Followers Are Not The Same As Having “Reach”
As more and more people enter the Twittesvere (I love making up words) we will see increasing numbers of “followers” on everyone’s list. I have a hundred and twenty something followers today but really what does that mean. I ask the question because I don’t really consider myself to have good “reach” with Twitter yet. Now let me explain what I mean.
Having a ton of followers is very nice, but if they never pay attention to what you tweet, what is the point of having them follow you? I guess they are bound to pay attention to the odd post here or there but that’s not at all the same as being able to have real influence or reach using Twitter. Those people who have that kind of power are the people who have what I would term a “loyal following.” The people following them are loyal in that they will generally at least glance at and skim what that person tweets. It’s not to say their followers go to every url they are sent but I will guarantee you that if @chrisbrogan gets up one morning and tells his list of followers to follow say me @michaelgcohen the next fifteen minutes my inbox will be filled with twitter followers. That’s because someone like Chris Brogan has established himself as a well educated and quick thinking (that is lots of good tweets and blog posts, not for the sake of making them) and his followers now have learned that he doesn’t speak just to be heard.
To have reach is to be able to ask a question and know you are going to get more than one answer. It does not mean that you can never use Twitter for personal gain and the promotion of yourself or your brand, in actuality the more you post outside of those and for the betterment of all, the louder your voice will be heard when you do want to promote something out of self-interest.
Comment by Gary Walter on 30 October 2008:
Well said! Thanks – BTW, @chrisbrogan recommended this post!
Comment by Michael on 30 October 2008:
Chris decided to prove my point by tweeting this post, probably 15 tweets back to me about it within the next 5 minutes…Completely proved the hypothesis. Thanks!
Comment by Jackie on 30 October 2008:
I’m one of your new followers as a result – btw, nice Twitterview w/ Brad Mays!
Comment by Michael on 30 October 2008:
Thanks Jackie, I appreciate you dropping by…As always if you are up for a Twitterview it’s easy and fun (I think) – http://www.twitterviews.net/suggest-a-twitterviewee/
Comment by GeekLad on 30 October 2008:
Chris proved the hypothesis indeed. That’s how I got here.
I’m still trying to get a good handle on this whole microblogging thing. It never piqued my interest when I first heard about it. However, all the buzz I was hearing about Twitter and FriendFeed finally forced me into it recently. It seems like a great medium for “famous” folks like Chris with many followers to listen to his broadcast, but for a small-time schmuck like me it seems to be rather limited. Sure I can Tweet until I’m blue in the fingers, but right now it’s a lot like a tree falling in the forest with no one there to hear it. My challenge is figuring out how to find eager eyes to read what I have to Tweet.
Comment by Michael on 30 October 2008:
I think you are right on GeekLad. I work in marketing day to day but decided to take my time with Twitter and social media marketing to determine what I wanted to get out of it and where I could perhaps make a contribution to the collective. I think that is really the point, if you are concerned with helping out the larger community as a whole you will inevitably gain a following and hopefully some influence.
For instance this blog did not start on a whim, I thought about how I could provide something that both helped me get my voice heard but also gave something of interest to others. I hope that over time that is what it evolves into.
Thanks for your great comments.
Comment by Gregory on 1 November 2008:
I think that people who have good reach tweet regularly on topic with useful impactful tweets — their own signal to noise ration is very high (lots of signal, not alot of noise). ChrisBrogan, while he may be insiteful has, IMO, a low signal to noise ration: his important and impactful tweets are buried amidst his travelogue (what city he is departing for, that he is about to leave, airport conditions, etc…) and tweets about family. I don’t know Chris, i followed him on twitter because i read a few insightful blog posts from him, but his twitter feed has proven to be less interesting and useful. This in and of itself is interesting to me since he is a pro-marketer who writes about effective use of social media. Even before i read this post of yours, I had been thinking about whether or not to unfollow chrisbrogan.
Pingback by A Perspective on Micro-blogging from a Microblogging N00b on 10 November 2008:
[...] You may find it difficult to filter information in which you may actually be interested, if you intend to use Twitter as a source of information as well as a medium for dispensing it. If a lot of the people you follow also follow a lot of people, they may not hear the interesting things you have to say or may not really even care to listen to you. Twitterviews has a nice article explaining that followers are not the same as having reach. [...]