This morning I felt like writing something to brighten the day of my fellow marketers on Twitter. After-all, if you can't laugh at yourself...
Marketers like to segment things, to make groupings, to profile, to classify, so it's fitting to poke some fun at ourselves from time to time using the same methodology...
The following is a list of the 6 most common types of Marketers on Twitter.
The Lurker
A sneaky little marketer, Lurkers are probably following you right now and you don't really know it. They're those strange people who follow you, but never, ever tweet anything.
The Scammer
Ah, the Scammer... These can be identified by the fact that they claim to have two kids, are proud of that fact, are ‘social marketing experts' and their claim that they can help you make millions using twitter. Scammers can also be identified by the fact that they have thousands of followers (for which they paid), but have tweeted nothing interesting, relevant, or worthy of the fact.
The ReTweeter
These are the most common of all marketers, and can be found retweeting dozens of linked tweets per hour. Everything from: RT @Someone 10 Twitter tips to optimise your on-line strategy, to: RT @Someone Forester announces their latest graph.
The ReTweeter loves looking for interesting and shiny things on the web, and when they find it, they enthusiastically share it with the world. These also very rarely tweet something original which they wrote themselves.
You can tell a ReTweeter by the fact that every single tweet they post finishes with a bit.ly link. It's good to have a few of these in your repertoire. Too many though, and their tweets become redundant.
The Collector
I follow you, you follow me, I follow you, you follow me, you not follow me, I not follow you. The most useless of all marketers (and I use the word 'marketer' loosely). The Collector has issues and uses the quantity of followers as a way to stroke his ego. Look at me! I have 27,000 followers! That's how good you should think I am! Of course, the Collector's followers all useless bots, autofollows, and other Collectors, but it makes the Collector feel good to see that number go up. Reminds me of people who try to overcompensate for some, er, shortcoming or other...
The Helper
One of the best types of Marketers to have following you. A joyful and collaborative Marketer that spontaneously replies with helpful tips to all your marketing questions. The Helper is best defined by the ‘Reply': "@Helper Hey! Thanks for the advice!"
The Professional
Real people who are experts in their field. These can be identified by the pang of envy that you feel while looking at who follows them. They know it's not about ‘quantity' of followers but about ‘quality'. These Professionals have nothing to prove on Twitter, their ‘off-twitter' success and accomplishments speak for themselves. Having one of these follow you is a real honour, and for marketers, it feels just like if @BrentSpiner or @WilliamShatner decided to follow a Star Trek fan.
Professionals retweet when they find something ‘new' that the ReTweeters haven't yet found, but are not only simple ReTweeters, they engage their followers, they have conversations with them, they ‘prove' daily with their actions, statement, and comments who they are, and what their contribution to their field is.
The Professional Marketer has figured out that ‘pull' works on Twitter. They don't go ‘hunting' for followers, the followers come to them.
I hope you enjoyed this little irreverent look at our industry, I think I'll expand on this subject one day, but for now, the funnies will do.
Have a great day from the Team here at Exo.
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