Steffan Antonas's Blog - Latest Comments in Focusing On Value: How I’m Changing How I Use Twitter

Re: Focusing On Value: How I’m Changing How I Use Twitter

Chuck Bartok — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 00:25:31 -0000

I am so glad I found this Post. Thank you.
I concur about the "numbers" and effectiveness
of social Media such as Twitter.

Even tough my Click through rates are around 10-12% consistently on each post with a Link, my platform records "Sales" and those numbers are VERY good.
Sales in my vernacular is movement to any level, Opt-in to Newsletter, subscription to membership or RSS feed.
My clients are very pleased with their Twitter "action" also, but we a "small Potatoes" keeping our Lists around 2,000-3,000 in our favorite niches.
Twitter is Just one Cog in our wheel of Social networking, Off-line and On-line

Re: Focusing On Value: How I’m Changing How I Use Twitter

Steffan Antonas — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 15:00:31 -0000

Thanks for the kind words, Mom Noir. I'm really glad you enjoyed it.

Re: Focusing On Value: How I’m Changing How I Use Twitter

Mom Noir — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 13:31:22 -0000

I can't believe I am just finding this. What a great post! I so am guilty of looking at my numbers to see how many followers I have when I should be focusing on listeners. Out of the 1800 or so people that are following me, I might interact with 50-75 a week, so lately I have been paying attention to who I interact with not how many are blindly following. I will stop talking and look around here. Nice space.

Re: Focusing On Value: How I’m Changing How I Use Twitter

Steffan Antonas — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 12:41:54 -0000

My mistake Robert. I may have slightly over exaggerated the number of people who unfollowed you in this post in error by a few thousand when I ball parked, because I was guestimating. The thing is, I had to guess. I did try to verify the exact number before writing this in your post ( http://scobleizer.com/2009/... ) but....well, you know... ;-)

I'd like to set this straight though and make the correction in the post accurately, since you've made the request for the correction. Since I can't go back more than 3 months on TwitterCounter, I did some digging and I found an except from your pulled post that was cached. You're right, you did say "over 7000" in the opening paragraph, but that number seems like it might be an under exaggeration on your part of the total effect of the unfollowing action, which I know now has a ripple effect that lasts for weeks:

Screenshot of the Cache on Stumbleupon:
http://www.stumbleupon.com/...

Cached from your post:
"On Monday I unfollowed 106,000 people on Twitter. The reaction so far has been quite interesting. More than 7,000 accounts have unfollowed me back. They did that so fast that I assume they are just bots that are looking to increase their follower numbers. I knew I'd lose them, but that's sort of why I did it. People who are following me just to get another count on their follower numbers are just plain, well, lame."

Here's the discrepancy I see that I'd like to resolve before making the correction: If you were over 106K before the drop (you'd need to be to drop 106K), it doesn't seem likely that you lost only 7000K afterwards (total effect), which is why I said you may be under exaggerating. On October 5th 2009, you're Twitter following count, on an upward trend, was exactly 97007 (verified that this morning on TwtiterCounter), and that was exactly 3 months after your big drop:

http://twitpic.com/wixn0

Even if we're talking about the differential between your total follower count you quoted in your post before the drop (>106K), and your lowest known follower count that was 3 months after the drop (<97K) - that's still a difference of >9000, not 7000, and your growth trend at that point was up, not down.

If I had to guess at the exact number of your lowest follower count after the drop I'd say it was probably around 93,000 followers. That's using your existing follower count as of today (107,904 yesterday according to TwitterCounter) along with the "15000 real followers" you said you've gained in the last 6 months in your comment. (~108K minus ~15K = ~93K). Ball park, this seems like a reasonable estimate, and it's based on numbers that you're reporting, not that I've come up with.

If you did have 93K followers after your drop as you've suggested, that means that the lower end of my guestimate (15K) was only off by a few thousand -

(106K before the drop) - (93K lowest follower count) = 13K differential.

13K is almost twice the 7000K you're quoting in the correction, and, while the upper range of my guestimate was obviously far off, my lower estimate is pretty close.

