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Followers or posts – what is more time-consuming?

Using our monthly statistic about destinations on Twitter we thought it would be interesting to analyze the number of followers and number of posts in more detail.
One school of thought on Twitter is that if you write tweets are people find interesting and helpful, your number of followers will grow. So lots of time should be spend on creating good content.
But reality is different. Try to build a following this way and unless something else happens (e.g. media talking about your Twitter efforts) it will take a long, long time to get to a larger number of followers.

Quite a few destinations therefore conduct follow-unfollow campaigns to grow the number of their friends.

But this is also time-consuming and has to be done right as Twitter will shut down accounts that have a big imbalance between followers and being-followed.

We use the followers/updates rating as a metric that we track each month for the accounts we manage. It tells us how successful we are in creating good content and in growing our following. We only looked at destinations that were on our list on Dec. 31st and had posted more than 10 updates.

Comparing these ratios between different accounts is not as meaningful when you look at them only as a snapshot and not as development over time.

Here is how to read this: WilliamsportPA twittered 10 times and got 219 followers. GoRockford on the other hand twittered 264 times and had on 12/31 only 71 followers. The ExpCol account that is fed by an RSS sent 1863 updates and had 705 followers. Paadventure has more followers and got there with only 221 updates.
(Full disclosure: we are working with TravelPortland – Nr. 34 on the list – on developing and implementing their social media strategy which includes Twitter activities)

Destinations Followers 12/31/2008 Updates 12/31/2008 Followers / Updates Ratio
1 WilliamsportPA 219 10 21.9
2 UtahStateParks 322 47 6.9
3 chicagonorthsub 121 18 6.7
4 VisitVF 112 19 5.9
5 VaBeachCVB 102 21 4.9
6 chicagonw 107 25 4.3
7 renotahoe 337 82 4.1
8 choosechicago 136 34 4.0
9 westhollywood 84 21 4.0
10 BattleCreekCVB 134 34 3.9
11 paadventure 841 221 3.8
12 chattanoogafun 76 20 3.8
13 ScottsdaleAZ 420 114 3.7
14 VisitMissouri 114 31 3.7
15 HeritageCVB 33 10 3.3
16 HarborCountry 56 17 3.3
17 VermontTourism 204 66 3.1
18 Stockton_CVB 34 12 2.8
19 GrandRapidsCVB 185 67 2.8
20 MeetMinneapolis 476 180 2.6
21 VisitDetroit 54 21 2.6
22 VisitChicago 1272 516 2.5
23 travelnevada 237 104 2.3
24 ColumbiaSC 330 151 2.2
25 SpringfieldCVB 573 267 2.1
26 AlpharettaCVB 53 25 2.1
27 enjoyillinois 482 235 2.1
28 visitkc 113 56 2.0
29 VisitNH 195 101 1.9
30 ArizonaTourism 670 348 1.9
31 PositivelyCleve 748 396 1.9
32 VisitFairfax 175 93 1.9
33 LakeCoCVB 26 14 1.9
34 TravelPortland 226 126 1.8
35 VisitMesa 280 166 1.7
36 VisitGrayling 26 16 1.6
37 lehighvalleypa 852 551 1.5
38 SantaRosaCVB 37 24 1.5
39 Ypsilanti 20 13 1.5
40 BaltimoreMD 1157 759 1.5
41 fargomoorhead 109 72 1.5
42 WCVA 118 84 1.4
43 VisitVirginia 167 124 1.3
44 ColumbiaMOCVB 205 157 1.3
45 VisitBtown 49 39 1.3
46 PensacolaCVB 123 104 1.2
47 whatcomcounty 197 168 1.2
48 PadreDude 42 37 1.1
49 ShastaCascade 97 87 1.1
50 flee2thecleve 183 166 1.1
51 VisitIdaho 74 70 1.1
52 VisitFlagstaff 128 140 0.9
53 visitphilly 856 1032 0.8
54 AnnArborAreaCVB 111 139 0.8
55 ashevilletravel 332 423 0.8
56 Hillsborough 195 251 0.8
57 discover_la 246 325 0.8
58 TravelOregon 646 883 0.7
59 visitflorida 280 411 0.7
60 DestWorcester 32 47 0.7
61 VisitIndiana 257 487 0.5
62 GalvestonIsland 220 421 0.5
63 InsideSonoma 189 372 0.5
64 FortSmithCVB 99 203 0.5
65 insidealaska 71 146 0.5
66 ExpCols 705 1863 0.4
67 visitfingerlake 129 413 0.3
68 Calistoga 56 180 0.3
69 gorockford 71 264 0.3

So the learning form this? You need to spend time on tweets and on growing your number of followers. And you need to develop metrics to measure the efficiency of your twitter efforts over time.

What are your thoughts on this?

This entry was posted on Monday, January 12th, 2009 at 9:15 am and is filed under Social Media, Twitter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Followers or posts – what is more time-consuming?”

  1. PDXPipeline Says:
    January 12th, 2009 at 9:37 am

    You do have to spend time engaging others on twitter. It is social media and just using a push approach will obviously not work unless you are the NYtimes or something big like this.

    Which leads to what second observation: The company/website behind a twitter account will have a direct correlation on clicks and followers. It is all part of the package and the stronger the website/brand behind the account is, the better twitter will work with it.

  2. Chris Says:
    January 16th, 2009 at 9:55 am

    The follow-unfollow technique will not bring the desired results. Yes, some people follow you just because you are following them, but wouldn’t you rather engage people that are actually interested in what you are writing? We believe in reaching the right 500 people instead of the wrong 5,000 people.

    Slow growth is fine as long as it is steady. Tweet consistently, Tweet interestingly and Tweet responsively…that seems like the best way to gain a quality following.

    We also review Monitter.com for keywords and respond to people that talk about us. That has created some ongoing and valuable relationships.

    Chris Harper
    Fairbanks CVB
    @insidealaska

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