The Brian Shaler Blog

There are several ways you can calculate your value on Twitter. The method with the most merit does not include the number of people you’re following OR the number of people who are following you. The latter seems to be the obvious way to gauge someone’s value. If people subscribe to your updates, then you must be worth listening to. Unfortunately, I think the best proof to the contrary is my own Twitter account. According to some lists, I am currently the 13th most-followed user on Twitter, where there are over 14 million registered accounts (but probably only about 1 million active users.. Wait, did I say “only”?).

Choose an adjective: funny, interesting, thoughtful, intriguing, fascinating, entertaining, etc. No matter which adjective you choose, I guarantee I am not in the top 0.000001 percentile of people. I think it is fair to say that this is reasonable evidence that the number of people following someone does not correlate to the value of the information they provide.

Robert Scoble recently wrote about the value of the number of people you follow, and how he thinks it is more important of a metric than the number of people who follow you. I definitely do not disagree with the importance of listening to many sources (I even wrote about and agree with Sean Tierney’s thoughts on people who subscribe to many RSS feeds). However, the number itself is not a metric of the value of one’s content. Anyone, especially uninteresting people, can follow thousands of users on Twitter.

The Real Metric

These numbers obviously mean very little when it comes to measuring the content of a Twitter user. There is, however, a way that I believe you can. The value of a Twitter user is in the amount, depth, and breadth of interaction with other Twitter users. Users who start global conversations and provoke discussion from others seem to have the most value. For people who need a concrete method of tallying this can start by performing searches on a given user’s Twitter name using tools like Tweet Scan.

Still, it is not as simple as counting the number of replies. For example, social media princess “iJustine” could post on Twitter that she is eating ice cream and receive dozens of replies. The replies that matter are ones that include thoughtful commentary, progression on the topic, or even redistributing the thought to one’s own followers. It is also important to see the user in question engaging in conversation with the people who are replying. When Twitter is treated like a distribution mechanism for a user to push messages to fans, the user loses value.

While quantity of interaction will definitely be on the side of the highly-followed users, it is easy for users closer to the average to carry on meaningful discussions with a diverse group of users. I personally think there are many, many users with between 100 and 1,000 followers that have much more value in their thoughts and conversations than the majority of the top 100 most-followed users.

Let’s say there is someone you want to communicate with online. In some situations, an email might not work because it might slip through the cracks or come off as too much of a sales pitch. Maybe you do not have anything in particular to say, but need a way to catch their attention.

You might consider connecting with them on a social network. You are interested in what they are up to, so you should probably ‘follow’ them on Twitter anyway. Unfortunately, following someone on a social network does not mean that they are following you. They might receive a notification email after you connect with them, but if the person you want to connect with is similarly targeted by others, that notification email is likely to go ignored.

There is, however, a way to stand out without being too intrusive. By doing a small amount of research, you should be able to find other instances of the individual’s web presence (other social network profiles, blogs, etc).

By adding an individual as a friend on multiple networks at the same time, or AcmeAdding, the potential contact will receive a few notification emails saying “John Smith is your newest contact on __.” Generally, the reaction begins with confusion and results in intrigue, leading to investigation. They will ask “Who is this?” and try to find out who you are and why you’re adding them. If who you are or what you do is relevant to them, then they are likely to connect and/or open the door for conversation.

The term “AcmeAdd” was coined after an observation of social networking expert and Phoenix photographer Adam Nollmeyer of Acme Photography. He usually uses the name “AcmePhoto” on social web sites.

Personally, I am not extremely “popular” but I do receive 15-20 notification emails per day regarding new contacts on various social networks. They do not get opened and I have them filtered so they do not distract from more important email. However, I do see them. Whether or not I take notice of who connected with me, skimming over the names makes them more familiar the next time I see them (in another notification email, in a comment on my blog, or anywhere else).