On a personal note, I honestly don't care about the exact number - that wasn't the point. I love your blog and I have a deep respect for your work and your writing. I wasn't trying to misrepresent you. I just made an educated guess in this case because I didn't have the data and my guess was a bit high in your case. The point I was trying to make was about the consistent, large numbers of users out there who follow only to be followed, which still stands.

Do you know the exact number of your lowest follower count in August/September? If you do, please send it over so I can make the correction you've requested above. Better yet, if you've got one, send me a screenshot of your TwitterCounter from August/September and I'll make the necessary correction.

Re: Focusing On Value: How I’m Changing How I Use Twitter

Scobleizer — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 20:03:08 -0000

Actually I only lost 7,000 when I unfollowed everyone (and since have gained almost 15,000 in just six months -- all "real" followers).

Re: Focusing On Value: How I’m Changing How I Use Twitter

Steffan Antonas — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 15:40:14 -0000

Here's a great update - Anil Dash just wrote an awesome post about what it's like being on the Suggested User List. He's been on a steady climb to over 250K followers these last few weeks, and he wrote the following points in a post titled "Life On the List" that backs up everything that I've suspected about Twitter and written about here. Thanks much to Anil for his transparency and honesty.

http://dashes.com/anil/2009...

Here are some quotes:

"After just a few days of being on the list, though, I made an interesting discovery that offers a dramatic distinction from buying featured position in an online store: Being on Twitter's suggested user list makes no appreciable difference in the amount of retweets, replies, or clicks that I get."

"Once in a while, I get confused replies from people asking who the hell I am, but for the most part they don't interact with me at all. The replies, retweets and conversations that happen for me on Twitter have the same frequency and volume that they would have had if I'd never been added to the list. I'm sure celebrities (whether on the suggested user list or not) get a disproportionately high number of people trying to catch their attention, but for a normal person, being on the list just adds followers, not real connections.

"Twitter followers who come from the suggested user list don't form real relationships or respond to the suggested users like "normal" followers do. If I'd have continued gaining followers at the rate I had been before being on the list, I'd have about 10% as many followers, but I suspect I'd have exactly the same number of replies and retweets. Before being on the list, a typical link that I tweeted would get between 250 and 500 clicks; After being on the list that hasn't changed at all."

Re: Focusing On Value: How I’m Changing How I Use Twitter

Ian Brodie — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 16:49:43 -0000

Hi Steffan,

Good to see the other stats - that makes the case for decreased clickthroughs stronger.

I'm still playing around with the clickthrough strategy - I get 10% of my blogs clicks from twitter so it's not an insubstantial amount. While I've got this many followers I might as well see what I can do with it. But certainly, if I was starting again I'd focus (as I said) on building a small, deep network.

If I was to unfollow folks, it wouldn't be the masses (who aren't watching anyway) I'd worry about. It's the small number of people who I really want to engage with. I fear I might forget to keep them on my list and they'd notice. Probably just paranoia.

I thought Erik J Heels did the right thing a few months ago when he mass unfollowed people. He did it in blocks of 1000 and essentially scanned each page of unfollows to make sure he wasn't canning someone important to him. But that took him ages.

A further thought:

the "deep relationship" strategy (I think) we agree is the best for most folks works (from a marketing perspective) because most of us sell things that require a relationship before people will by. Consultants, lawyers, trainers - people need to know you know what you're talking about and they can get on with you as a person before they'll buy from you. Twitter can do a fine job of this using the deep relationship strategy,

But most of the internet marketers and "gurus" don't sell services - they sell a product: an ebook, video, software, a newsletter, etc. They talk about building a "list" (man, I hate that phrase - it totally dehumanises your clients) and then selling to it.

So for them the "build a huge following" strategy is a natural extension of what they do with email marketing and the web anyway. And so that's what they tell other people they should be doing - even the majority for whom it's a totally inappropriate strategy.

Ian

Re: Focusing On Value: How I’m Changing How I Use Twitter

Steffan Antonas — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 15:45:06 -0000

Thanks, Ian for such a well thought out, detailed comment. I agree with
almost all of what you said (especially your points about relationships,
attention and scalability).

