A quick post which will hopefully get you commenting about a question I get asked a lot, Have thousands of Twitter followers, or a small hard core group of followers?
- Thousands
I look at some profiles within my market place and they have upwards of 100,000 followers, and I immeaditely start to think, I need to recruit more followers. As a rule, I try and follow nearly everyone who follows me, with some exceptions, but does that mean I am interested in what they have to tweet, well in my case yes it does, I read, click and re-tweet anything I find interesting. I am fully aware others don’t think like this, and purely follow me so I return the favour and their numbers grow. At the time of writing I have just over 3,000 follows which gives me around 3-4,000 hits a day at the moment. If I had 60,000 followers I’m sure my traffic would be a lot more, but would that traffic represent loyal readers?
- Die Hard
Having a die hard group of followers that rave about your content all day long is what we as InfoPreneurs all want, but what if you only have 150 or so of these followers, could you still make it? Quite possible yes, because although you only have a handfull of followers, they are your groupies if you like. They talk about you all the live long day, and if one or two of these have a massive following themselves and they spend all day re-tweeting your content, you’re going to get just as much traffic from having 60,000 followers who are just interested in boosting their own numbers.
So a case for each camps really. What do you think?
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{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }
It’s a toss-up. I want lots of people to follow me, but I would prefer them to be real. I’ve realized I’ve been following way too many people, and too many end up being automated robots. I’m tired of that, and i want to interact with real people. There are quite a few fun, interesting, exciting people on twitter with something good to say, and those are the people i want to follow from now on, and to have follow me.
The ones who follow you back automatically aren’t really reading what you say. So I’ve quit worrying about them.
Highly debatable topic. I prefer quality over quantity. I want all my social media connections to be meaningful. Having said that I still auto-follow people. The competition is high and its very hard for a newcomer to get noticed.
Twitter: theinfopreneur
November 27, 2009 at 12:28
I auto follow people too TechThinker, your totally right its extremely hard to get noticed in this market place unless you have a big following
Good article. I am still in the “collector’s” mindset and want thousands of follower. But it’s already hard to really stay in touch with anyone. I need to set me a milestone and after than start un-following some people.
Twitter: theinfopreneur
November 27, 2009 at 12:27
Hi Daniel, I must admit I need a milestone too, In fact here I go 10,000 is my milestone
Quality counts for a more one-on-one friendship, trust comes into this equation and an understanding of who it is you are following. Twitter has allowed me to make contact with people who really want to hear bits and pieces of our life out here in the African Bush. I hope I make them smile and the whole idea behind my tweets is to be a help to people wanting to travel to Africa. Not everyone is interested in travel to Africa, but they may want to know about life here, again it becomes personal, sharing your way-of-life.
Quantity allows you to reach a wider audience and that’s where the best form of advertising kicks in – word of mouth. I’d bend over backwards to make sure a visitor to my part of the world has a wonderful experience so that a simple referral tweet and feedback of their safari becomes a valued form of advertising.
So I’d say, quality is more important if your heart is in your tweets and yes, having a die hard group of followers that rave about your content all day will certainly help, but more follows means that somewhere, someday, I might help to plan a safari of a friend of a friendly follower!
Twitter: theinfopreneur
November 27, 2009 at 12:26
Jennie, One of the most interesting comments on here so far, I’m now off to check your website!
Interesting topic – especially to me since I only have a hundred or so followers. It used to amaze me that overnight people I had never heard of started following me – then I read an article about Hummingbird, and realised that these people were in the main following me in the hopes that I would follw back, and were quite probably using an automated system, so they have no real idea of who I am.
I do automatically refollow for a while, until I see what these people are tweeting about. Those who simply tweet their product link over and over fall by the wayside when I have time to clean up my lists. Those who have interesting tweets stay on my list.
When I am list building myself I do it manually – I read every single profile, and decide whether I want to follow that person – of course being female my choices are probably not terribly logical – if they are Australian I will follow them, if they are female, and successful, or run an ineresting looking site I will follow them, and if they write interesting tweets I will follow them.
My favourites are the ones who tweet out inspirational quotes. The sad thing about some of them is that they seem to tweet on automatic. If I read a great quote I will often send a private message, or at least an @response – but never do I get a response back. I have come to realise that much of twitter is people tweeting their own thing, and maybe following a link in someone else’s tweet – but rarely is there actual interraction and that is a shame.
