I’ve been on Twitter since 2007, and I’m approaching 5,000 followers. Maybe I don’t tweet enough.
When I look at some of the folks on Twitter these days, I find it incredible that some of them have 50,000, 500,000, or even over a million followers. If you aren’t famous in your own right, why are all these people following you?
The typical answer: because you are following all of them back.
Luckily, the ways of Twitter are finally starting to wise-up — people are becoming more interested in effectiveness, as we see the use of influence-measurement tools (ie Klout, Twinfluence) and Lists (though these are often misused to purposely omit people from them, but we already knew social media is a lot like high school).
At least Twitter acknowledges that friend overload has become a problem, implementing strict guidelines to the amount of followers you can add daily.
So let’s ask the question: how many followers should people really have? I would argue that it should at least in part depend on an account’s age.
There will always be exceptions to the rule (i.e. celebrities, top name brands, and one of a kind accounts like @shitmydadsays), but how many followers should a typical user of the service actually accumulate over time? How many people should they attempt to follow back?
Some of you may have noticed a new Twitter Retweet logo marking your friends’ RT’s. Since users, the originators of the term, have been utilizing “RT” (followed by the author’s @name) almost as long as Twitter’s been around, and applications such as Tweetdeck and Seesmic implemented the feature long ago, what took Twitter so long in adding such a simple and necessary feature? This is something I would have expected to be released prior to Twitter Lists.
Let’s just assume they wanted to take their time, ensuring they didn’t leave anything out. From our initial impression, it looks as if they didn’t. The Twitter developers were sure to include a retweet counter and smartly prevented users from editing the original tweet. I’m sure you’re all eagerly awaiting your opportunity to give it try.
I remember when Plurk first came out. At first glance its user interface was different but once you got to spending some time on the site, it was pretty cool. As luck would have it, Plurk also came around when Twitter was having some of its worst downtime in history. Take that, and some nifty enhanced features (conversations on one page, ability to share images and video, dancing bananas and it seemed as though Plurk really could have taken over the microblogging space.
But it didn’t.
Why? I would offer that Plurk ultimately didn’t listen to its community. Perhaps the dealbreaker for me and others was the fact about not making karma optional. The nature of many on the social web is to be competitive, and Plurk gave us a forum for this. The more active you are, the more karma you received. However, if there was a period of time that you were inactive (say, you had a holiday, a weekend, religious reasons, etc) you would actually lose karma. A number of people brought this up, but Plurk stood firm, saying that if you didn’t want to see karma on your profile, you could just hide it out with a different page design. That’s a band-aid to the problem.
I was thinking about keeping quiet over this situation, that is, until I received an email from Plurk last week talking about the Plurk activity I’ve missed for the week. After seeing this, I chatted with Teeg, a friend of mine and still staunch supporter of Plurk. She said that she didn’t get the email! This is a community fail on the part of Plurk to target the Plurkers that are not participating, rather than the ones that are.
So Plurk, I didn’t want to say it, but you’re doing it wrong:
This a phrase that anyone working in customer service should be fully familiar with. While frequently known, albeit infrequently implemented in the “real world,” the saying has taken on a new meaning with the dawn of a new era on the Internet.
Social media has give a voice to the masses; a refuge the customer dealing with bouts of anxiety due to lack of true service. That scares many companies, large and small, and for good reason. The public, and very likely their target audience, now has access to uncensored reviews, testimonials, and all of the “good, bad, and the ugly” about all sorts of products and services.
Recently, I’ve been shopping around for Internet connection services. Always one to be a picky shopper, I chatted with at least three members of Comcast’s online sales crew (based in the Philippines). Incidentally, I also received three different quotes and related information regarding service packages. I had also spoken with (on the phone) AT&T – both their technical support and their customer service department. The tech support was fantastic and solved the issue I was experiencing. Their customer service department, however, only led in two frustrated hang-ups, after being transferred around between four phone representatives – without even being notified of it beforehand.
