or the dustiest corners of Ebay. If you know of anyone who has a copy of Child of Our Time, please lend it to me.
UPDATE: how funny and Freudian… I just wrote the whole post about Ray Winston coming to town thinking “I mustn’t mix up Ray and Robert cos it’ll make me look really stoopid… it’s alright to do that kind of thing in my head, but no way in blogland” – until John Braine (check out his blog – the pic re. the passport office is so funny!) kindly pointed out the error of my ways. Just so you get how poles apart these two are, here’s Ray (on the left) and a rather more kindly looking Robert (on the right). I’m playing the Pregnancy Brain card on this one. 
Tags: child psychology, Prof Ray Winston, Science Gallery Dublin