A few things -

#1 I am aware of the bit.ly issue, but I think it's somewhat of a moot point
because of the huge degree of disparity between follower count and actual
click throughs - even a basic approximation shows the reality clearly, so
fine-tuned accuracy doesn't tell a drastically different story. I have been
studying this phenomenon over a long period of time, across a lot of
different links and users. Case in point - this post was Tweeted by Tim
O'Reilly (+1 million followers) and retweeted over 100 times and I still
only registered under 10K unique visitors that day in Google Analytics.

#2 - Hitwise data backs up the sentiment that engagement on twitter is
dropping off sharply.
http://weblogs.hitwise.com/...

#3 - Lists further segment the "following" in the ecosystem, and reduce the
potential for "incidental" clicks that big-following-seekers went for when
we all only had one stream.

#4 - the fact that big names (4 sited in the post) are dropping for a reason
- i.e. they arent seeing engagement or value. If they're willing to risk
ticking tons of people off (in Robert Scoble's case his total following was
over 100K) you know something about the reciprocation model is either
unsustainable or doesn't deliver value.

#5 - The true risk you have that you'll "tick off a huge amount of folks if
you reduce your following list to just the people you talk to anyway" is
perceived (fear), not actual. True, there is some risk that someone will get
pissed and go on a rant, but you should be maintaining following
relationships with people you know and talk to anyway. If a user you dropped
wasn't having conversations with you, and are just listening - nothing
changes for them - they still follow you. They'll only notice that you're
not following if they try to DM you...(hint:risk = low, especially if
they've never done it before). Bottom line: The people who are listening and
do care about you should stay on your list (you know who they are - the
number is between 150 and 300 of them tops)). Everyone else should go in a
list, or be dropped. Just as a matter of experience with the dropping - I
did not get a single negative Tweet after I made the drop - and I even
blogged about it.

#6 My click through rate has decreased since drop, and my follower count is
decreasing by a few followers a day, every day - this is what you were right
about. In order to build your ability to drive traffic you have to go for a
1:1 strategy. However, the number of new users you'll have to recruit to
follow you using an "i follow you, you follow me" strategy in order to
increase your average number of clicks per posted link is about 100:1 at
first, and that ratio decreases (subject to decreased marginal gain) with
every new user who follows you. If that's what you want to do...good luck to
you.I chose a different approach ;-).

Re: Focusing On Value: How I’m Changing How I Use Twitter

Ian Brodie — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 12:47:35 -0000

Steffan,

I partially agree with you. I've been studying different twitter usage patterns and how the people I work with (professionals like lawyers, consultants and accountants) can use it to initiate and deepen relationships with the end goal of winning clients.

I've also been experimenting myself with building a big following (currently around 35,000) to see what impact that has.

Firstly a bit of nit-picking. bit.ly click through rates were very inaccurate in the early days. They way overstated clicks vs what I tracked via my site stats. So I'm not sure clickthrough rates have actually decreased. I think they may always have been very low and now they're just more accurately reported.

In terms of being able to use twitter to get new clients, there are two very different strategies which work in different ways. The essence is that twitter is a communication mechanism just like paper. Some people use paper to write personal 1-1 letters. Others use it to send junk mail or print magazine ads. Both can work in different ways.

The strategy that I've seen work best for most people (when I say people I mean my clients: lawyers, consultants, etc.) is to use twitter pretty much as you say - to build relationships with a small number of people. They often have as few as a few hundred followers - up to maybe a few thousand. But because they have meaningful interactions with those people over twitter, they deepen their relationships and eventually they communicate in other ways, have face to face meetings, and get hired.

Even with the aid of tweetdeck and other automation, it's difficult to keep up with this level of interaction if you have many thousand followers. Believe me, I've tried. You have partial conversations - but if you return a day later, all the relevant tweets have been overwhelmed by messages from the other thousands of people you follow.

What you can do is broadcast useful stuff - including the occasional link to your site. Your tweets end up being 80% broadcast and 20% interaction. It does drive traffic to your site. But as you say, given the very low click through rates (even when you're tweeting really useful, targeted stuff) you need a huge following to get a decent number of clicks. And a huge following makes it even harder to do deep interactions - it's a bit of a vicious circle.

