Does size matter when it comes to Twitter followers?

Don’t believe what your friends say, OF COURSE it matters.

I’m always a bit surprised when I see organisational Twitter accounts with less than 100 followers, there’s plenty of them, I think to myself, are they really trying here?

Follower Build:

It’s really not so hard to do, all you need to do is follow some relevant people, a proportion of those will follow you back, those who don’t follow back you stop following over a period of time and then repeat. Pretty soon you have a few thousand.

Content:

Perhaps then a follower build isn’t the main stumbling block, being so easy and all, perhaps it’s a content issue, Twitterer’s block perhaps, faced with 140 characters and not wanting to seem superficial, what the devil do I write. And yet there are limitless options, photos, videos, links to blogs and articles, so it can’t be that can it?

Organisational Politics:

Maybe there’s a concern that their organisation will not approve of the content, or perhaps all the relevant stakeholders cannot agree. In these still pioneering Twimes, anyone with a Twitter account or Facebook page thinks they’re an expert because in the land of the blind, a one eyed tweeter can be king.

Management Buy In:

And then there’s management buy in and budget, all this stuff is time consuming, creative, deft and skillful, really you should either form an in-house dept or better (from my standpoint) outsource to your favourite PR Agency.

And yet, in 2012, only the most pioneering boardrooms see social media as an opportunity to steal a march on the competition.

Scary Competitive Advantage:

Imagine, your Twitter followers = 10,000, your competitor’s = 100, how powerful is that – licence to engage with that audience several times a day.

Hmm, maybe that’s the scariest thought of all.