The Twitter Challenge ended.
People will view the results in different ways. I feel we didn’t meet the ‘challenge’. No, not because Meghna didn’t rank #1 at Blogging Idol 2 (she’s anyway a winner), but because of the numbers involved.
On my Twitter stream, I record 2,045 followers.
When we started the challenge, Meghna’s blog had 118 followers, and went up to 143. Even if ALL her new followers came from the Twitter Challenge, that’s just 25 subscribers to a free RSS feed – out of my 2,000+ followers!
Just about ONE out of every HUNDRED followers took action which would involve no longer than 3 minutes, at most.
19 people got involved by doing more than just voting and subscribing (like re-tweeting posts, mentioning it in their own Twitter conversations, and in a few cases, even emailing their lists)
Like I said, the challenge was a test of the ‘tightness’ of bonds built on Twitter – and these numbers show just how tight most of them really are!
One variable may impact this analysis. People may have missed my announcements completely.
I doubt it, though. In all, between November 21st and 26th, at different times of the day, I posted TWENTY-TWO direct tweets and ELEVEN @replies related to the contest and the Twitter Challenge. If anything, I’ve flogged it too hard!
This is NOT an isolated experience.
My recent joint venture invitation received a similar luke-warm response, and while the Heart Kids Tweet-a-thon did raise an impressive $11,000 in donations, a lot of it was co-ordinated and came from communications that happened off-Twitter.
All of this is rather convincing proof of two things -
1. People are busy on Twitter, with VERY LITTLE attention being available to each person in their tweet-stream. Like I said in one of my earliest Twitter related blog posts, it’s practically impossible to catch the eye of someone in a crowded room when they are thronged by hundreds of their ardent fans.
2. Most users treat Twitter as a channel for casual (VERY casual) and superficial contact, NOT for holding deep or lengthy conversations… even though they pay lip service to “relationship building”. Bonds built on Twitter, regardless of how ‘personal’ they may appear, are more often than not loose and weak (to my dismay and disappointment, I might add!).
These conclusions nudged me to take a closer look at how I can use Twitter more effectively, in a way that aligns it with my overall social media strategy.
One option I’m considering is making my Twitter profile ‘protected’ – so that only those who actively indicate their interest in following what I say on Twitter are on the stream.
Another is to cut down on my Twitter use drastically, so that even smaller ‘returns’ become meaningful because the ‘investment’ is even lesser.
Whichever of the two I pick (or maybe both), I won’t go back to those link-lobbing, pitch tossing early days of my Twitter experience.
So, why not just QUIT Twitter?
No, I like it too much to do that. But things will change. I won’t use Twitter the exact same way I have until now. Will you?
Thoughts?
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Dr. Mani:
As twitter evolved from a platform for personalities to interact, to the latest & greatest web 2.0 marketing tool, volume increased tremendously, swallowing personal tweets in the flood.
How many posts are conversations vs. pitches? Many tweeters never use the @ to reply.
I imagine there’s a third party app to meet anyone’s vision of what twitter should be for them. If, that is, you want twitter to be more than it is.
Twitter rule #1: Use it any way you want.
There are no other rules. Your expectations of how twitter should work are none of my concern.
For me, twitter works very well as a news reader of some very bright and interesting people. Any relationships that are started are usually nourished off-twitter. Your example of the hospital break room works for me.
I look forward to seeing what twitter becomes for you.
I’m one who is far too busy right now to follow every tweet everyone presents. You yourself advocate only following 40 people. When I followed 40 or so, I was pretty much able to keep track of it all.
Over the past few months I upped my following for a variety of reasons – I, too, was experimenting. Now, because of the number I follow, I don’t see all your tweets. And, I don’t have the time to go back and look for them. And, I’m not even interested in some of them.
I did see one of your tweets about this person and took a look. However, I didn’t see anything that fit my interests nor did I feel compelled to follow your requested actions. I’m sure she is a nice young person, but I felt no connection and sorry, but there was nothing there for me.
I am surprised that you would feel that just because people are interested in what you are doing, we should all just be sheep and follow your suggestion to go do something that would benefit you and your friend, but that holds nothing for us. Not that I want anything for “doing a favor”, but seriously, I do have a choice in the matter.
So I guess that’s my point. We are all individuals. We do the things we do for our own personal reasons. Blaming Twitter or anything else for my choice to not follow your desires is a rather shallow generalization and as much as I like you and most of what you are doing, I guess I’m a bit surprised that would be your conclusion.
To me your request was really no different from the so called “gurus” hyping the next book of interviews that some newbie has put together by interviewing that same group of “gurus”. You are welcome to tout whoever you think is worthy, but you are naive to think that every one of your followers has the same interests, tastes, values or desires that you do.
