Why your number of Twitter followers is not the only factor driving your engagement
Two case studies that prove why engagement is the best metric for measuring success on Twitter
On a daily basis, I hear people talk about growing their social media accounts. They want 5k followers for their personal Instagram and 25k Facebook likes on their corporate Facebook. Today, I’m going to explain why your follower count matters less than your rate of engagement by comparing my experience with two different Twitter accounts.
Context:
I run a 6-year-old Twitter account with 5 000 followers that barely receives any engagement, no matter what strategies I deploy or what content I create. I also manage a brand new account with 550 followers that is swimming in retweets.
Examination of account #1:
Regardless of what I do with the first account, it remains fairly stagnant. The organization gained thousands of followers between 2012–14 before their Twitter strategy completely dissolved. The account became near-dormant for several years and its growth significantly slowed down.
In the early years, Twitter users flocked to this account. But when the account nearly died, its followers naturally became disengaged and they spent two years without interacting with the account. This had two significant outcomes. Firstly, the original crop of followers lost interest in the account. Its Twitter presence dropped off the face of the earth for two years, and therefore people lost interest in its content. Secondly, few fans who learned about the brand on other channels actually stumbled upon the Twitter account during that period. The brand cultivated big advocates and fans on other platforms but that didn’t transfer into growth or engagement on Twitter.
Examination of account #2:
The second account has grown to 550 followers since its launch one month ago. This means that all of its 550 followers decided to follow the account within the past 30 days. Since the account has tweeted every day since its conception, all of its followers have only seen this account in an active and functional state. This brand has been consistent on Twitter since day #1 and its followers have taken note.
This account is very easy to run. With even less effort than the first account, I can easily create content to gradually grow the number of followers and the rate of engagement. This is because the followers are relevant to the account. They’re new and fresh!
Lessons learned:
Growth is more than just a number; growth is also the process of bringing new and engaged followers into the fold. Staying continuously fresh and relevant is part of healthy growth. Just because an account has 5k followers doesn’t mean that its engagement is healthy and useful. You can still drive engagement off of a small account — which, when run correctly, will gradually grow into a large account.
In conclusion, you may want to evaluate whether you are actually getting enough value off of a big account. Just because it has a lot of followers doesn’t mean that it’s proportionally useful to its size. Moreover, longterm inactivity in an account is almost a kiss of death. It is extremely difficult to resurrect an account after years of neglect, which is an excellent incentive to stay consistent with your content.
