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Comment by siong1987 | Hacker News Reader

siong1987

how about "Follow me on twitter here. I have x followers."?

But some people are going to respond negatively to large numbers (or at least very large). e.g.: if I see "I have 28,437 followers" I'm likely to think: okay, this is probably some Perez Hilton type person.

But if the info could be tailored more (e.g., "2,437 HN subscribers that follow me") I would be more interested. In other words, not everyone finds following the most massive crowd a sign of value.

Similarly, I wonder how some automated text like "11,399 people follow me on Twitter, you should too" would work.

I'm not familiar with Twitter, but would it be possible to have the site say something like:

"You're following X, Y, and Z, who are also following me; you should too."

I don't really like the tone I wrote, but you get the idea.

I'd word it like: "Join the 4,615 people following me on twitter _here_."

Maybe... "You should join my 4,615 followers on Twitter _here_."

'twitter' seems to be more effective than 'Twitter'. ;o)

Why not just go all out ;).

"You should join my 4,615 followers on Twitter _here_. Everybody uses it. All the interesting people follow me. You really need to follow me now. I can't believe you're reading this when you could already be following me. DO IT DO IT DO IT. Fine. Enjoy your miserable life without me and die alone. Don't you want to be popular and interesting?"

Probably not as well as notaddicted's suggestion below/above. People don't like being told they "should" do something, and it also presents a statement they can answer "No, I shouldn't" too. Ideally you'd need to ask an obvious "yes" question or just direct them to do something without allow them to think about it.

Number of followers is great for determining spamminess of an account, but mentioning the number of followers makes the message seem less personal. I would guess this would reduce its effectiveness, but I'm sure a quick test would provide harder evidence :)

Or the Cialdini route: "Can you follow me on twitter because I have X followers?"

"You should follow me on Twitter because I need to make some copies."

Am I doing it right?

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