Twitter: Quantity vs. Quality

When it comes to Twitter followers, and really anything related to social media, quality is much more important than quantity (in my opinion). For example, you can randomly select 2,000 people to follow and while you may have a lot of "friends" on Twitter, you more than likely are not gaining anything valuable from those connections. People seem to be overly-focused on getting a high number of followers, but I think that emphasis should be placed on the quality of people that you're connecting with. Sure, there are benefits to having a large following, including a larger audience to interact with and more exposure, but if you don't care about the tweets of all those random people, there is a really good chance that they also do not care at all what you have to say.

It's just like personal interactions with people on a daily basis; you have to earn their respect and their time, because time is a valuable commodity. You wouldn't meet a random stranger on a bus and expect to have an intense, in-depth conversation with them without at least establishing a relationship, right? The same social rules and principles apply to social media. Choose those people that you follow wisely by making sure you have some common ground, ideas or interests. Don't feel obligated to follow people back if you have no idea who they are or what they are promoting. Social media isn't just about getting your name out there and collecting followers like they're pennies, but actually establishing and maintaining relationships! Make sure that you're engaging in dialogue with these people, or if your sole purpose for following them is to simply gain knowledge and insights from their tweets, make sure that they are actually providing you with valuable information and not wasting your time.

When I choose people or brands to follow on Twitter, I want to make sure that there is actually some form of connection there whether it be a name-brand recognition, someone I've met in the past, someone that (obviously) shares a similar interest that I'm passionate about, or someone that is also in my field of work.

My top 5 Professional "Tweeps" include:

1. @SocialSavvyGeek    Laura E. Pence is the President of Social Savvy Geek which is a social media management firm that helps to protect your brand name and reputation online. She always posts interesting tips and articles, and she engages all of her followers.

2. @chelseahandler        Well, she's basically hilarious. She doesn't seem to hold much back and just tweets whatever is on her mind. She absolutely cracks me up!!

3.@NC5_HeatherGraf     Heather is a local reporter for News Channel 5 in Nashville. I've worked with her at several different events and she is one of my favorite reporters to watch and interview with! She's always the first one I call when doing any type of PR, so I like to see what other things she's up to and reporting about. Her tweets are informative, but her kind personality seems to really shine through in everything she writes!

4.@CRNC       This is the account for The College Republicans, a group of conservative youth with chapters across the nation. I'm involved with this organization at a local level, but I love their national account the most because they share relevant and interesting information, they don't tweet TOO MUCH, and they strongly encourage interaction from their followers.

5. @PhiredUpMatt      Matt Mattson is the Co-Founder/President of PhiredUp Productions, and is a recruitment and social excellence expert. His tweets, while aimed towards collegiate greeks, are really beneficial to anyone as they address issues of handshakes, introductions, self-confidence, social cues and guidelines, public speaking, business ethics, decision making, etc. through the use of quotes, questions, articles, and dialogue with followers.

• On my business account for the Nashville Wedding Planners Group, I currently have 313 followers (that has grown a lot in the past few months!)
• On my personal account I now have 478 followers (a huge jump from when I first started this class!)
• On my anon account I have 1,195 followers. That's not a lot compared to most big anon accounts, but having only started this one 2 months ago, I'm pleased with my progress.

As far as engaging with my followers, I'd say the only account that I'm consistent about doing that with is for my job. I have scheduled tweets every morning for our new blog post, I #ff different planners and vendors, I RT important info and exciting news from our members, remind members to RSVP, post links that I think our followers would appreciate, and respond/participate in dialogue among my followers.

My personal account seems to really fall by the wayside because most people that I interact with still use Facebook as their primary means of communication, so I rarely spend time even logging into my personal one.

My anonymous account, on the other hand, is a lot of fun and I engage with my followers as often as possible. Obviously my work one comes first, but whenever I have free time I like to spend it with my anon account. I've established a lot of close "connections" with other anons and have a pretty consistent dialogue going with some of my favorite followers.