How important is a bunch of twitter followers to an Internet Marketer?

Posted: Jul 19, 2011
Author: WordJack Media

I was send this recent dilbert and could not resist publishing it here. I was amused by the aparent correlation between number of twitter followers and presige. Of course this sentiment is not just obvious in a social sense, but a lot of internet marketers equate more twitter followers to greater internet marketing success.

In reality, I don't see anything wrong with a brand building up a large number of followers on twitter, but here are the key questions when deciding whether they're valuable:

Did your number grow as a result of more tweeting activity on your part?

If your answer is yes, then you can assume you are hitting a chord with some people out there....good start!

Are the followers active accounts?

Have a skim through your follower list. Do they look like real people? Are they active accounts with a picture/logo, a profile, regular and recent tweets and others following them?

Do they look right, geographically speaking?

I never write off a twitter follower as being a potential brand advocate or even customer on the basis that their interests don't seem to align to what I'm selling. But what about geography? If you are a business servicing a local area in the US, it's worth considering how close your followers are to you. Don't get me wrong, an out-of-state follower is not harmful or problematic in any way, but it's worth scanning the list of "locations" with your eyes to work out roughly what % of your followers are. This may help you determine how effective your twitter list can be for your internet marketing campaigns.

Anyway, that's the serious stuff out the way. I hope you get a laugh from the comic....