Following on Twitter: Quality vs Quantity

The debate has been raging since before Barack Obama or Ashton Kutcher had even heard of Twitter.  Is it better to join the “race for size” on Twitter or is quality of engagement the goal?  There are many easy answers to this question and a handful of tough answers. Let’s keep it easy at first. It’s in the tough answers that we can truly find the answer, so we’ll save that for the end.

Twitter Followers Debate – The Easy Answers

“Twitter is not a popularity contest” – There are millions of people, especially many of the early adopters of the platform, who follow 50, 100, even a few hundred other users.  It doesn’t matter if 500 people follow them or 500,000 people follow them – they are interested in seeing what certain people are tweeting and that’s about it.  They don’t want the noise. They don’t want the spam. They have their friends and/or accounts that they consider interesting and it doesn’t matter what else is happening outside of their hand-picked, privileged group.

They are Twitter purists. They are correct.

“What’s the point if nobody’s listening?” – The other side of the coin is interesting. Many look at Twitter as a tool to spread their wisdom, post their links, and see what the masses are saying at any given moment in time.  They know that it is easy to grow on Twitter by following random or targeted individuals, unfollowing those who who don’t follow them back after a certain period of time, and then starting the process over.  They want to be seen, heard, addressed, engaged, and clicked on by as many people as possible.

They are the Twitter profile builders. They, too, are correct.

How can this be?  How can Quality and Quantity have equality in the debate?

It’s time for tough answers. At this point, the question changes from “Quality vs Quantity” to “What do you want Twitter to do for you?”

Twitter Followers Debate – The Tough Answers

Twitter is not a popularity contest, but for some it is. Twitter is not a private network to chat with friends, but for some it is.  There is a ton of gray area in here, as many who follow tons of people in an effort to gain tons of followers can and do engage with everyone on their massive lists, while many who follow and get followed by a smaller amount of people can make claims of successful engagement by making certain that everyone who is on their list is actually listening to what they are saying.

There are dozens of “Twitter Personality Types” including the 14 Twitter Personalities listed at Media Caffeine.  For this excercise and debate, we’ll first eliminate celebrities and “recommended” accounts who follow their 50 or so personal friends but get followed by thousands (even millions). Once they’re eliminated, let’s group the rest of us into those looking for quality (the qualtweeps) or those looking for quantity (the quantweeps).

QualTweeps

Greenerside is a qualtweep. This account posts links about the environment from several different environmental blogs. He follows those who do the same. Some may be personal friends. Some are simply like-minded people. Regardless, he isn’t following many of the other 4000 people who are following him. Looking at those who are following, it appears that there are many spammers and QuanTweeps in his mix.  It doesn’t matter – he doesn’t hear a thing they’re saying.

He is able to:

• Engage those who are interested in the same things he is interested in, namely environmental issues
• Follow his stream easily and potentially read everything his friends have tweeted since the last time he logged on
• Get a decent amount of responses to his tweets and links
• Pick up real followers who may believe he is interesting because much more people follow him than those that he is following
• Develop personal friendships because he can engage with a tighter group of people
• Show people his Twitter account without having to answer the question “How do you read everyone’s tweets?”

He is not able to:

• Generate a viral buzz on his own without exceptional breaking news or retweets from users with a lot more followers
• Achieve “Twitter Fame” by getting on this list of top users or that list of most retweeted regularly
• Use Twitter as a resource to get dozens of responses to questions, whether mundane or imperative

QuanTweeps

Guy Kawasaki (and the girls who help him manage his account) is one of the most outspoken quantweeps out there. He is exceptionally active with tens of thousands of updates and over a hundred thousand followers. If you aren’t trying to get him into Forex, porn, or MLM, he’s very likely going to follow you back. The fastest reader on the fastest computer in the world couldn’t read everything that people are saying in his stream.

He is able to:

• Generate interest, visits, responses, and retweets regarding just about anything he says whether it’s a link to a new Alltop section or another link that sparked his interest
• Ask a question and get dozens of responses – he could ask “What’s the best Social Media blog out there?” and receive plenty or responses (FYI, the correct answer to that question is soshable.com if you were curious)
• Be known for Twitter, speak about Twitter at conferences and seminars, and achieve “Twitter Fame” even if he doesn’t need it
• Interact directly with hundreds of people every day who send him DMs and @replies
• “Be courteous” by returning the follow to anyone who makes the effort to follow him

He is not able to:

• Keep up with the hundreds of tweets that hit his stream every minute
• Stick with a niche or segment – he follows Republicans, Democrats, Anarchists, Spam Bots, interesting people, boring people, actives, inactives, and everyone in between
• Develop personal friendships as easily because there is so much noise, chatter, and spam that isolating a potential good friend is challenging
• Avoid the question, “How do you keep up with everyone you follow?” I’m sure he’s asked that several times a month.

Pick a Side

Regardless of what you want to do with Twitter, pick one side or the other. Those who fall in the middle by following a few thousand people without attempting to grow will have a difficult time achieving success regardless of their goal. They get the noise without truly gaining the benefits of steady growth. Twitter can be a wonderful experience regardless of what you want to accomplish with it (even if you don’t want to “accomplish” anything with it).  Decide what you want to do with (and for) Twitter and stick to it.

Trying to stay on the fence will hamper the whole wonderful Twitter experience.

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Read more on Soshable and don’t forget the answer to the question, “What’s the best social media blog out there?”

Tagged as: twitter followers, twitter friends