Comments on: The Quest for 5000 – How many Followers are Enough

By: Satya Thakur

Satya Thakur — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 18:37:47 +0000

I think 5000 is a good number to start with!

BTW how do you follow 1000+ people without ignoring 99% of their tweets?

By: Robert "Butch" Greenawalt

Robert "Butch" Greenawalt — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 18:23:52 +0000

In reading these comments a question was asked that immediately caught my attention.
Question: How do you follow 1000+ people without ignoring 99% of their tweets? This is also a question that may be familiar to others who use Linkedin.com or Plaxo to stay connected and the answer is “commitment.” What I mean by this is “while it is important to pay attention to your followers tweets”, many of them also include links which if they have immediate value to you “Bookmark” them and revisit them at your leisure or subscribe immediately to the Rss to visit them again at your leisure. Reading or revisiting your followers sites,blogs or content shows commitment and posting comments re-enforces the commitment to them. Is every single tweet made by someone going to be socially relevant and immediately impacting to you? Probably not, as many Tweets as you know, may be directed specifically from one follower to another and not you. Is your relationship with a follower immediately worthless if you miss or fail to reply to one of their tweets? Again, I certainly wouldn’t think so. Followers will come irregardless, either by natural or unnatural means, but it is inevitably your choice as to how many you can follow and commit to!

By: Ned

Ned — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 10:31:17 +0000

640 followers should be enough for anyone.

By: storyboardlife

storyboardlife — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 07:12:35 +0000

Mark,
I didn’t even know that my answer was going to be on a post. It shows that you should always respond on twitter if you think that you can offer something. The followers that you are talking about seems to be more like godin’s tribes. If you get some devoted followers you will get word of mouth and personal referrals. This is the key….also don’t forget the book, “marketing to the affluent.” Great book about becoming an expert in a niche by letting people know that you care.

Caring in the twitter-verse is about responding to anything that you can help with along with connecting those that you think would be a good connect with one another. On an number of occasions I have referred on follower with another when a need came around.

It’s not the quantity that will get you the true on going money and connections but the quality. do your followers believe and trust in you and what you have to offer.

Great post mark.

By: Internet Strategist

Internet Strategist — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 05:32:25 +0000

How many followers truly depends on what you’re using each Twitter account for and the size of your niche. I prefer to have one “power account” with as many followers as possible. I use that account to share the best Tweets related to blogging, ecommerce, usability, and Web design. I follow everyone and spend a lot of time ReTweeting the best of what others have shared.

That account is stuck at following 2000 so if what I Tweet there is of interest I will be eternally grateful to all those who follow and recommend @GrowMap so I can stop wasting my time figuring out who to unfollow and spend it instead on blogging, research, and sharing. I follow everyone back except for SPAMMERS whose only purpose is to send us to some link where they’re selling something. Those I block.

I use other Twitter accounts to reach specific Niches and in those I follow only those interested in that subject – and hope those who follow me back are too. For example, @NoBogies is about Golf, @ExecGifts is about Personalized Gifts for Business, Pleasure or Groomsmen, @MoreSales is specific to increasing sales for online stores and ecommerce.

The reason for multiple accounts is to keep followers happy by only Tweeting what they’re interested in. It is not much fun trying to keep up with multiple accounts so I’m still hoping for that killer Twitter app that allows me to be signed in to all of them at once – something like a cross between Splitweet and Tweetburner. (And another for FriendFeed too!) If anyone knows of one do please let me know.

By: Rob Chant

Rob Chant — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 23:31:34 +0000

Interesting thoughts, even in terms of just prompting people to set a goal. I’ve still no idea how many followers I’d want though!

Thanks for the shout too.

By: Ross Hill

Ross Hill — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 23:13:09 +0000

500 is a good start, but 1000 is nice. This is assuming that these are ‘true fans’ and not all spammers and bots. You could find the service useful with only 100 followers if you had a strong connection with them all and they are likely to reply to you.

By: Vinny

Vinny — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 22:49:42 +0000

I think 5000 is a good number to start with, if everyone that looked at your tweet and passed it on you would have a million people before you know it that looked at your tweet. Putting out quality tweets is what its all about.

By: LoneWolf

LoneWolf — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 21:44:20 +0000

I struggle to keep up with the 130 or so follows that I have. It is almost like having to dip in to the stream periodically to see what is there right now and ignore the rest. Respond to the replies and direct messages and set up searches for the people who’s tweets are really important to you. I guess its like almost all media — I can’t watch 200 TV channels at once either, or read all the newspapers and magazines, or the books, or …

Twitter and its users will continue to evolve as people find things that work and things that don’t.

By: Laura Christianson

Laura Christianson — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 19:15:41 +0000

I figure people will follow @heblogssheblogs if they 1) know us & like us 2) want to get to know us 3) find our links & info about how to improve your writing, blogging, and marketing valuable. Currently, we have 442 followers. 500 sounds like a nice round number to shoot for.

I’ve seen many a tweeter who follows 18,000 people in hopes that 18,000 people will follow them in return. That’s fine for them, if they need to fulfill that longing to be loved (or at least, followed). Personally, I enjoy having fewer, “quality” followers, because I have more of an opportunity to interact with them and get to know them, virtually speaking.

Laura Christianson
Co-owner, http://heblogssheblogs.com
Taking biz blogs from “potential” to “influential”