Once on your site though, visitors may sign up and return or subscribe to your newsletter. Once they're there it opens up the opportunity for deep interaction again - this time via email or maybe blog comments.

But I would certainly advise anyone new to twitter to focus on building a small number of deep relationships rather than a huge following. Once you have a huge following your only options are to keep growing it to get more clicks, or to do what you've done and shrink down again (and potentially upset a whole bunch of folks).

Ian

Re: Focusing On Value: How I’m Changing How I Use Twitter

Steffan Antonas — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 17:33:09 -0000

Definitely. There's no better way to experience music IMO. Check my "7
Things You Didn't Know About Me" Post that's linked in the sidebar for why.
;-)

Re: Focusing On Value: How I’m Changing How I Use Twitter

Luke — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 17:16:35 -0000

Thanks man. Just started it a few months ago and its been fun. You into live music?

Re: Focusing On Value: How I’m Changing How I Use Twitter

Steffan Antonas — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 12:21:56 -0000

Ozzy,

Thanks for the kind words. I'm glad you got something out of this post. Btw
- love the tone of your blog. What a cool theme.

Re: Focusing On Value: How I’m Changing How I Use Twitter

Luke Harris — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 11:52:13 -0000

This is a valuable post, Steffan. Thanks so much for explaining the auto following. I was wondering what I was doing wrong with people to follow me and then un follow the next day. Because I wasn't auto following them back.

Clay Hebert sent me over here and I'm glad. This is a great blog!

Re: Focusing On Value: How I’m Changing How I Use Twitter

Steffan Antonas — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 16:09:20 -0000

David. I hope you do. Since I've limited my following, my click through rate
is actually UP from before. I'm connecting with more people, I get
absolutely no spam and I've been having a lot more fun. Good luck to you. If
you need any advice on how to best go about rebooting, let me know. I'm
happy to help.

Re: Focusing On Value: How I’m Changing How I Use Twitter

Davidbeking — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 12:15:14 -0000

Great post Steffan,

I have considered unfollowing for a while now and I think this blog post pushed me over the edge.

I was thinking If I un-follow all these broadcasters and spammers I can focus on connecting with more people and not have to digg through people to find those people to connect with.

I think i'm going to do that soon, thanks for the blog post :)

David

Re: Focusing On Value: How I’m Changing How I Use Twitter

Steffan Antonas — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 15:29:02 -0000

Glad you enjoyed the post. Yes, search is a great way to find the stuff
you're interested in. filtering and focus on twitter to get value out of it
is key. Hopefully we'll start to see more innovation around real time search
in the months to come.

Re: Focusing On Value: How I’m Changing How I Use Twitter

Mark Hazleton — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:10:45 -0000

Great post, this is something I have been thinking and talking to folks about for some time, but never put into words.

Since all Twitter posts are public and search is so easy to use, I find it is easier to look at tweets using search.

I never bought on to the follow a million get followed by a million hype as a path to get rich quick.

Thanks for the article.

Re: Focusing On Value: How I’m Changing How I Use Twitter

Steffan Antonas — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 10:26:00 -0000

I don't believe that the answer about the value (or lack thereof) of
following lots of people is quite as obvious as you seem to think it is.
Everyone uses Twitter a little bit differently - and if the ability to drive
traffic in big numbers was supported by the data, a lot of people (including
me) might be singing a different tune. While it seems intuitive that
"following more than a few hundred people" kills the value, there are many
tools out there like Tweetdeck and Hootsuite that allow you to filter your
list for your favorite people, searches etc

Re: Focusing On Value: How I’m Changing How I Use Twitter

Raptoreyes — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 23:56:36 -0000

Then the real trick will be choosing WHO is in each membership list VERY carefully. Or perhaps multiple accounts for multiple purposes if Twitter's software is in any way unequal to parsing out lists of people and keeping them separate for the purposes of updates. In other words can I keep messages (for services) that might appeal to an architect away from messages that would appeal to Sci Fi authors. (For example)

Any resources online that are NOT produced by the "Twitter Team" (other then this great article) that can give me a sense of what the limitations of Twitter are and any abilities that I might not have considered as assets in Twitter? The companies own tutorial resources might overstate or understate the functionality that expert users understand far better then the designers themselves.

