First 40 Follow – A Twitter Strategy for Quality Followers

This is a guest post by David Druckenmiller, producer & editor of video, television and documentary film

"First 40 Follow" - a simple twitter strategy

If you have an established twitter account and a good bit of interesting updates, here is a way of having some great  fun with Twitter and gaining relevant followers pretty quickly. This is not automated or rocket science … just basic human psychology.  Nearly all twitter users have an INTENSE need to be NEEDED and also like to follow interesting twitterees … so this could be one way to grow your base.  (In the last week I went from 150 to 420 followers, with I’d say about 60% or so of these new followers being relevant and interesting.)

1 - Find the people you consider to be your "go to" twitter followers or users you follow and that you like their stuff, i.e. they are like minded, in the same line of work, interesting, etc. etc., whatever your main criteria for judging twitter users are.  Now, go to one of your "go to" user’s page using the standard twitter web viewer. 

 i.e.:  http://twitter.com/KentBeatty

2 - Hit the person’s "FOLLOWERS" link. 

(This displays the last twenty people that decided to follow this user, in the order they signed up)

example:   http://twitter.com/KentBeatty/followers

3 - Scroll down to the bottom of the page, hit the "next" button.

(This displays the second to last twenty people that have chosen to follow this user, in the order they signed up)

example: http://twitter.com/KentBeatty/followers?page=2

4 - Now look at the number above, how many users does this person follow.

In this case 440.

Divide 440 by 20, that equals 22.

5 - Now lets go the the page that reveals the first users that decided to follow KentBeatty.

Take the number above, (rounded up if needed) 22 and put that number at the end of the URL address in the command line of the browser.

For example:  http://twitter.com/KentBeatty/followers?page=22

(In this case, what you see now is the first 20 people that decided to follow this user.  The first follower for this user was @chrisabraham)

I’ve found that in nearly every case, there is strong probability the first 40 or so users that follow a user are pretty similar in interest to that person you have an interest in … or they are a close friend or family member.  These are the user’s early followers.  

Follow these first 40 and see what happens.

6 - Now do the same thing for this user’s  "FOLLOWING" list.  Perhaps EVEN MORE TELLING … these are the users that this user decided to follow first when they first started their twitter account.  Again, a strong probability that these users are very similar to your interests, in some cases they are the very reason this user originally bought into twitter.  Follow these first 40 and see what happens.   (I had to turn off my email notification of new followers, getting too many)

NOTE: The "First 40 Follow" strategy doesn’t seem to work on really huge numbers of followers, (anything above 10,000/20=500 as the URL page number ) not sure why …   For example I tried to see who was the first follower of @aplusk but twitter would not pull up this page.  I did see however the first user he followed was @kevinrose.

Put a little time into doing this and see a rapid increase in, not just quantity, but quality of your followers and those you choose to follow.

Good luck

David Druckenmiller

Bio producer & editor of video, television and documentary film

Follow David on:  Twitter 

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