This week at Phoenix Social Media Club, one of the people I talked to was Erin Atherton, the owner of a local business, “Durtbagz” (They sell satchels and messenger bags with street signs on them, including “Slow School Zone: Watch For Slow Children” and “DON’T DRIVE DURNK“). I had never met her, but I had known of her thanks to a lunch I had in Santa Monica in November.

Travel back, back, back in time to November of 2007…

I was in the Los Angeles area for a few days to see family. While in town, I sent out an open invitation to my social network friends (people I know and people I don’t know YET) to have lunch by the beach in Santa Monica and some bowling afterward. Six people I had never met in person showed up, despite relatively short notice.

One of the individuals I met at lunch, Serena, is an employee of BusinessWire, resulting in some good conversation about public relations and the press release, misconceptions of PR vs. marketing, and the future of the press release on the internet. Serena recommended that I get in touch with Malcolm from BusinessWire’s Phoenix office.

Within a week or two, I sat down for lunch with Malcolm Atherton and we discussed the future of PR on the internet, social media, and even some search engine optimization. During our discussion about social media and marketing, he brought up his wife’s company, Durtbagz.

Several weeks after that, I attended Social Media Club and bumped into Malcolm’s wife, Erin.

None of these introductions or conversations would have been possible if it weren’t for my relatively open social network friend-adding philosophy.

I finally made it to Social Media Club. It was my first time and overall, it was a worthwhile evening.

The topic was a presentation by Arizona-based white label video site, V:social. I have heard about the site, but it was great to see a more detailed view of their platform. It was also great to see some of the implementations of their product. As a white label video player, you can be watching V:social video without even knowing it (and I have!). Great company. Great product. Great presentation. Glad to hear about companies like this thriving in Phoenix.

There were two other highlights of the night. As I introduced myself, Francine Hardaway, an “uber” networking maven if I’ve ever seen one, interrupted me immediately after I said my name. “Oh HEY!” she said. “I (@hardaway) follow you (@brianshaler) on Twitter.” That happens from time to time with people I’ve never met, and it’s always awkward. But because this was Francine, it was awkward + awesome.

The other highlight was the guy that introduced himself by saying “I invented Web 2.0 in 1991.” Yes, an Al Gore joke inevitably followed (it wasn’t me, I promise…. but it was definitely on the tip of my tongue).

Social Media Club meetings are on the second Thursday of every month. Check out SMCphoenix.com for more information.

Recently, I have been brainstorming ways to spur more interaction from my friends on Twitter.com. I have always tried to post questions, conversation-starting statements, and interesting links, all in hopes of getting more and more people to respond.

Problem

The problem I am facing is that a very, very low percentage of my “followers” (the term for users who receive your updates) on Twitter actually know who I am. An even smaller percentage interact with me in any way. This is a problem because if my friends on Twitter don’t know who I am, then the following I have built up there is pretty pointless.

As of this writing, I have over 7,400 users receiving my messages. When I pose a question, I can get anywhere from zero to forty replies. With a maximum of about forty people responding, my participation percentage (on a good day) is 0.54%.

That’s not good.

Inspiration

One of my favorite blogs, BrainFuel.tv, holds weekly “Caption Contests” on Fridays. They post an image and users are encouraged to comment with a caption for it, the funnier the better. It is great to see the level of interaction the blog gets because of those contests.

That is something I wanted to replicate in some way on Twitter. It would be great to play some sort of recurring game where I would post a Twitter message up to 140 characters and people could participate by replying with a creative answer.

TwitLibs

I have decided to try out a simple weekly game that could be fun and amusing. It’s like Mad Libs, but instead of asking for words then filling in the blanks, I will just provide a sentence with blanks for people to fill in. While the game itself is played entirely on Twitter, TwitLibs.com will be the main resource for archives, suggestions, and discussion. I will post the TwitLibs starting statement as well as any Twitter replies I receive.

Only time will tell if people will enjoy the game and interact with me more because of it.