There’s lots of talk about influence in social media — and if you have a Twitter account, you know the importance of followers and how it relates to perceived influence and credibility.
When it comes to Twitter, I think it’s fair to say that the average person will judge you based on how many followers you have. And it makes sense. If you have something interesting to say, people will gravitate to you. The cooler/smarter/more influential you are, the more twitter followers you will have. Numbers don’t lie.
Except that’s not always true.
I know this because I started cleaning up my own account about a year ago. My tribe of followers included job seekers, HR pros, recruiting geeks, spambots, p0rn stars, right wing birthers, and sketchy marketing firms. I used tools like ManageFlitter, Just Unfollow, and Twitter Karma — and a Firefox add-on called Check All — to clean things up, follow the right people, and block the aggressive spammers who follow me with the hope that I’ll follow ‘em back.
It took forever (and it’s not perfect) but I am on my way to having better conversations. And if someone follows me who offends my sensibilities, I block that person. It impacts my follower count, but I don’t care.
So during the process of cleaning up my account, I learned something interesting. Many people — career/HR/social media superstars/celebrities — engage in a weird transaction to buy the appearance of importance & authenticity on Twitter. It’s very common. You probably know this. But if you don’t, here’s how it works.
- A Twitter user (or a PR firm) purchases something called ‘twitter follower lists’
- and then he follows people in bulk (up to Twitter’s limit each day),
- and the chump — who wants to inflate his own sense of influence — banks on the concept of reciprocity and hopes you will follow him back.
Before you know it, that person has 20,000 or 30,000 or 1.1 million twitter followers and you are impressed. You consider the individual to be awesome, influential, and important. And even though half of those followers might be junk accounts, it doesn’t matter. He claims those followers as members of his tribe.
Gag.
I can see how this process makes sense for companies, consultancies, and sole proprietors who want to develop leads, share information, and interact with customers who are already on Twitter. Very simply, I have a problem with men and women who understand how Twitter works and want to buy the status of influencer instead of earning it. And these are often the same people who will say, “I have 34,000 followers on Twitter. It’s not a big deal. I don’t pay attention to that. It doesn’t matter.”
Like hell it doesn’t.
Good old fashioned marketing techniques are okay, but I am bothered by sketchy and intellectually fraudulent behavior. It is scammy to act as if you have influence in the marketplace when a majority of your followers were purchased and 50% of your Twitter followers consist of other spammy assholes.
So I just wanted to remind everyone that we’re at the very beginning of this social media stuff. Technology will advance. Influence in 2011 will look much different than influence in 2021. It is always important to use critical thinking skills — and a critical eye — when dealing with someone who is a perceived influencer of anything. It’s okay to ask someone how many Twitter followers they have, but don’t forget to ask, “How many did you buy?”
And when that person says none, don’t believe him.
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How THAT word – influence – even got involved in somehow quantifying “whatever this crap is” is still a mystery to me.
I could go on for days with this one Laurie but I”ll just head to the break room for another cup of Kona Blend……..
I thought I kicked you off Twitter. You’re back? Get back to work, buddy. Make some placements.
Agree with Jerry, if this is Influence then I am Alladin!
I want my three wishes.
Most successful people are far too busy to even have a Twitter Account; I’m not buying it’s influence beyond the scope of celebrities & teenagers.
@Tricia If this is what you think of Twitter I would highly recommend that you take a look at Gary Vaynerchuk and others like him that aren’t celebrities or teenagers but have used twitter to engage their audience! He has two great books that I highly recommend: “Crush It!” and “The Thank You Economy”
We know Gary Vaynerchuk pretty well in these parts. Super awesome fella. But for every Gary Vaynerchuk there is a Chuck Perlinski who is a brilliant guy, loves his wife, knows a thing or two about life, has smart kids, and has five followers.
I say this as a woman who has been on Twitter (under an alias account) since 2006 — if you’re a self-promoter and a narcissist (and I am), Twitter was once the place for you.
Gary is great. Gary is awesome. Most people follow Gary to get a piece of Gary. He gives/gives/gives and that’s part of his core philosophy. There is only one Gary, though. You’re not it. Neither am I. Neither is Chuck Perlinski.
