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WHERE BUSINESSES GO TO GROW

Just How Important Are Twitter Follower Numbers?

BY Peg McDermott on May 21, 2015 / IN Uncategorized

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As recently as a couple of years ago, businesses left and right were panicking about the number of Twitter followers they had, and some were even going so far as to buy thousands of follows in order to get their numbers higher. The idea was that higher numbers would give the impression that the brand was incredibly popular, and that would in turn encourage real followers to come along and actually validate that appearance.

It soon became clear, though, that artificially pumping up follower numbers did not really achieve the desired results. As it turns out, people on Twitter want to be social over all else, and they’re more likely to follow an account where they can have meaningful interactions regardless of follower numbers, versus an account with a high follower count and no real way to connect with the people who run the business.

So then things swung back in the other direction for a while, with marketing experts chanting the “quality over quantity” mantra and warning that suddenly having a huge number of artificial followers could actually backfire, causing the “real” followers to get frustrated and unfollow. Now, however, there’s more a balance between the two extremes, with marketers still pushing the idea that quality is important, but also acknowledging that a quality account will and should be attracting increasing numbers of organic followers.

In other words, you can use the growth (or lack of) of your follower list as a sort of metric to measure whether your Twitter strategy is working. If you’re interacting with your audience and tweeting regularly and your numbers are increasing at a regular pace, be patient and keep going. Building up an account can be slow and steady work, especially at first.

If, on the other hand, you’re giving your Twitter account all the necessary attention and nothing’s really happening with your follower numbers, it may be time to look at the type of interaction you’re doing, and make some adjustments. Are you tweeting too frequently, or not frequently enough? Is there a good mix of interaction in your tweets, or are you doing too much straight-up blatant promotion? Implement small changes, stick with them for a while, and then note whether or not what you’re doing is helping to bump your numbers in a positive direction.

What lengths will you go to in order to keep the numbers heading in the right direction?

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