This month, I have been spending time looking at online tools that could help to enhance social campaigns and assist in reporting back with social ROI.
I have found it quite a minefield to identify useful Twitter tools that are both simple to set up and show clear advantages to using it. Blog posts with titles like “50 Twitter Tools You Must Be Using” have proven to open a can of cyber worms; nobody needs 50 online resources to use one social media platform effectively do they? I’m sure I will find out as I continue to plough on in my quest for the very best. I do hope that my subsequent blog post is more along the lines of “5 Twitter Tools You May Like to Use” (I don’t like to be too forceful).
Wefollow.com has a very easy set up, it’s free and the design is nice and simple with a clear navigation, therefore I thought we could start here.
What’s Wefollow.com About?
Wefollow.com is a directory site that allows you to sort through users via their interests. Not just for Twitter, this directory can be used as a tool for Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram too. By knowing people’s interests off the bat you can reach out to others in the industry and potential customers you know are already at least lukewarm to the idea of your product or service.
How is it Different from a Normal Twitter Search?
On the face of it, searching by interest isn’t really radical as you can do this directly on Twitter anyway through the existing search function and through searching specific hash tags within your topic of interest. What is different is the prominence scores offered by Wefollow.com. These prominence scores allow you to see who are the most “prominent” people within that interest category. Below are my current prominence scores (they are out of 100; I clearly have work to do).
When you search, you can do so by their prominence score which is fantastic as you may wish to connect with industry leaders therefore you can search for the high scorers, or you may wish to discover new kids on the block to reach out to, so you can search for the lower end of the spectrum instead. These scores are calculated by an algorithm similar to PageRank and the reason for this is that it takes into consideration the prominence of those that follow you as well as your own status within the interest category.
Does it Improve Following?
I set up my account on 8th May and instantly noticed an increase of followers. I gained 15 followers in 7 days. The week before setting up on Wefollow.com I had a total of 4 new followers. Whilst still modest numbers, the quality of the followers I have gained is what has really jumped out as being a huge benefit of setting up the account. Out of the 15 followers, every person has an interest listed in the same vein as the interests I have listed for myself. This means not only are they legitimate, but they are also valuable to me for building strong online connections within my industry and my other interests.
When it comes to following others, one of the features of Wefollow is that it allows you to view their prominence scores on one tab and their social activity on another. Here’s the top of my social activity page on Wefollow;
Essentially, this means I can be summed up in a nutshell easily without a person even having to touch Twitter in order to assess if I’m a spam bot or a real person. Of course, what this means for me is that I have access to the various tweets of other industry tweeters incredibly easily too, helping me to start following relevant, useful and real people instantaneously.
Summing it Up
Best Feature: Searching by prominence score for users across different platforms, not just Twitter.
Worst Feature: The blog is not updated as often as I would like to see and its topics are all over the show. Wefollow.com is incredibly simple but echoing this in the blog makes it seem a little disorganised rather than neat and tidy. Categories and increased, valuable posts would be a welcome addition.
Action: Go ahead and spend a few minutes setting up here. It’s worth the time and it’s completely free. From this you can start searching users, list yourself under the most appropriate categories and view your own prominence scores, returned to you in minutes after signing up.
