Comments on: How engaged are your followers on Twitter?

By: John Haydon

John Haydon — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 09:57:19 +0000

Frank – thanks for stopping by!

It’s funny that you mention guy. When I conducted my social media experiment with Guy Kawasaki and the fool on the hill, I ended up getting the highest number of retweets I’ve gotten in a while. Clearly, his followers are engaged.

By: frank

frank — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 03:53:14 +0000

I think Mr. Guy Kawasaki would agree to disagree on this one.

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2008/12/how-to-use-twit.html

That said, I have to be on the side of “quality friends on Twitter matter more than total numbers” because i’ll never have 1million followers

One way i’ve seen this effect play out is by watching the RT love from highly connected people in know on Twitter. I tend to get many more RT’s if I get a RT from someone who is VERY active on Twitter and has been building relationships with people there for a while. On the other hand, I’ve gotten RT’s from people with ton’s of followers and the resulting RT’s after that didnt happen as you’d expect.

It all comes down to relationship and people wanting to share what you Tweet because they like you and value the time they have spent with you.

http://twitter.com/franswaa
[rq=44009,0,blog][/rq]franswaa: RT @johnhaydon If Google ranked your posts on Twitter, would it change how you tweet? http://tinyurl.com/nhjwj4 (me: uh oh!!)

By: Amy Shropshire

Amy Shropshire — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 02:44:05 +0000

Thanks John! Look forward to reading more of your posts!

By: John Haydon

John Haydon — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 20:51:19 +0000

Thanks, Amy. By the way, I love some of your design work here.

By: John Haydon

John Haydon — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 20:46:59 +0000

Gabe, I agree with you. Folks like @chrisbrogan do a very good job at engaging with followers, but of course it's not humanly possible to converse with 75,000 people. That's why some folks use either Seesmic or Tweetdeck, which allow you to filter on followers and create consistent connections with people. Thanks for the visit! John

By: Amy Shropshire

Amy Shropshire — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 14:12:11 +0000

I agree wholeheartedly with this post and Gabe’s response. I read every single post from the people I follow. Yes, every single one of them, and try my best to remember the 3 R’s of Twitter – Read, Retweet, and Respond. If I find myself consistently skipping over someone’s posts, then I know that maybe its time to unfollow.

It’s sad to see how many people use their number of followers as an indication of how valuable their posts are. My #1 rule when deciding to follow someone? If they haven’t @ responded to someone, anyone on the 1st page of their Tweets…I give it a pass.

By: Gabe O'Neill

Gabe O'Neill — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 12:29:39 +0000

Hey John,
Thanks for this post. I wasn’t aware of the tools that you mentioned – must check them out right away.

My take when I see someone who has 75K+ (or even 20+K) followers is that I don’t bother to follow them because it is too difficult to engage with them. I love following people that have less than 1000 followers so we can actually have a conversation. I really feel sorry for the people that are getting sucked in to this follower trap – all they end up getting is a number of people that didn’t choose to follow them because of their content which means few of them ever will connect with each other. Great post – thanks!
[rq=5529,0,blog][/rq]To Follow or Not to Follow