I would say that’s partially true — although my mom has a twitter account. Only 10% of the users are active/daily users (or something low like that) so it remains to be seen how this plays out.
Just don’t unfollow ME… Albright – yes.
I suppose if I spent my days 100% online I might care about “quantity” but since I care about “quality”, I use the phone. For some reason, the phone isn’t associated with klout…
Phone sucks because people still use it but don’t know how to use it.
I’m done with it.
That explains why you never call me back. At least now I understand.
Perhaps Maureen, Jerry, and I should create a CPR certification – Certified Phone Recruiter – make money, then consult for Starr Tincup.
I reckon the random quality of my tweets would preclude me from any list of influencers. I just don’t tweet enough about “the business”. That said, I am approaching a milestone figure (on the very small end of the scale) and have to wonder why on earth all these people are following me. I’m relatively well known, and positioned pretty centrally in UK online recruitment, but I’m honestly not looking to influence anyone. In fact, any time I express an opinion, I get told off.
I used to say I would only ever follow people I actually know, or want to know, but now find it impossible to read them all. I also think it is kind of fraudulent to follow say 1,000 people, but only read the tweets of say 50 people in a Tweetdeck list. In that case, I’m not really following them at all.
PS. I still make mix tapes, in the form of Spotify and Youtube playlists.
I still make mix tapes, too, via iTunes. They are playlists. Sad. I miss my tapes.
Yuck, yet so many companies buy into the whole follower culthood, look how Klout numbers are used by some agencies when trying to find influencers for their brand. An agent who spoke at the American Society of Journalist & Authors conference said that if a writer has something like 30,000 followers, she’ll pay more attention to their pitch. I’d like to think that writers wouldn’t stoop to buying followers, but then again, look at some of the crap books out there, I’m sure they do.
Klout has some clout, but how long until it’s something new?
18 months?
12 months?
So right, CG. Quality is much more important than quantity across all social media channels. If our followers/friends/fans/readers are just big numbers and aren’t engaged, then we’re completely wasting our time with social media.
And who has time to waste?
I can always find time to waste (really).
I hope you appreciate a comment from the other side to this coin. I fall into the group of people who use Twitter to generate more business and one way of doing that is to follow people who are likely to be interested in following back, re-tweeting, etc.
I do have a lot of followers (90,000+ to @StevenRothberg and 80,000+ to @EntryLevelJob) but I always, always, always am open, transparent, and honest about how we achieved such numbers. A quick peak by any of your readers at my Twitter pages will confirm for them that I follow a lot of people (not quite 90,000 and 80,000 but not too far from those numbers either). Many but not all of the people I follow will follow back and many but not most will re-tweet, click through, buy, etc.
There is power in quality when it comes to social media but there’s also power in quantity. Those with 50 really, really engaged followers are going to get at most 50 re-tweets to something they write. I can get hundreds and those re-tweets are gold to Google, Bing, and the other search engines so if one of your goals in using Twitter is to improve your search engine rankings, then quantity is important. Ideally, you have both quantity and quality.
Note that we have never “purchased” followers if I understand your blog entry correctly. It seems from your entry that you can pay people to follow you. I wasn’t even aware of that possibility. It is interesting as I guess everything else in life is for sale so why not following, but that’s as far as my interest goes. Other than bragging rights for the number of followers, I can’t see how a purchased follower would help as they’d be very unlikely to care in any way about your tweets and therefore would be very unlikely to re-tweet, click through, etc.
I do appreciate this… and I appreciate that you haven’t purchased a twitter list and followed people with the hopes of getting them to follow you back.
I think numbers are important (and I said that) but influence is different. That was my point. And you’re not a dick so everyone SHOULD follow you. xo
Some would beg to differ…
This reminds me of a piece I read on how the Tipping Point was basically bogus… the conclusion was that you never really know who those 50 hardcore fans are going to be, so mass marketing is still important. And Steve, it sounds like that’s what you’ve done.
Out of those 80k or so followers, I’m sure many of them just ignore your stuff. But you have no way of knowing which of those followers are the ones who will really love what you do. Why not grow as much as you can?
