Numbers Matter in Twitter

Maybe you weren’t good with numbers in school. Maybe numbers were boring to you and now you’re happier letting someone else deal with the “math” of your life. There are just a few numbers that you might want to consider when you delve into Twitter a little deeper. You could use some of these numbers to help you track your progress on Twitter.

Ratio of Followers to Following

Twitter by the Numbers

Like your cholesterol’s HDL versus LDL ratio, it’s important to shoot for a “good ratio.” On Twitter, that means roughly one follower to one following. Celebrities or superstars may have a huge number of followers and follow very few people. Some people won’t follow those with low numbers of followers (something to keep in mind if you’re going to run out and follow 2,000 accounts when only 17 people follow you). Decide if you want to follow a million people without many of them following you back. What do you get out of following all those celebrities, anyway? You could cut them loose and just put them on a list. For me, the most important thing when deciding to follow is good content and conversation.

Number of Tweets

You might want to look at an account’s number of tweets to decide if they would be a good fit. I am fairly chatty (which is prolific) on Twitter, so someone with only a few tweets may not be the best fit for me. If the account has only 23 followers, I will probably dominate their Twitstream, since I tweet 20+ times a day and that’s on a slow day. However, some newbies find that they really like the chatty nature of Twitter. But if you’re not going to have conversations on Twitter, you might not want to follow people with huge numbers of tweets. First check how many tweets a user averages before following them if too many tweets is a concern to you.

Number of Listings

Number of Listings

The number of times you’ve been listed by others is a good indication of Twitter success in my book. So although this isn’t your usual key performance indicator, it’s one that is more important than followers, especially since followers can be bought. Being listed is a real badge of honor because it means that someone took the time to create a list and then put you on it. Take a look at my friend, @TerriNakamura’s listings, for example. She has been listed over 3,500 times. To me, that’s a real sign of success on Twitter.

Total Number of Followers

The total number of followers isn’t the most important number to many social media experts. Partly that has to do with how easy it is to plunk down some cash and buy followers. There are ways to tell if someone bought Twitter followers. And if you think big accounts are all truthful, Gizmodo has a great article about celebrities and their fake followers. In fact, selling followers on Twitter has become a huge business lately.

Which Numbers Impress You?

Are you impressed by large numbers of followers? Why or why not?