The age-long debate of quantity versus quality has made it’s way to social media marketing, Twitter specifically. Is it better to have more followers or “better” followers (i.e. followers who are more interested in what you actually have to say, and will more likely respond). Guy Kawasaki co-founded the media aggregation site Alltop and has written of nine books. Robert Scoble is a prominent blogger who has made a name for himself discussing world-changing technologies. However, both of them have very different opinions regarding how to go about getting Twitter followers. Kawasaki, who has almost 300,000 followers on Twitter, suggests more followers will result in better Twitter influence. His strategy “Twitter is a marketing broadcast platform, and so the way it gets to be the best platform you could have is to have as many different followers as possible.” Scoble, on the other hand, looks more for quality followers than focusing on numbers. He says “Caring about number of followers is going to take you down a path that’s not very satisfying…Even if you get the numbers, if you’re surrounded by a million [jerks], is that as much fun as being surrounded by a thousand brilliant, fun, great people.”
Both Kawasaki and Scoble did have some suggestions in regard to getting Twitter followers, whether you’re looking for quality or quantity. First, they both suggest looking for a reasonable goal. According to Kawasaki 5000 followers is the critical mass of Twitter followers, “Any less and you’re not really at critical mass, you don’t have a breadth and diversity of followers. Any more and it starts becoming a full-time job to keep them happy.” Also they both agree that regardless of the quantity or quality of followers you want, if you want to bring in followers, you have to put in the time. It’s also important, they both said, to pick a specific niche, and keep your Tweets relevant to your niche. According to Scoble, “being recognized as somebody who is credible in politics is really tough…But it’s not so hard to be credible on something really, really small and very, very niche.” Finally in order to better engage your followers it’s important to respond to them, if not 100% of the time, then Scoble suggests at least 80% of the time.
Written by Brennan Mack