I hope the idiots who assemble HR “influence” scores based on Twitter and LinkedIn followers read this. Um, Twitter is nearly dead, anyways. People who pay attention to it now do some really tight curation.
You know what’s influential in HR? Actually doing it. Knowing people who lead HR organizations, not people who are junior middle managers. Knowing what’s happening. Shaping outcomes by doing it, not just talking about it. all the “social” in the world won’t make up for one dose of doing it.
I’m only on Twitter as an extension of my narcissist self… and I’m nearly bored with it, which is saying a lot.
Those who can, do.
Those who can’t, tweet.
(or blog like me
)
Laurie, you do it all. I think there is a contingent out there in HR Echoland who don’t (and can’t) tell the difference. You continue to do…that’s where the basis for all of it comes from. This was a really good article.
Nice post. Anyone who buys, or recommends buying, Twitter followers is playing a fool’s game that will ultimately lead nowhere.
Some of the companies that purport to measure digital influence recognize that issues like this need to be accounted for. How well they’ll succeed remains to be seen.
Hubspot’s TwitterGrader scores, for example, seem to be based solely on number of followers and number of tweets. So not very meaningful or useful.
On the other hand, Klout looks to be taking a deeper approach in that it factors in (or attempts to) the “quality” of one’s followers, activity like retweets and mentions, etc. Please note: Not endorsing Klout here, just pointing out an example of an outfit cognizant of, and attempting to account for, the “follower scam” factor.
I think Klout is interesting but it’s like any other tool: it gives me one perspective. I trust it for its data reporting (followers, # of retweets, lists, etc.) but a Klout score of 67 means nothing to me. And the moment it does mean something to me, a better solution will probably come along.
Of course you’re right about boiling things down to one simple number. Doing so is inherently silly and leads to simplistic thinking. Considering multiple angles is key.
This reminds me of the days long ago when I used to help bands build street teams, mass friend requesting people on myspace using obnoxious tools like FriendBlaster in hopes that I’ll find a 10% that actually be interested in the band.
LOL I love this comment.
Twurkers, or Twitter lurkers are very important. We tend to discount listening and observing. I don’t care about achieving my 4,000th follower*. I care when Chuck Perlinski let’s me into his world and I become the sixth person he follows.
*In that I’m-so-cool-I-don’t-care-about-quantity-even-though-I-do-but-can’t-admit-it-why-oh-why-do-I-never-show-up-on-those-HR-influencer-lists kinda of way.
I would schedule a tweet-up at Portillo’s and invite Chuck Perlinski. A hot beef sammich and fries will win him over. Extra peppers.
I still don’t understand people who buy those lists, follow people, and then regularly stop following people who actually follow-back to keep their follower/followee ratio at a certain level to maintain the illusion of influence. Weird.
Twitter may be dead soon, but I say enjoy it while we have it like we should with all these tools. My friend met her husband on Friendster and they just went back to log in and get their correspondence before it was deleted.
Oh that’s so cute. I wish I had a courtship story like that.
Funny how you early adopters are now getting bored. What’s the next great thing? Let us know Laurie…
I gauge my influence by how effective the medium is for me in accomplishing my purposes. Twitter continues to connect me to new people that are interested in my and my business, and it helps me stay connected to customers.
I am no Gary Vaynerchuk and my so-called influence is minimal in the grand scheme of things. But I am able to engage with people to whom I matter, but who I didn’t know existed before Twitter. For that I am very grateful.
I’m going retro and watching more TV.
I do like Twitter but I am getting sick of my own voice. (Yes, that’s possible.) I still read other people’s tweets (OPT) and follow conversations. I’m not going anywhere — but holy crap I do love TV.
Funny. I only watch HULU and news videos. I’m such an old-timer.
This is so true. When I just joined Twitter and was looking for some kindred spirits to follow, I decided to try out Twiends. You can read about my experience here: http://www.visionsforhr.com/2011/03/be-my-new-twiend-not-ever-again/ Needless to say, all my Twiends have gone by now and that’s fine with me. Twitter is about having meaningful conversations that I get something out of: it’s quality not quantity, so who cares if I don’t have Klout!
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