What do you value?

Are you part of the Social Media phenomenon that is Twitter? If you are, then you’re sure to have others ‘following’ you. Hanging on you every word. And of course the more followers you have, the more important you must be. Size matters and all that.

But what does follower count really measure? Is it feedback on your content, or feedback on your efforts to build follower count? Here’s a method to build a ‘following,’ as described by a friend of mine:

When someone you’re following mentions someone, follow that person. Check back in a few days, and un-follow the ones that didn’t follow you back.

So what’s does he value? Follower count. He doesn’t care what the other person had to say; only that he was followed back. His followers provide an audience to promote his business, or so the logic goes. NOT LIKELY. That method may build followers, but it doesn’t build LISTENERS.

You can’t lead a horse to water (any more)

News flash: You can’t make people listen to you. We use DVR to skip commercials. We pitch junk mail without opening it. We filter email spam. And most of all, WE FILTER SOCIAL MEDIA. If you don’t understand, you’ll naively build a follower count that’s a hollow shell of people who mainly ignore you.

To illustrate, here are some stats on 4 people I know in real life who are on Twitter. Two of them are very engaged and are often spoken to, about, and re-tweeted (quoted), one is me, and the other? Well anyway here’s the data:

Now the TweetMention count doesn’t include every single mention in the last week, but at 17k tracked users and growing, it’s a large sample. Do you see a problem here?

Listen, Learn, Engage

I admit I like it when I’m followed. But who I follow is more important. I seek people who have something to contribute, and the best indicator I’ve found is: Who are my friend already engaging? That is who are they talking to, who are they talking about, and who are they re-tweeting. The mentions tell me far more than follower count. It’s the ultimate feedback on content, and yes content is still king.

I wanted an easy way to visualize who my friends are mentioning, and that led me to create TweetMention. It shows me the Top 50 Twitter accounts that my friends are mentioning, but I don’t follow. Those are the folks I’m most likely to find interesting and follow. And learn from. And talk to. And it will only become more useful as I create new and different ways to visualize the information I’m collecting.

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