For some reason, I suddenly got followed by a good dozen people on Twitter today.  I’m not really sure why or how they found me, but it was quite the mix of people I know, people I don’t know, and organizations I’ve never heard of.  Up until now, I could usually understand why someone would happen upon me, because I’d have a recent post that was related to something they are interested in.  However, today’s follows don’t quite make sense to me and I’ve been trying to find some sort of a pattern to it.  Is it because I posted a bunch of Twitpics yesterday?  Is it because of all the random links and resources I’ve been “tweeting” about?  What is driving traffic to my page?

I’ve been getting more and more into Twitter, happily sharing a slew of websites and articles of interest with my small audience.  Through the various outlets that I get my information from, I have so many things to share with the world at large!  I talk about anything from all the free offers at various stores to the cool new resources that are popping up left and right.  I have about twenty tabs open currently, with the sites that I want to share loaded so I can start putting them up one by one.  I am trying to space out my tweets so as to not overwhelm people with a whole page full of them, then stay quiet for a few days.  However, it does seem that I sometimes manage to accrue more to share by the end of each day than I manage to get out to the world.  I will have to start increasing the frequency of my updates!

With all this new activity, I have been slowly acquiring a larger follower base, with a stray add here and there.  For each user that follows me, I will go check out their profile to see what they are all about and usually pay their website a visit to decide if I’m interested in following them too.  I’m sure a lot of people follow people just so people will go see who they are and hopefully follow them back.  This is a great way for users to spread the word about their existence and try to lure people to their page in the hopes of catching some of their visitors’ interest and gaining another follower.  Every now and then I will get a few people who will stop following me and I know that it is because I was not intrigued by what they had to offer and decided to opt outof adding them to my growing list of people/groups to keep track of.

The powers of viral marketing are alive and well, but it seems that the social media outlets themselves aren’t faring as well.  Hmm.  Now there’s something to think about.  Nevertheless, the powers of grassroot marketing really do amaze me.  Just look what it can do for raising money for the homeless!  I’m still trying to understand how it works, why it works so well, and how I can maximize my desired exposure to the big, big world.  I tried sending out a message asking how people stumble upon me awhile ago when I was still fresh and just started to get random adds, but nobody responded, so I am less than enthusiastic about doing it again.  Perhaps I should give it a go anyway, since the numbers are greater now and there’s a better chance someone will reply to me and explain how they chanced upon little old me.