I search constantly on the web for writers and thinkers who display a chip on their shoulder. They are brilliant thinkers but they have a sarcasm about them that keeps my days interesting. One of my favorite writer is Alexander van Elsas. There are times when I completely agree with Alexander and also times when I completely disagree… there really is not a middle ground.
He has a post talking about the real value of Twitter ‘s suggest user feature which was made a little more valuable after Jason Calacanis offered $500K. Congratulation Jason and Alexander, you have pushed me to a crossroad on the purpose of quality over quantity.
We talked about the purpose of quality over quantity all the time on the web.
“I would rather have 200 devout followers than 20,000 kind-of listeners.”
There is a reason we do this. We are the social-renegades of the marketing world. What? You think we should send out mass mailings? Buy an email list? AHH. I am dying from heart failure.
The truth of the matter is this… I haven’t come to any conclusions yet on the value of quality over quantity. Jason Calacanis shows the absolute value of driving traffic from Twitter to his start-up, Mahalo. He was willing to pony up $250,000 to drive two-million visits a month to his site. I would do it too.
And yet, Alexander talks about the quality of the followers being below zero. I also agree with him when he says:
“It makes the reach you have on Twitter as good as any spammer that hijacked millions of e-mail addresses. There is always a sucker that falls for it. The real-time effect is pretty much worthless when put into comparison to the nr of followers and the spam being produced. To me the only benefit, if you can call it a benefit, would be that the audience that follows you remains persistent.”
So what is the answer? You can always give the quality over quantity speech but does that drive revenue? In the world of business there is absolute value to use social media but what is the strategy? Quality over Quantity?
What are 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 Twitter followers worth to you?
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Hi Kyle, you cheated! You didn’t agree or disagree
Quality versus quantity is an important discussion, but I think I’d choose quality anytime over quantity, unless I had a service where user value was of no concern. What would you choose when given the option. Take a microphone and deliver speech to 1M people that aren’t interested in you or the things you have to say, or sit down and do the same with 10 people that actually care about you and your message? The impact on those 10 will be more sustainable for your business imo.
Start with quality and then scale, instead of trying to do it the other way around.
People forget that networking is a means to an end, not a goal in itself. There is no point to building 30,000 followers directly without a goal as to what you are then going to do with them.
The real question here is how easily Twitter helps you achieve a goal with tangible value to it. It is as easy to achieve specific goals, such as better customer support, with 20 followers as it is 20,000.
If you don’t take this approach then you’re just playing a pointless game of Twitter Pokemon.
Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz
I say it really depends on your goals with social media. For instance, I can see a charitable organization benefiting with quality AND quantity because the goals for most of those organizations include being able to get the word out easily. Or with a large corporation that affects a lot of customers and you want to offer innovative means to serve those customers (like Comcast). Twitter helps both of these types of goals.
Good contents and ideas brings followers to share them. What should I do with my thousand & thounsand followers if I can’t improve, an inch, in their lives with good proposals?
Quality versus quantity? It depends. Is your company or organization serving a specialized vertical? If so, it’s a case of quality over quantity. Someone with a company specializing in database software for mid to large enterprises would not expect, nor desire, the type of following that a consumer-focused site would. In that case, 200 devout followers (in this case, IT managers) is more valuable than 20,000 followers of all-things tech. On the other hand, if we’re talking about somebody with a photo-sharing site, even the casual follower has some value.
I agree with Ian on this, you need to know what you are going to do with them!
A high quantity can be turned into quality if you have a strategy to do so. If it is just collecting for collecting sake tehn they are most definitely worthless (or low value) but if you continue to follow a well laid out strategy to achieve…whatever it is you want to achieve..then the value of each follower can increase!
Grant Bodie
Mount Recruitment
http://www.mountrecruitment.co.uk
The nature of Twitter makes receipt of an individual Twit a very hit or miss proposition. You could have a large number of followers but a large percentage will still miss a Tweet. Meanwhile any given follower might happen to be tuned in at the right time. I think you need both quantity and quality.
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but… how does it make any business sense to post bloggs on the web? On Twitter or otherwise? Are you paid money for your thoughts or expressions on twitter? I admit to spending time on Facebook for example, but it never has resulted in more than time wasted.
Joe,
It makes sense for me because of the thought-leadership standpoint. I can sell more product and services because of the thoughts I put down in this blog. There is a trust factor associated with selling and business development… between clients. The trust is built through content.