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Twitter bandwagon overcrowded and under-informed 3

Fundraising | Celina Ribeiro | 23 Jul 2009

I’ve blogged a fair bit about Twitter now. Blogging on a topic should not be mistaken for expertise – or competence in general - however, I believe I have a fair understanding of how Twitter works.

1. You set up an account.
2. You sign up to receive critical and informative updates from people and organisations you’re interested in - eg. I just had a great lunch with @X.
3. You keep your friends, fans and randoms updated with critical and interesting developments in the life of your organisation/self  - eg. Traffic is delayed on the M25 ;(.
4. (Optional) You become obsessed with points 2 and 3.

Straightforward, methinks. And with Twitter becoming one of the fastest growing destinations on the internet, it is no wonder that charities want to get involved – even if they don’t quite understand the above four tenets of Twitter.

One such charity is an American children’s cancer research centre, St Jude’s. The charity has set up a Twitter account @FundraiseStJude which plans to attract one million followers for no other reason than that when it does have one million followers, it will auction off its account to the highest bidder.

You can’t fault them for ambition. Or quirk - of which I am a fan. But the campaign seems to misunderstand the basic fact that people only follow Twitterers they are interested in seeing updates from. It will take a follower and supporter of St Jude’s all of five seconds to cease following the Twitterer if instead of St Jude’s updates, they start getting offers from Revlon or the like.

One million Twitter followers are absolutely worthless - if the reason of having them is for the sake of having them. They are not loyal, they are not obedient and they are not stupid. As Jon Waddingham pointed out in his blog last week, even Stephen Fry with his 670,000-odd followers cannot get his fans to do much more than pay attention to him.

In the rush to fundraise from Twitter not only has the sector been inundated with seminars, workshops and intensive courses, but clearly some have been blinded by the lights flashing 'NEXT BIG THING'. 

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Who's Who: Celina Ribeiro