Twitter Following to Followers Ratio

Twitter world: I need some help. I love Twitter. It has replaced my Facebook time almost entirely and I’m convinced that it’s the best aggregator of information on the web. One day in the not too distance future, I hope to be an influential voice on Twitter, with thousands or even tens of thousands of followers. How I get to that point of influence and authority isn’t the subject of this post. However, I am struggling with the following two observations:

  1. There are two types of highly influential Twitter users (>2000 followers):
    • Few Following (< than 500), Many Followers
    • Many Followers, Many Following
  2. I am following 300 users and I am finding that 300 is close to the limit that I am able to keep close track of. This has lead me to:
    • Unfollowing interesting people that simply post too much and cloud my timeline (eg. @craignewmark)
    • Being overly selective on who I follow, which causes me to miss out on important conversations

I feel like I am at a crossroads.  Should I choose to follow many people or few people?  For the people that do follow a lot of people, how do you keep track of everything? I am worried that having to start using lists or other filters to separate the people that I follow will just increase the time that I need to administer my Twitter use, and that’s the last thing that I want to do.  Lastly, if Twitter is just a pissing contest anyway should I just try to be one of those people that has a very low following:followers ratio, and therefore “very influential”?

Thanks for your help!

  • http://www.toandang.com Toan Dang

    Hey Alex,

    I think that you can still follow >300 people and still get value out of it. Here’s why:

    -It is relatively impersonal when you follow someone but it does show that you care to connect, much like stars to their fans. However, it says more about how you value them when you RT what they say or reach out in a conversation to them.

    -You can find more effective ways of RT’ing or conversations through Twitter search; much more targeted to your interests

    -From time to time, you can go back and refollow people who you have unfollowed before. People grow with the technology and learn to use it better

    -Managing people by lists and columns is a great way to manage your streams. My most important list is a “short list” where these are the people who I aim to keep in touch with. My goal is to help them succeed.

    -There is a point where there can be too many people that you follow but I think even up to 1000 can be manageable to an extent.

    -My advice is to filter out the people you follow in the first place, take a look at their Twitter accounts and see the things they are talking about and how often they do it.

    Hope this answered your question a little bit.

    Toan

  • http://www.alexshipillo.com Alex Shipillo

    Toan, wow – that’s super helpful! Thank you!