Product Review: Twitter Follower Programs: Scam or The Real Deal?

I’ve been on Twitter now since last summer. My list of followers grew slowly but surely for several months until I got a little more proactive. Along the way, I’ve come across numerous tools, apps, courses and videos promising to send my number of followers through the roof.

A few months ago, I started seeing people tweeting “RT @garymccaffrey has a crazy idea. 19,530 new twitter followers in 30 days? Check it out http://tweetergetter.com/”. I knew what to expect but since I knew people would ask me about it, I checked it out. What I found was a free service that sounded like some kind of pyramid scheme. You follow others through his app and new people follow you. And when you sign up, you automatically Tweet the “@garymccaffrey has a crazy idea’ tweet. It was free so I signed up but it did absolutely nothing for me. I monitor my daily averages and Tweetergetter had 0 effect. I may have gotten a dozen new followers in total.

As far as I can tell, the lone beneficiary to Tweetergetter is Gary McCaffrey himself. His follower numbers probably increased by 19k in 30 days but that’s about it. Even worse, he’s what I call a Twitter snob. He’s got over 30k followers but is only following about 150 of them. I expect that from someone like Ashton Kutcher or Britney Spears but not from a guy that’s supposed to be helping people increase their Twitter traffic.

I’ve seen other copycats but I didnt’ bite.

On Monday, I sat down with someone I’d connected with on Twitter, Scott Allen. Scott is a social media wiz and a super nice guy. We have a couple of mutual friends and he messaged me suggesting we connect in person. I got to the meeting a bit early so I decided to pop over to Scott’s blog to find out more about him. I read about a Twitter traffic course Scott was recommending and also realized I’d met the guy that created it a few months ago at a networking event.

Scott told me a little about the course and highly recommended it so when I got home, I read the sales letter and paid $97 for the course called “Brute Force Twitter

Brute Force Twitter includes an ebook, 7 short downloadable videos and a 20+ minute audio interview with Rich Bryda, the author. The ebook contains a

Brute Force Twitter includes a number of strategies you can use to add followers but if you do nothing but what Rich calls the 5-minute loop, you can add 500-1.000 followers a day. The videos serve to demonstrate how each tactic works. The audio is really more of an overview, it doesnt’ add anything that isn’t in the book.

BFT is not a comprehensive how-to course on Twitter, it’s just about how to get followers. And since Rich is a low-tech, hands-on type of guy, you won’t get recommendations on how to automate any of the process or tips on favorite Twitter tools.

Automation wouldn’t be the way to go here anyway. The only tool I can think of that would be useful with BFT is TwitterKarma. Twitterkarma helps you determine who you’re following that’s not following you back and vice-versa. The problem is Twitterkarma is unreliable. Every time I’ve tried it, I’ve found numerous discrepancies in the ‘who I’m following that’s not following me back’ lists. Also, TwitterKarma won’t work at all if you’ve got over 10k followers.

You’d be better off hiring someone on Rentacoder or Odesk to handle this for you. Give them the videos and for a few hundred dollars, you could be over 10k with very little effort.

So, does Brute Force Twitter work? Let’s look at the results:

Twittercounter Results for Bill Hibbler

The image above is from Twittercounter.com. Their numbers are several hours behind. As I write this, I have 8,440 followers on Twitter. That’s approximately 3,000 more than I had on Monday night when I started applying Brute Force Twitter. I also tested it on two brand-new accounts for clients. I built one up to 1700+ in about 48 hours and the other to 899 in about 24 hours. (Update: Twitter recently changed their system so that you’re unlikely to exceed 1,000 followers per day. BFT has now helped me get to over 12,000 followers)

So, Brute Force Twitter definitely works for both people that already have a substantial following and for Twitter beginners, too. BFT does require an investment of time, though. It isn’t some pushbutton gimmick. You actually have to spend some time on it. I found that it took a little more time than I expected but it wasn’t unreasonable. And again, you could easily outsource the whole thing to a virtual assistant or coder for very little cost. You can also hire Rich himself to do the work for you, too. You’ll get details on that with the course.

Some may ask if it’s a good idea to build a huge list like this on Twitter in the first place. Many prefer a smaller, more targeted list. I had the same concerns and discussed this with my buddy Scott Allen. Scott said he felt the same way until he did some tests with some of his friends with massive follower numbers. When they did a product offering, Scott’s conversion rates were better but others generated far more sales. That’s what convinced Scott to start growing his follower list.

There’s also the credibility factor. If you’re an expert on a topic and people see you have a massive following on Twitter, they tend to feel like you’re more of an authority than someone with only a few hundred followers. If you’ve read any books on persuasion, this is social proof in action.

Bottom Line: Brute Force Twitter works as advertised. As an added bonus, I’ve already gotten follow-up emails from Rich with more helpful advice and strategies not included with the book. All indications are that there’s a lot of service after the sale with this one.

My Affiliate link for Brute Force Twitter: https://paydotcom.com/r/82930/gigtime/23783524/

If you’d like to follow me on Twitter, go here: http://twitter.com/BillHibbler

Thanks for reading. If you try the program, come back and leave a comment about your results.

All the best,

Bill Hibbler