I have about 2,600+ followers on Twitter. It’s not really a big deal since I only talk to about 5 consistently on a daily basis. So when a friend came up to me recently and said “Hey, I almost beat you in follower #s!” I thought:
“Oh, really? I didn’t know it was a contest. So what cool prize did I win??? Oh, nothing. Bummer. A beer would’ve been nice.”
I think collectively as a culture, we are obsessed about #s: the price tag on our cars, the sales #s this month, how many hot boys I dated, blah blah blah. This past week the whole twitter world and entertainment news have been buzzing about @Oprah and @aplusk (Ashton Kutcher in case you still live under a rock) and how @aplusk just surpassed CNN in 1 million followers. Cool for Ashton, but what does that mean to have 1 million followers?
It could mean…. those 1 million followers just followed for a silly “movement.”
Or, Ashton can leverage his celebrity powers for charity by tweeting about worthy causes, or.. I don’t know. Inspire someone to cure cancer?
I think my friend Jeff said the best. Social networks are about Y.E.O. — You Engaging Others. He recently made up 2 fake accounts which just happened to attract thousands of followers in a matter of weeks. He did it by leveraging 3rd party tools (are you wondering how he did it? He will tell you in this post: YEO — Why Twitter Follower Count Mean Nothing).
Obviously it’s different for celebrities. People will want to talk to them even without prompting. But for us regular folks, it’s really about establishing meaningful relationships that create values for the community, even if you are just yakking about food, like I frequently do.
So the choice is always yours:
- collect “friends” like baseball cards or..
- actually make significant and meaningful relationships that you can take offline
which one do you pick??
2 Comments
I recently heard a quote concerning business – “Build relationships; do not just make the sale.” I will chose the former – DO think this applies here … can anyone be close to 1 million people? NOT!
Hey Jan!
Thanks for leaving a comment
You are the first one! How are you? 
Yes I think that’s true. Personally, I feel that my own Twitter follower # are a little bit out of control. I started to get weird comments back. I just think there is a fine line between quality vs. quantity. It’s true you need a group of people to build a network, but at the same time, when the network gets too big and much harder to navigate, it can be an issue. I think Active Rain is a very clear example of that.
Cheers,
Cindy