Twitter Rank: How Can Size Not Matter?

There has been some discussion among the ranks about Twitter and how to best use it. Of course, there is no consensus. Twitter is a micro-blog with a feature set that gets richer by the day, so it becomes increasingly difficult to place in the same cubicle any two people who are using Twitter the same way. But we’ve been able to pin down a few facts that inform our own tweeting.

First, it simply isn’t true, categorically, that size doesn’t matter. While the number of people following you does often represent a vanity measurement, if those followers are targeted and if you keep them engaged, then size matters a lot. In his piece “The Science of ReTweets,” social media and viral marketing scientist Dan Zarella points out that it only makes sense that the more followers you have the more retweets you’ll get. Number of retweets is an important metric in determining Twitter influence and clout. Zarella does point out, however, that the correlation between number of followers and retweets is weak, but it is still a positive one.

Various ranking services list number of followers as their first measurement. Twitalyzer.com presents “Impact” as its first of several key metrics, and listed first under this metric is number of followers. And on Grader.com’s “Algorithm Factors,” the first measurement is, yep, number of followers.

So size matters. But not in a vacuum. To borrow from Twitalyzer, engagement, referenced citations, influence, generosity, clout, and velocity all contribute to overall Twitter rank, and more importantly to achieving your objectives with your Twitter campaigns. Here is a simple set of steps to remember:

• Target the people you follow. Look at bio information to see with whom you may easily engage, and search on terms and hash tags of interest to you or your organization.
• Unfollow anyone who hasn’t followed you back in three days (unless of course you simply love their tweets).
• Make your tweets engaging, and use keywords and links.

Another part of the discussion among the ranks deals with actually being able to read all of the tweets of the individuals you follow. What you see is less than what you get. Let’s face it, once you follow more than 50 people, and if you’re tweeting for your company or organization hopefully your sites are set much higher than that, you’ll never see all their tweets on your home page. This is why our friends at Twitter created lists, which allow us to categorize and group together those individuals we wish to keep up with by carving them out of Twitter’s rushing stream.

Okay, okay. Size isn’t everything. What matters is that you get from Twitter that which you enjoy. And that could come from a single follower.

Oh, please retweet this!

Tagged as: Ian Huckabee, Social Media, social media optimization, Twitter, twitter tool