Twitter has gone mainstream. It is no longer the bastion of the networked and tech crowd. The good thing is that more people are using the service but the bad thing is that it drawing the attention of marketers that don’t get it or what we like to call spammers.
So what is the true value of Twitter click-thru traffic? I believe it goes beyond just clicks but to brand building, conversation and support. Techcrunch reported that even though their referrals went up in January 2009 when Twitter suggested to follow them when signing up for a new account that traffic went down the following month. What it did was introduce new users to Techcrunch but overall the new followers were not the core audience hence the drop in traffic. Are these no followers bad? No, but they need to figure out how to create value in their tweets for those people too. It might not be doable since you might be alienating the core audience by trying to appeal to a wider group.
So what does an artist do? Build your base and develop a following of people truly interested in what you have to say. Be genuine and talk with people. It might be slow but the results will be surprising.
