Why Twitter Followers Don’t Matter

// January 19th, 2009 // Journal

Twitter is not a broadcast medium.  So, there is no need to make an effort to gather as many followers as possible.

If you try to broadcast your marketing message via Twitter, a few things happen:

  • Only a small percentage of your followers will see an individual message.
  • Some of those will be turned off and stop following you.
  • To account for the above, you could broadcast more marketing messages and increase the frequency.
  • You’ll reach some more followers and some of them will again be turned off.
  • You will be seen as a 24/7 commercial. Followers will see less benefit in following you and stop.

Twitter is best used as a conversation agent. As in any conversation, it’s better to listen than to speak. You learn more that way.

Use Twitter to gather information. To do this, you will need to focus on following, not gaining followers.

Use Twitter to share useful information. “Buy my product” is not useful.

If you do this, followers will come on their own (I REALLY wanted to use a “build it and they will come” quote here, but deemed it too cliche) and your ego can be satiated.

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  • It's interesting that you say this. Over the last few years, Twitter certainly has become a tool for conversation. It did, however, start out as a broadcast tool. The whole, "What are you doing?" question certainly lent itself to broadcast messages. It was the users who defined what Twitter would become, and what it will become in the future. This may be a question of semantics, but I think it's worth mentioning when you declare what Twitter is or is not.

    As far as broadcasting a message, in some instances, broadcast works well. For example, the user @BreakingNewsOn is pretty much a broadcaster. There is very little interaction with the user base, yet they have many followers, and are arguably a valuable addition to the twitter community.

    I understand that you're talking about marketers, but your first sentence is then very misleading. Twitter most certainly IS a broadcast medium.
  • Very interesting perspective. I am learning more about Twitter every day.

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