Twitter became the place I turned to in the midst of my frustration with online and phone customer service/sales with both AT&T and Comcast. Being on the Pacific coast, I mentioned @attjason in my Tweets twice and even asked a friend to do so, which she also did twice. Between these four tweets mentioning the AT&T Twitter representative for the West Coast, one reply was received, one private message was sent, but nothing to really solve the problem. The other AT&T customer service folks on Twitter are @attcustomercare (Molly for the East Coast), @attjohnathon (Johnathon for the Central USA), @attnatasha (Natasha for the Central USA), and @attsusan (Susan for the East Coast), for which I have no personal experience in dealing with.
AT&T customer service on Twitter
For Comcast, I had mentioned @comcastcares (operated by Frank Eliason) twice. I only received one reply from @comcastcares specifically, which had asked me to e-mail them … and I hate e-mailing. I did receive one response from @comcastmelissa, whom also inquired into how she could help.
@comcastcares on Twitter
By this point, I was really frustrated with trying out all different avenues of contact both companies to get service. Again, AT&T had great technical support (which I suspect is in Israel, based upon accent and the name of the young man that helped me), but just lost customer support on the phone. @Attjason did send me a DM (private message) apologizing for my poor experience and did offer to do what he could, which was considerate, as I’m admittedly not an easy customer to deal with (I expect working service, knowledgeable employees, and real discounts).
What I ended up doing was calling Comcast for once and for all. It didn’t work out with the first person I spoke to, but I needed service. So, I took a deep breath, called back, and got an undoubtedly American young man that was one smooth operator. Within 5 minutes I had an appointment for next day installation, no deposit necessary, exactly what I wanted and nothing else. Of course, the time slot for the appointment was coming to a close, so I was irritated. @Comcastbonnie was really a trooper in dealing with me and my tweets. She never lost her cool and quickly pinpointed the reason for the delay, solved it, and the Comcast technician arrived within about 20 minutes of her informing me that he was on his way. He was perfectly friendly, efficient, and, hey, my stuff is working so far. That’s always good.
I am still a customer of both companies, albeit for different services. The customer representatives on Twitter really have made a difference in my experience … I think I’ll contact them first the next time I want to order anything. Why are they different, and better, than the majority of the e-chat and phone reps? Because this stuff is public. If a customer is upset, they’re not afraid to let their friends/followers know about it – and oftentimes their followers will share their frustrations and retweet it.
While incidents of good customer service rarely make it on Twitter, and are even more sparsely re-tweeted, if a high standard is implemented and maintained, there will at least be a subliminal positive message floating around … and a positive corporate image never hurt anybody. Kudos to the companies savvy enough to put smart, efficient, and friendly customer support representatives on social networks.
Hello, my name is Brian Wallace, and I’m a Twitterholic. I’ve been on Twitter as @nowsourcing nearly 2 years now.
(image credit: whendidyoujointwitter.com)
So if I’ve been on Twitter so long, you might be skeptical that I only have 5,000 updates and not even 5,000 followers.Other people are flying by in follower counts. And that’s fine. What you must understand is that I’m more concerned about reach and influence vs. just a follower number.
When we take a look back over the past year, some would even go so far to criticize my meager average of 8.5 Tweets per day:
(image credit: tweetstats)
Keep in mind that the average number of Tweets per day is actually 4. Dan Zarrella might argue with me that I’m not reaching my full potential, as he suggests 22 Tweets per day is optimal. Maybe he’s right. Am I a Twitter slacker though? Hardly. (Funny, some might argue that being on Twitter so much makes you a slacker).
We manage several different Twitter accounts and advise on a significant client base. So if you put all those together, I’m actually Tweeting more than is suggested
Even so, let’s just stick with the 8.5 Tweets per day number. Some days I’ll even Tweet just a handful. Why? I would prefer to make each Tweet count and be relevant, entertaining, and helpful to my followers. They took the trouble of singling me out, so I’m here to provide that value.
A trend that is appearing is that fewer people read blogs (at least, it’s slowed down due to lifestreaming and microblogging) as well as expected RSS usage. People are looking to their Twitter friends to point them in the right direction. So, I dedicate my 5,000th Tweet and this further analysis to you, dear reader. Hope it got you thinking.
How do you approach the whole follower/following/velocity vs. influence discussion? Would love to hear your thoughts.
I’ve been on Twitter since 2007, and I’m approaching 5,000 followers. Maybe I don’t tweet enough.
and it seemed as though Plurk really could have taken over the microblogging space.
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