Twitter – redefining ‘Social Kudos’

Twitter - the micro blogging tool that stormed the digital world all that time ago, and yes, in the digital world, years are like centuries, so it was an age ago…

I like Twitter. There are some seriously talented people on there and a wealth of information to be found, as long as you have the time to read it. If you’re not on Twitter then you’re missing out, especially if you have ‘niche hobbies’ or other passionate interests. It’s a useful personal interest tool but it is also a powerful business development mechanism - as long as it’s used in the right way! This brings me neatly to my topic: following vs. followers.

One thing I see a lot is people with huge numbers of followers - impossibly large amounts of people! I mean, seriously, how can you keep up with 14,027 people/brands? It’s impossible; you just can’t, well, in my opinion! It’s one thing to build up your following by relying on the ‘follow me and I’ll follow you’ system, and I understand that people have certain strategic objectives, but when I see individuals following 23,902 people with a similar number of followers it just makes me laugh! And it’s an easy target if you have no real strategic aims. Social media, particularly networks like Facebook, seem to encourage the numbers rather than the quality of the communication. How can anyone have 1,000’s of friends and keep them all happy. You couldn’t do it in real life, so why is the web any different? It just becomes ‘social kudos’.

Don’t get me wrong, numbers have their uses depending on your aims, but surely interesting content should be the real driving factor for ‘being followed’?

At Idealogy we follow those we think have something interesting to say and who we actually invest time in reading. That’s probably why we follow so few people - we just don’t have hours of spare time. That said, I did have an aim for the critical mass of our Twitter account - to have at least a 1:3 ‘follow to follower’ ratio. At present, we’re on 1 to 3.06, which is brilliant, so we must be doing something right.

I have the utmost respect for most ‘Tweeters’, however they gather their following, but I reserve my highest respect for those who have cultivated a healthy ratio of ‘followers to followed’. If you’re a brand, this is relatively easy (depending on the brand size). If you’re famous it’s even easier, but as an individual it’s very hard and, in my opinion, relies purely on the value of the content you produce.

So again, kudos to these people. You’re informative and interesting. You invest time in Twitter and it repays you with your following. And great content equates to popularity. At least, that’s the way I think it should be done.


Posted by Simon Johnson