Twitter Following Counts are Useless. Here’s proof.

An unsophisticated forecaster uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts – for support rather than for illumination. ~ Andrew Lang

It has long been recognized by public men of all kinds . . . that statistics come under the head of lying, and that no lie is so false or inconclusive as that which is based on statistics. – Hilarie Belloc (The Silence of the Sea)

I always find that statistics are hard to follow and impossible to digest.The only one I can ever remember is that if all the people who go to sleep in church were laid end to end they would be a lot more comfortable. – Mrs. Robert A. Taft

On Thursday April 16, 2009, Jeff Turner writing for the Social Media Marketing Institute gave irrefutable proof that the number of people you have following you on Twitter is a completely useless number. And he did this with brilliance and aplomb.

I won’t go into a lot of detail as you can click on the link above and read it for yourself. Briefly, here’s what happened. He created two fake Twitter accounts. Used a script that randomly followed 100 users an hour and used other automated Twitter services to post messages and handle re-tweets. He generated thousands and thousands of followers.

The results of this experiment are fascinating. The most interesting and disturbing result to me was that Mr. Turner actually changed the sex of one of the fake accounts and only one person out of the thousands that were following that account even noticed the change.

Mr. Turner’s conclusion:

There is a huge difference between a follower and someone who is engaged and listening to what you have to say…. It is better to have 100 truly engaged, targeted followers, people who are listening to you, care about what you’re saying and are willing to act on your behalf, than 10,000 who wouldn’t notice if you changed your gender.

I fully agree with Mr. Turner’s conclusion. I believe, like him, that social media is about engagement, not broadcasting. Broadcasting is old school and is dying a slow and agonizing death. No one listens to commercials anymore, and no one is going to listen to your stream of continual links, quotes, and promotions. Sure its OK to occasionally shout out a quote or a link promoting one of your sites or products, but people gravitate to social media to be…well, social.

I like Twitter. I really do, but I’m getting frustrated by several things:

1. People who continuously re-tweet only stuff about themselves.
2. Spammers who have no intention whatsoever to connect with those they follow, except to dump their crap in the Twitter stream.

3. People who are only interested in tweeting their blog posts.
4. People who constantly broadcast, but never join in conversation.
5. Celebrities who never actually respond to their followers.

6. Companies who promote but never listen to their customers.

7. People who actively promote the myth of “the bigger, the better” about your follower numbers.

As far as I’m concerned, if you are any of these people you won’t be followed by me. If I’m currently following you, I won’t be for long. Read Mr. Turner’s article. I think you’ll find it educational. Here’s the link:

YEO – Why Twitter Follower Counts Mean Nothing

Picture by flicker user kevinzhengli under Creative Commons License. Use of this picture does not constitute an endorsement by kevinzhengli of the ideas in this post.

Managing TweetDeck Groups

I’ve been looking lately at some of the search terms that are leading readers to this blog. I’m using Woopra and WordPress.com Stats. Both are quite revealing. It seems that there are many who are looking for advice on how to manage groups in TweetDeck. They are wanting to know how to add someone to an existing group, how to delete someone out of an existing group, how to create new groups or delete existing groups. So I thought I’d give you a brief answer or two on how to manage TweetDeck groups.

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Why do you Tweet?

Last week, Liz Strauss of Successful and Outstanding Blog(gers) wrote a very thought provoking post entitled: It’s Not How Big the Tool … It’s the Thought, Skill, Fluency, and Authenticity Behind It. In it she asks the question:

How do we help business become fluent in the social sphere while maintaining authenticity for us all?

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Look, I’m Not a Social Media Expert

I need to be really clear about why I’m writing about Twitter on Tuesday’s and FriendFeed on Fridays. I want to avoid leading you to a false conclusion. I’m not trying to position myself as a Social Media Guru or expert. I’m just a guy who is enthusiastic about the Social Media world. I love this stuff and am actively experimenting with it.

Twitter and FriendFeed have been really fun for me and I wanted to help others who were just getting started with them. I write in hopes of sharing my knowledge and reducing the learning curve of others so they can enjoy them as quickly as possible.

I want to be up front on this because I don’t want to mislead anyone. I’m going to make mistakes as I explore the Social media world. I’m going to be doing things that will work great for me and not so great for you. I’m going to be changing things and doing things that others advise against. But that’s OK because it’s all part of the experiment.

Having said all that I want to tell you about something that I did this week, and about why I did it. Read the rest of this entry »

Some More TweetDeck Functionality

Just a couple of more things about TweetDeck that I really like. I think you will too. First up TwitScoop.

TwitScoop allows you to see what are the most current “hot topics” being discussed on Twitter. As you can see by the picture the listing is displayed in the form of a tag cloud. This means that the bigger the font, the more popular the topic.

To activate TwitScoop simply click on the icon to the immediate right of the magnifying glass icon at the top right of the TweetDeck screen and the tag cloud column will be displayed.

This can be an excellent tool for two purposes. First it can be used for market research. By observing what gets talked about over time, you can identify markets that are growing.

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TweetDeck Groups — A Life Saver

I’m currently following over 600 people on Twitter. No one can do that. No one. Yet I’m doing it. How? Look on below.

The first strategy I use is what I call a dip in – dip out strategy. You can’t follow every individual tweet that passes by in the twitter stream. You wouldn’t get anything done all day. Instead you occasionally dip into the stream of all your friends and respond to those things that interest you, then you leave for a while. Broadcast a post or two that you think will bring value to all your friends, and respond to individuals who reply to you. Reply to individuals that post interesting info. This keeps you in touch with your stream of friends yet allows you to go on with your life.

The second strategy works to make sure I don’t miss anything important. TweetDeck allows you to create groups. Go to the icon at the top of TweetDeck and click on the one that looks like two people (one standing behind the other). This will bring up a window that allows you to establish a group. Type in the group’s name and a listing of all your friends will be displayed.

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TweetDeck: Twitter’s Star Player

If you’ve been using Twitter for any length of time, you’ve probably noticed that there are some key players in the Twittersphere. Three of the most popular are AlertThingy, TWhirl, and TweetDeck.

NOTE: AlertThingy is releasing a new version sometime today so I may give it a try in the near future and report on my findings in a future Twitter Tuesday post.

I originally started using TWhirl when I first started getting active on Twitter. Then I tried TweetDeck and have never gone back. With one exception, which I’ll cover later, TweetDeck immediately stole my heart and loyalty. Here’s why:

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Twitter Tuesday – 03/10/09

Not sure exactly how this will develop, I may do some “themes” in the future. For now, I’ve simply dipped my line in the Twitter stream and came up with the following. Hope you enjoy. Please leave any comments or ideas about what you’d like to see on Twitter Tuesday.

Quotes:

Posted by @AaronMartirano:

“Always do right – this will gratify some and astonish the rest.”

“Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living; the world owes you nothing; it was here first.” — Mark Twain

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