Thanks again for your reply, it made me realize that the label we give information depends a great deal on weather we want to hear it. This helped me ask a better more useful question. After all, its very easy to unintentionally "force feed" a person content that they might not want at that particular time. A person might get visibly bored in person but on the internet the just skip over your messages without any warning that you just "lost them". Lets hope these list provide feedback when its apparent that peoples interests have changed.

Re: Focusing On Value: How I’m Changing How I Use Twitter

vadadean — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 21:23:50 -0000

If you enter Twitter-land with commercial intent then your message will likely fall on deaf ears. If you enter with connection intent then you will find a cadre of conversationalists welcoming you.

As for content crossing the line, I'll quote more eloquent writers:

"Conversation is king. Content is just something to talk about." -Cory Doctorow

"We call it advertising when we're not interested in it. When we're interested in it we call it information." -Vint Cerf

Re: Focusing On Value: How I’m Changing How I Use Twitter

desmondpieri — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 20:39:02 -0000

Interesting that it took so many "experts" so long to figure out was obvious to so many of the masses right away: Following too many people on Twitter (and Facebook) kills it's value. I only follow people on Twitter from whom I can learn something new of value. When my Twitter gets over 75, and my Facebook gets over 200, I cull them back.

Re: Focusing On Value: How I’m Changing How I Use Twitter

Raptoreyes — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 20:14:36 -0000

Well well Vada! Fancy meeting you here.

I have begun to consider getting Twitter (Big thanks to Steffan Antonas linking Twitters exponential growth chart vs other social networks for helping me to consider this). Still the word count limit for Tweets is what kept me away in the first place, so I still wonder if it will annoy me, once I "jack into" the Twitter network.

As to the article I was wondering how useful Twitter is for commercial use. When does your content cross the line from being useful to being spam. How do you avoid crossing the grey blurry line even if you keep the number of people who follow you below Dunbar's limit?

Re: Focusing On Value: How I’m Changing How I Use Twitter

sebastianconcept — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:58:43 -0000

Yes, that's the value of your investigation.
Social media technology is becoming more sociology than technology each day.
I'd not be surprised if we end up needing a new profession: web app developers that are designers and socio-psychologists

Re: Focusing On Value: How I’m Changing How I Use Twitter

Steffan Antonas — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 15:19:08 -0000

Mark - You've hit the nail on the head right here...

"That change was not due to fewer new people following me, that number
stayed constant, but because the ratio of people who actually use Twitter to
build relationships (instead of broadcast spam) dropped from 90% to 5%".

I noticed it happening in early summer myself. And I was dying to try
rebooting for months. I'm actually glad I did though. Believe it or not, my
click through rate has actually gone up (I'm connecting more with people
that matter), my spam completely stopped and the utility I get out of
Tweetdeck and lists is way up.

Re: Focusing On Value: How I’m Changing How I Use Twitter

GlobalPatriot — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 14:49:33 -0000

First point...excellent blog post on the current state of twitter...I'm passing on to all my close friends!

As to my Twitter experience, I've never auto-followed or used any automated tool to get followers - I follow people I find interesting, and only follow new followers who are using Twitter to have conversations and build relationships. I was fortunate to connect with amazing people early on, did my best to communicate and share relevant links. The ride from zero to 500 took a while, but the subsequent climb from 500 to 5000 happened over just six months, then things tapered off this Spring.

That change was not due to fewer new people following me, that number stayed constant, but because the ratio of people who actually use Twitter to build relationships (instead of broadcast spam) dropped from 90% to 5% - which is to say that I used to follow back 9 out of 10 new followers, but I'm now down to 1 out of 20.

I haven't tried the reboot yet, as TweetDeck allows me to follow a reasonable subset of followers (where I spend 2/3 of my time) while allowing me to still see the entire stream when I want, but at times I'm tempted.