Scott Porad

For awhile now, I’ve felt like there is a problem when someone follows me on Twitter.  The act of their follow is a tremendous compliment, but it’s too easy for that compliment to go unacknowledged.  I felt like I wanted a way to acknowledge their follow genuinely.

In addition to somehow expressing my gratitude for their follow in a genuine way, I wanted to get to know the person a bit too.  If I were at a cocktail party, and a circle of people were standing around listening to what I was saying, I would introduce myself and ask their name.  Why should it be any different in the giant online cocktail party known as Twitter?

Many people acknowledge a follow with an auto-DM response.  And, many, many people think this is lame.  I considered using an auto-DM response to a follow with my contact information, along these lines:

Thanks for following me.  If you ever want to get in touch, you can reach me at http://scottporad.com/contact

but I decided that was cheezy.  Plus, if they really wanted to contact me, it isn’t all that hard to do so through Twitter.  And, that didn’t really tell me anything about them at all…it just told them more about me.

For about the last week, I’ve been trying something new, and it’s been working well, so I’d like to share with you:

• A few times a day I visit my follower list
• For each new person follows me, I click to view their tweet stream.
• I read a page or two of tweets.
• I may follow a link if they’ve shared one.
• And, if I find something that is interesting or engaging I respond.
• However, I don’t say “thanks for the follow”…I’m not responding as a thanks for their follow.  I’m responding because they’ve said something that has engaged me.
• Sometimes these responses lead to conversations, sometimes they don’t.

I have to tell you, this feels really good.  I feel like I’m developing a real, genuine rapport with people who were kind enough to follow me, and I feel like I’m getting to know them a little too.

I’ve been enjoying it so much, that I’ve been thinking of building a special tool that will make the process more efficient.  Twitter doesn’t really have smooth UX for this type of thing, so a single-task tool could help.  I thought it would be fun as a project to learn how to use Google App Engine, but I don’t really have the time right now.  If you’re interested in building something like this, send me a note and I’ll share my idea with you in more detail.