Is Twitter Real?

I happen to manage a few social media accounts for our properties and of course, for myself. What is so ironic about this is that I knew nothing of this a few years ago. So, what did I do? I started my own personal Twitter account and started following some highly respected and very knowledgeable industry professionals. I found myself participating in a 4:00 pm Friday afternoon apartment Chat with these multifamily marketing professionals and I started taking notes and paying attention to how they post content, etc. Their support was and still is invaluable to me.

Then I started reading their posts and following their links to articles on improving SEO, getting creative in content marketing, and learning how to use some of the great tools available to everyone to manage account posts. Now, I am not an expert. I am not a guru on this stuff and likely never will be. I find Twitter to be insanely informative and supportive of spreading the good news in our multifamily world (which it kind of turns out is a small world, after all.)

What really rocked my world was discovering another section of real estate professionals: Realtors, investors, marketers, media experts, bloggers and developers who formed a morning Chat group. There are others who also join in and it has become a fun time. Occasionally, the group has informal conversations at other times of the day as well, and people tweet as they can. Sometimes, the discussions may turn serious depending on someone mentioning personal circumstances. All in all, it is a relaxed, no pressure thing designed to bolster people who may have lost a deal or just need a word of encouragement.

Recently, I began to notice that some people being “introduced” to our group were really vaguely familiar so I investigated a bit. These “newbies” were really extensions of current Tweeters who were singling me out in a “conversation” and attaching all their other personae to their tweets.  Huh? Then I began getting “followed” by all these people who wanted me to buy followers from them. Double HUH?

“Why would anyone buy followers? Vanity? To make themselves look bigger and more engaged than the competition? To look like they have greater marketing reach than they actually do?” Chris Jones asked in an online article back in 2013.

I don’t know about you, but this is not how I intended to use Twitter. I do not want to connect to people who are not sincere and who are in fact not even real people. For the accounts I manage, they are not linked as followers to my personal account. I can't think of a reason to do this. I also have to question the sanity of someone who hosts “conversations” between their personal account and all their fake accounts – isn’t that the very definition of associative identity disorder? If blocking and unfollowing these insane people is the only answer, then at least there is that.I wonder, is this the intention of Twitter?