I was recently talking with Chris Abraham about the types of people that use Twitter; and yes I know that there have been lots of blog posts on the subject. But I’m a simple person who likes things to not be too complicated so I decided to take our conversation and dumb it down into three distinct types of users. There could be more but that’s for you to decide.
I look at Twitter Leaders to be those that: Engage others, that ask questions, that announce and alert others about upcoming events. They forward information that can help people. They Retweet info and tweets that are worth sharing. They share links and otherwise do the best they can about engaging worthwhile tweets, but they also have conversations, they bring value. In other words they are leaders.
Repeaters are just going to be forwarding and Retweeting machines. They are not so much into conversing as they are into giving off the semblance of having conversations. They will just read something and supply a link, read and retweet. They may give credit as to the source, they may not. They are using Twitter but they don’t know why. or they think they are using it properly but in actuality, they are not. They might be earnest, but they just don’t get it. They need to understand how to utilize it’s true potential.
The Feeders, might be better associated with bottom feeders. They are just taking whatever they “think” they can get from Twitter. They could care less about conversations. A sample bio from this type might be a cute name, or a company name associated with about 5 or 6 titles, one of which might be the word expert or ninja, and the Follower/Following/Tweets ratio will look something like this 200/5000/53. When looking at the tweets, you’ll see nothing of value and lots of messages that resemble some type of Google Adwords campaign. Zero value, zero relevance and ultiimately zero return on their time and effort.
What others could we add to this list?
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Marc,
I found this very helpful (I appreciate simplification!) I would add a bit to your definition of feeders. There are some fine folks out there on Twitter that use it as a news feed of interesting information and links, but are not inclined to join in the ‘conversation’ (either because they largely follow news feeds and business bots, or they simply have nothing to say). Still feeders, but not bottom dwellers?
Laura, sorry for the delay-but you’re right, feeders do not always have to be bottom feeders. Bottom dwellers is a much better definition!