So to round up, I am a fence sitter – I agree that its all a numbers game, and tweeting to 10 000 on percentages should bring you greater traffic, but perhaps tweeting to 1000 who actually read your tweets is better.
I have to ask myself how people with 10 000 followers, who are following almost as many can possibly read all the tweets that come in. I struggle with my 200 or so that I follow, so again its timing – if I happen to be online and reading tweets when an interesting one comes in I will follow the link – that leaves thousands of tweets lost in the ether as I work or sleep or live life.
If I could choose, I’d love to have both: quality and quantity:)
To me the most important though is to get access to all the great information and all the interesting people that are out there (as we all know, there’s an abundance of this), but of course, I love to share whatever I have to share as well.
I’m not a “professional” social marketer (more like the opposite) and, like many others who write here, not sure which way to go, so I just follow my heart.
I do think it’s important that the people I follow have something that interests me, that I can learn something from them, that I feel some kind of “connection” with them or that they move my heart in some way.
Regarding the tweete, I have read a lot of “Twitter strategies” but I follow my own: I write and share whatever is true for me at that moment.
I am positively surprised of how many people there are on Twitter who want’s to do good things for others and for the world.
This makes me happy and hopeful!
It wasn’t until I started being selective about who I followed that I started getting good hits to my blog. Although I do go for quality, quantity just seems to follow behind.
Great article and have RT’d tweet.
Steve
Steve SEO UK´s last blog ..Three Keys for Social Media Success
Twitter: theinfopreneur
December 20, 2009 at 11:39
Yeah it’s a natural by product of quality followers, good point!
I really love the people I currently follow as they’re interesting! And I want them to follow me because they find me interesting too!
I actually also regularly purge the spam followers with a single post to a dodgy link, following hundreds of randoms, as they’re not real and the more you have on there the more you seem to get!
Big up the real twitter
x
Carmela J´s last blog ..Random poem 1: The torment of loving a b@stard
Twitter: Giveabrick
January 21, 2010 at 16:15
I’d like to be able to quickly and easy choose who to follow but right now I have Twitter set to auto-follow. I was reading a piece (via Twitter
) about how Google have a policy that if you follow someone it means you are validating them. If having Twitter set to auto-follow means I’m going to be validating spammers, I’d rather find a way of following them each manually.
That said, I love the idea of having 1000 followers (let alone 10,000) but I suspect that’s just my ego talking
Twitter: theinfopreneur
January 21, 2010 at 20:26
are you following people you want to follow who aren’t following you yet?
Twitter: Giveabrick
January 21, 2010 at 20:50
Yes. In fact, I’ve just logged in to Twitter Karma and had a look at the playing field. I just spent literally the last hour unfollowing folks who just send out the same old teeth whitening ads as well as the aggregated feeds. In fact, I’ve also just decided to manually look at everyone who chooses to follow me so I can aim for quality first. Inspired a post too
Eleanor Edwards´s last blog ..How to Bottle What Makes Your Soul Sing
Twitter: theinfopreneur
January 21, 2010 at 22:41
brilliant let us know when it’s up!
Twitter: Giveabrick
January 21, 2010 at 23:20
It’s up my friend. No flies on me
Eleanor Edwards´s last blog ..Why I Just Spent the Last Hour Unfollowing You
Twitter: ryanhanzel
January 28, 2010 at 20:30
I think you need a balance of each quality and quantity. If you just go for quantity your message is still getting out there but what is the impact of your message to them? If you want just quality your message will have a larger impact on those people and you will generate a core social group but your message is not getting out as it would with quality. I would think of this type of situation as maybe a rock band. You have your groupies that follow you around every where you tour and make you feel like a rock star. Then you have the every day people that just wants to listen to your music on shuffle between 50 other artists on their lunch break. They are the ones that allow you to be a rock star just through purchasing your music because you make them feel the way they want to feel. So with having quality and quantity you will have the folks that comment and help you stay inspired to continue and the quality for finding that little bit of advice to make their experience smoother. I hope I make sense in this comment, had a long work day.
Twitter: theinfopreneur
January 28, 2010 at 22:19
Groupies love that analogy! top work Ryan and FYI I know what it feels like to have a long day lol