Category: Social Media

The pursuit of 2K followers on twitter

Lately, I have restarted using twitter, after a brief hiatus. The reasons for the hiatus would be reflected upon in a later post, but for the time being, I have a bigger and more perplexing problem to tackle. The problem of finding those elusive 36 more followers.

You see, at the time of writing this, I am followed by 1964 people on twitter. And I want to reach the magical number of 2000. The chase of 2k as a number looks very scary. A brief brain soul searching tells me that there are a few reasons why I could never get all those followers. Am making a list here…

  • I am not a wedding/event/fashion/animal/amateur/etc photographer. Am dont even talk about my flickr stream and I dont have a Facebook page where people can “fan” or “like” me. And since I have a Blackberry, I cant use Path or Instagram or Pinterest or one of those fancy services and talk about them.
  • I am not an entrepreneur and thus I cant ask all my employees and friends and relatives and neighbors to follow me and help me get more clients. And then once I get those clients, talk about how I made a difference to the life of the goldfish of client’s wife’s sister.
  • I am not funny. Not even remotely. Period.
  • I am not a social media expert. And that means that I have no opinion on anything. And that means that I cant pass fleeting comments encompassing everything from the beginning of time and then relate those to why I should be tweeting this or that. And I cant thus take a jab at folly of brands and businesses.
  • I refuse to engage in various gimmicks that brand manager plan and throw out as bait to the unsuspecting twitter users so that they could report that their brand is followed by a million people etc.   
  • I am not interested in IPL. Its just too much for my peanut sized brain to be honest. There is overload of everything. Information, excitement, jealousy, anger, confusion etc. Name an emotion and IPL has that in abundance. And I cant process that. And that means that since I dont tweet about how IPL is causing a war in my family because everyone supports a different team, I wont be featured by a TV channel and I wont become famous and I wont have new followers.
  • I refuse to participate in trolls. Ofcourse I use a million hashtags but I dont think I have participated in #whenIWasYoung, #itHappensInIndia, #IPL, #kfBeerUp etc. And as a result I dont make friends on twitter and otherwise. (note to self, talk about Kingfisher in a separate post)
  • I am not a journalist. Yet. And as a result I dont have people trying to make friends with me, hoping to get free passes to IPL and other such dos. 
  • I dont booze and thus I dont have my timeline full of drunk tweets abusing everyone for everything. 
  • And finally, I am not a celeb. I am not a film actor (not even an extra), I am not a cricketer (even of yesteryears), I am not a CEO of a large business group (not even a startup), I am not a VC. And as a result I am stuck at 1964!

So if I dont do any of those, why my friend, why am I on twitter? Because I like to post things that I am upto. Irrespective of what people think about them. Irrespective of what opinion or comment they illicit.

And then why would you want to chase 2K followers? Well, its a good number and I want to put that on my CV. And more people who follow you, more opportunities to know new things!  And who knows, I may even get famous some day?

Guess this is it for a Sunday rant! I just hope that this post helps me reach the magic number. And if not that, at least does not make some of those 1964 unfollow me! 

And no, this post is not part of Project 1000. Not yet. 

Hello @altSG

Say hello to @altSG. Its my new twitter handle (apart from @Saurabh) and over time I plan to make it my primary twitter handle.

Why would I do this?
Simple. Work vs play. And respect.

There are tons of interesting people that follow @Saurabh. Most of these are serious people with stable day jobs and a million things on their heads. In short, they would be busy. And since I dont really want to crowd their timelines with noise, I’d rather move my frivolities to some place else. A place like @altSG.

So, at @Saurabh, I’d talk about things that people want to read. It will eventually become my brand, my portfolio and my CV. It will become my voice. It will become my identity on the Internet. So, amongst other things, I would talk about advertising, branding, writing, marketing, poker, travel etc. I’d talk about things that I am trying to explore. I’d talk about things that I am trying to learn. Things that may get me work and an opportunity to interact with interesting people. Things that get me that all important foot in the door.

One the other hand, I’d use @altSG as my personal handle. The way I use @Saurabh right now. I would post things that most of the world will not be interested in. Mundane, miscellaneous, insignificant updates from my life. Things like what I am eating, where am I driving to next, how I felt after that bad beat etc. I expect just a few close friends and some bots to follow me on @altSG.

I guess thats about it. To summarize, I would be at @altSG and my brand would be at @Saurabh. Or vice versa. You can never trust Internet with these things!

Tweetup at Rangsharda

Met Anaggh (@anaggh), Asfaq (@asfaq), Kapil (@kapilb), Netra (@netra) and Sampad (@sampad) for a mini tweetup at Rangsharda yesterday. Along with the lovely view of the sea and full moon shining on us, we had an awesome discussion on social media (which i dint understand a bit), life (where I tried talking), businesses (heard and tried to remember everything), people (all sorts of), places to honeymoon (Sampad was more than curious and Anaggh was more than willing to share his knowledge) and other things that I have forgotten.

I had so much fun that I am sure I want to do more of these from next time on. And if you are wondering, I am @Saurabh on twitter.