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My wife asks all the hard questions!

This morning as I am telling her of my recent explosion in followers on Twitter, she asked “so why do people follow you anyway”

This is not an easy question to answer..

My thoughts on this are the subject of this post, and I think I may be onto something?

Firstly, I believe it has a lot to do with the 140 character format. Winston Churchill once made comment about the difficulty of penning a short speech versus a long speech…the shortness of our tweets forces us to be a little more thoughtful, hence there is often more meaning in the 140 chars.  More importantly though, I believe the 140 char format of Twitter brings out our real personality; and it is the real personality that people are attracted to and like to follow!

Related to this reasoning for the follow, is the simple fact that what someone has to say may just be entertaining, insightful or informative…

Maybe also, there is something here in about vanity “If I follow you, you will follow me, and therefore, I get more followers” - and this is true in some cases I am sure…especially for the so called ‘social media sluts’ who simply crave the largest number of connections with little meaning.

Finally, there is the the basic principle of Social Media…reciprocity and good manners..”you followed me, so I will follow you in return” (which does not always apply in my case - especially when internet marketers follow me).  This is one of the endearing natures of social media and social networking; everyone working together and striving to get along (mostly).

So if anyone asked you why people follow you on Twitter (or anywhere for that matter) how would you answer?

BTW - you can follow me here on Twitter

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