How Many Followers Do You Need To Have To Be An Influencer?

Brands, Social Media August 17, 2009 11 Comments @niallharbison

So on Friday we published a post of the 50 most influential people on Twitter in Ireland and although that is a great resource to have people should not be obsessed with numbers when using social media. The key thing to remember when using social media is that one person can have an influence and it doesn’t matter if they have a thousand followers or just a couple, everybody has a voice. There are so many connections in social media and the world is working in real time now online so it is very conceivable that even somebody with no discernable pull online will only be one step away from somebody who has the potential to make a massive difference to your business outlook. The thing about social media is that it opens up the feedback loop around products and services and means that there is a new layer of transparency in the world today.

A good campaign will work on bringing in many brand advocates and keeping the customers that you are already lucky enough to have happy and spreading the word about your brand.

One of the things that annoys me the most is when I see people targeting celebrities trying to get their attention online in order to RT about their brand. I mean come on? Just because you have the tools available online why would this work when it has never worked in the real world? If I was walking down the street and saw @lancearmstrong on the other side of the street would I shout “Hey you know lot’s of people will you tellÂ about Simplyzesty“. Never.

Just act online as you would in the real world and get talking to to a few people within your industry and don’t spend all your time trying to get the attention of the big boys because just like in the real world they get bothered all the time and probably couldn’t care less.

Who Are We?

Simply Zesty are a Social Media Agency located in Dublin, Ireland who offer a range of Social Media Services.

Comments

http://mulley.net?simplyzesty Damien Mulley

Above you said this:

One of the things that annoys me the most is when I see people targeting celebrities trying to get their attention online in order to RT about their brand. I mean come on?

Yet your list on Friday was nothing more than a list of targets based on their follower numbers and the fact they get media attention.

This list is based on influence and when you take into account that the following 50 people have over 100,000 followers (mostly Irish) you can see just how influential the list actually is … The real power is that you are only a couple of clicks away from starting to engage with these influencers so go ahead and start a conversation with them

http://www.simplyzesty.com Niall Harbison

Well clearly there needs to be a balance of both things happening. The main reason for writing this was because so many people were thinking that Friday’s list was some sort of holy grail (partly my fault for creating lost in the first place) and just wanted to highlight that it was important to show to people new to the game that talking to everybody was just as important.

http://www.mneylon.com/blog/ Michele

Niall

It would be nice if you actually posted something of substance that was actually thought out properly and executed properly.

Your “top list” last week was a total sham and was purely based on your own narrow view of things.

Now you follow it up with this?

As Damien rightly points out, you are contradicting yourself. You also don’t even make that much sense across the two posts.

Either numbers don’t matter OR they do matter.

Last week you posted links to YOUR choice of 50 twitter accounts that YOU felt were the most influential.

Influence can be tracked and measured. So it stands to reason that a twitter account with 200 users has a lot less influence than a twitter account with 2000 followers.

Michele

http://www.simplyzesty.com Niall Harbison

Wow you guys are like a well oiled pincer movement in the comments

It might not come across as making sense but I think there is logic in having a list of people who between them have the ears of over a million Irish people and then balancing it with the fact that anybody can be an influencer. All of these things are very obvious to somebody like yourself who has been in the industry for years but I try to write for companies and individuals who don’t have the foggiest about anything online and are figuring it all out as they go along.

I disagree that influence can be tracked by pure numbers. I have a twitter account for example that has 5000 followers (@twecipe) but another (@lookandtaste) that only has 2500 and lookandtaste is far more influential because I engage with people and only push out relevant content.

http://www.mneylon.com/blog/ Michele

Niall

You’re supposedly running a company that offers “social media services” to other businesses, yet you fail time and time again to show any real understanding of the environment you are attempting to operate in.

So now they have the ears of over 1 million people?

Really?

So between Friday and today the number has gone up ten fold?

Simple fact: numbers do matter. You might be able to dupe some people into buying into your figures, but face reality. There is no way that an account with less than 300 followers is going to come near one with 10 times that number of followers. It doesn’t matter a damn how engaging one account is over another – the numbers do not lie.

You are, after all, the one who brought up the entire subject of influence in the first instance by claiming that your list of 50 was a “must”:

” ….we have selected 50 of the most powerful and influential users of the service that you should be following in Ireland.”

In a post which carried the very clear title of “most influential”.

Make up your mind.

You can’t have it both ways

Michele

http://www.simplyzesty.com Niall Harbison

Hehe love the nit picking, very productive use of time, actually said this in the post…

You might also want to take into account that the people on this list have their voices heard by over a million (conservative estimate) Irish people every month (Radio, TV, Blogs, Newspapers and websites).

Life is too short Michelle so if my posts are bothering you that much just click the unsub button and you’ll be a whole lot happier

N

http://mulley.net?simplyzesty Damien Mulley

“Wow you guys are like a well oiled pincer movement in the comments”

Someone needs the wood from that cross Niall.
Pingback: Twitter: Meaning Trumps Influence? : Alexia Golez
http://www.insideview.ie Bernie Goldbach

On first glance, the Simply Zesty list feels divisive and that’s never good. In fact, I wouldn’t mind being deleted from it and perhaps Damien Mulley feels the same way. Just saying.
http://ronanlyons.com Ronan L

I actually see the use in Top 10s and so on, but didn’t feel – for whatever reason – that the list produced by Simply Zesty did it for me.

Perhaps it’s that there are different types of Twitter user, based on what they tweet and what they retweet, and the mix seemed to be a list of all different types. I don’t know what those types are yet – then again, that’s probably a question for you guys.

But someone who could give me that insight, something well beyond just a one-dimensional Top 50, would be establishing themselves as an expert in social media, rather than an expert who uses social media, if that makes sense (and that’s not a dig at anyone, just giving my thoughts).
http:www.btbtraining.com/blog Niall Devitt

Hi all,

As a one time SM skeptic and a non-expert, I will tread carefully here.

I DMed you the other day to find out what metrics were used in putting together the list? my read is that what you meant was:

Influential people on twitter rather than people that use twitter to influence.

These lists are meant not to be taken seriously and if we were honest , they are self serving too as they help raise our profile through piggy backing on the reputation of others.

I investigated compiling a similar list myself and decided that the unknowns were so much that all I could possibly come up with was a best guess.

My interest was Irish people that are using twitter most effectively. From the little research I undertook, here’s what I found surprising and interesting.

People with 1000s of followers and very few RTs and mentions so I would safely say that followers doesn’t always equate influence.

In fact, if you look at the top 100 Irish with the most followers, many had a very minimal amount of RTs or mentions.

The second problem is that while RTs might be a better guide to influnce than followers, it’s still far from a science. Many might merely be conversations/interactions with friends etc.

With even more sophisticated analytics, we would fail to measure silent listeners, DMs etc etc.
So perhaps all we can ever hope to achieve is a better guess depending on the metrics you use.

From the little I have learnt about SM and Twitter, I believe them to be potientally very useful business tools. I would say however that many of SM events I have attended help you to get started rather than really teach how to actually capiltise. This is not a dig and perhaps is it more a reflection of where we are still at.

However, I think we are fast approching a time where we need our experts to be having a slighty more advanced type of conversation.

Great discussion, we need more of it.

Cheers,
Niall

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