I am grateful when someone thinks enough of me to recommend me or my work to someone else, but I don’t expect all their friends to become my friends, or all their followers to suddenly follow me.
So far I haven’t used Twitter for marketing. I’ve used it to develop relationships and discover new resources. I unfollow people who use it exclusively as a marketing tool because that does not provide any value to me. Using Twitter as an announcement vehicle (as you did with the Tweet-a-thon), in conjunction with other strategies seems to make the most sense if you are using it for marketing.
I see you have a new post about your use of Twitter, so I’ll be interested in seeing how your ideas evolve.
Katie, excellent points, thanks for sharing your thoughts here.
You wrote:
“…you are naive to think that every one of your followers has
the same interests, tastes, values or desires that you do.”
I would indeed be naive if I expected that (significant parts bolded
for emphasis).
But just as with my email lists, I do expect that a large part
of my audience will have SIMILAR interests and concerns – if
not identical.
If not, and we significantly diverge in just about everything, why
would you care to follow me on an essentially permission-based
medium as Twitter – and contrarily, why would I continue to follow
you?
No, the problem is with people following too many others.
If – let’s hypothesize here – you and I both followed each other
and ONLY TEN others on Twitter. And the ‘follow’ was based on
mutual respect or admiration, shared interests and concerns.
Then – if I asked you to click a link, subscribe to an RSS feed
(for winning a contest), donate to a cause, spread the word about
a worthy effort, or just vote up a post on Digg or StumbleUpon…
Would You Do It?
I should think you would. I know I would under those circumstances,
if you asked.
Then, when FEWER than 1 in ONE HUNDRED respond, it seems to me a
reasonable conclusion to derive that out of the 2,000+ people who
are following me, either 99 in 100 do NOT share anything much in
common with me (which means there’s no purpose in them following
me on Twitter) OR they simply are not seeing what I’m sharing on
Twitter!
Both are ‘problems’ with the way I’ve been using Twitter until now.
And both will be ’solved’ (I think) by the way I will be changing
how I use Twitter in the future.
Oh, and for the record, I’m not “blaming Twitter” for anything!
Why ever would I – it’s a FANTASTIC platform, for anyone to do
anything they like on a world stage. The only thing I might have
considered blaming Twitter for (if I were PAYING for usage) would
be the frequent outages in the past. Nothing to blame here!
“Relationship building” on Twitter is, imho, one of those terms we
pay ‘lip-service’ to – just like gaining “Friends” on Facebook!
Once your Twitter following crosses a limit, it really isn’t
more than a water-cooler where you wave quick hellos to folks
who are familiar to you – not quite a relationship building
medium akin to a dinner date, or even a shared cup of coffee
at Starbucks!
And that component, again, is one I’ll be addressing in the
Twitter MAGIC post that’ll be shared with my email list – soon!
Dear Doc
I can understand your dejection when you get lower than 1% response rate to a ‘request’ – where one does not have to buy something. I did vote for Meghna, but frankly I could not connect to her either. May be you wanted to promote her as a young talent or you saw something which I missed.
However, I cannot see your point of making your Twitter account private. If you have more than 2000 followers who are not responding to most of your suggestions or requests, why kill them? May be they are just watching what you are doing? May be they started following you and then followed so many others that they ‘lost’ you?
At some point of time, they may clean up their Twitter following and then, stick with you and listen more carefully to you. Why don’t you wait patiently for them, specially because you don’t have to pay for it.
I would understand if Twitter was utterly useless for you but I think you have made some good friends here. I am ‘for’ limiting my reading list but I am ‘against’ trimming my follower list.
As for me, I start following any good resource I locate and then, if I find good useful tweets, I stay on. Otherwise I ‘unfollow’ them after a few days. This periodic cleaning helps me keep my list of people I follow to a manageable level and I get regularly get alerted to new, useful resources I would not have found otherwise.
I tend to rely on http://search.twitter.com to catch Tweets directed @ me. I only catch other Tweets when I pop by Twitter in the morn, and sometimes eve.
I do find it great for one on one conversation, with some bystanders being pulled in at times.
Dr Mani, I have had the same disappointing results from trying to sell an ebook on Twitter to raise money for charity. But, The friendships and fun will keep me hanging around.
I am sorry I missed your tweets in November. I have been ignoring Twitter in an effort to do more worthwhile activities.
Perhaps your other followers have been busy and not reading their Twitter stream as well. I am sure if they knew you wanted help, they would have been tweating their hearts out.
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