• Audience Development Specialists
  • Home
  • About
    • FAQ
    • Our People
    • Clients
    • Press
    • Testimonials
  • Blog
  • Contact

Audience development and Twitter tools – Friend or Follow?

Posted by Shoshana 
· Saturday, January 8th, 2011 

I found a new Twitter tool this week I wanted to share with everyone. It is called FriendorFollow.  This little Twitter app makes it easy to categorize your twitter people into three categories:

1. Who you Follow – this section shows you who you follow that is not following you.

2. Who is your Fan – these are tweeps that follow you, but you do not follow back.

3. Who is your Friend – the people that you follow and who follow you back.

Of course everyone wants more friends than anything else, right?  Maybe, maybe not.  I see that many celebrity accounts or other people in the public eye mainly have fans.  It is okay to follow people that do not follow you back if they have good information for you.  It is also okay if people follow you and you do not follow back.  Perhaps you have helpful and fun tweets for them, but maybe this offering does not work  in reverse.

However, if you are in the arts, the best case scenario is to have a majority of Friends.  If you are an artist or arts organization that only has Fans, this means you are not engaging with your followers, and you are simply marketing and missing the point of the two way interaction of Twitter.

Twitter is meant to be interactive, and if you are still not using Twitter in this fashion, you may want to reconsider how you tweet.  I do want to point out that you will not want to get unbalanced the other direction either.  If you only interact or only retweet, people are not going to see enough value in your tweets for them.

The best recipe is to have a cup of valuable information, a 1/2 cup of interaction or conversation and a tablespoon of retweets.  You can add a dash of marketing, but do use sparingly or your twitter account will become a spamming bore.

This recipe has served me well, and I am happy to report that the majority of my twitter folks are Friends, which I found out when I used FriendorFollow.  If you want an audience that is more involved and supportive, become Friends with your twitter folks too.

Happy improved tweeting to all!

Cheers to happy and loyal audiences,

Shoshana

Shoshana Fanizza
Audience Development Specialists
https://www.buildmyaudience.com

FacebookTwitterLinkedinE-News

“Never treat your audience as customers, always as partners.”
~James Stewart

Workshops are available!

Does your arts organization or artists group need some new energy?  Our workshops can generate enthusiasm for audience development.

Contact us for more information!

Hourly Phone Sessions – Do you have a question about audience development or need feedback or advice on a project or challenge?  ADS can help!

Donate to the Audience Development Specialists Grant Fund!

YouTube Gallery – Do you have an amazing way you use YouTube to promote your art?  Let ADS know, and you might see your YouTube highlighted on our new gallery!

More Posts:
« Audience Development Specialists – 2011 resolution for new direction!
Ramblings of audience development, “Resuscitating Art Music” and MLK day »
Categories : Audience Development, Management, Marketing
Tags : arts and twitter, Audience Development, audience development discussion, audience development ideas, building relationships, Change, Management

Comments

  1. Das Twitter-Rezept « Das Kulturmanagement Blog says:
    February 4, 2011 at 8:02 am

    […] für ihre Follower zu interessieren und folgen ihnen meist nicht zurück. In ihrem Blogpost „Audience development and Twitter tools – Friend or Follow?“ spricht Shoshana Fanizza dieses Thema an und zeigt wenig Verständnis für diese Haltung: […]

ADS Founder — Shoshana Fanizza

Search the blog:

Archives

Testimonials

Charlotte LaSasso

“Boulder County Arts Alliance hired Shoshana to present a series of workshops. They were fabulous! Very well received and packed with useful and new information. The best part was I have been able to apply Shoshana's methods with very positive results. If increasing your audience is your goal, there's no question Shoshana will make it happen.” —Charlotte LaSasso, Executive Director of Boulder County Arts Alliance

Tip Jar

Find this valuable?

  • Donation amount
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Blogs We Love:

Purchase Our Books!

The How of Audience Development for the Arts — ebook

Categories:

Advocacy ARTicles Arts Audience Development Fundraising fund raising Idea Database Management Marketing News Podcast Social Media Technology Volunteer Management

Latest Blogs

It’s about the people!
Random Audience Development Thoughts, vol. 6
What can Simone Biles teach arts nonprofits about mental health?
How to heal the arts
Audience Development Specialists
Copyright © 2025 All Rights Reserved
Member of Americans for the Arts