For people embracing Twitter, one of the biggest challenges is who to follow and how to find those people.
The other challenge is determining how many people to follow. What’s the magic number – 100, 200, 500, 1000, 10,000, 100,000? The answer is the number can be different depending on your goals and needs.
For people interested in using Twitter as a resource to access content and sources, I would suggest that a manageable number is probably 200 to 500 people. It offers enough people to provide a good and broad perspective, while not overwhelming you with too much “noise”.
Another advantage of following 200 to 500 people is it provides a big enough resource to quickly get answers for any questions you may have. In my mind, Q&A is one of Twitter’s “killer apps”.
If 200 to 500 friends is ideal for most individuals, why would anyone want to follow thousands, if not 10s of thousands of people?
If you’re looking to build a personal or corporate brand, the more friends you have, the more people will follow you. So if you’re blogger Robert Scoble, and looking to build an audience, it makes sense to follow 106,266 people because it also means having 100,546 followers.
In many respects, this makes Twitter akin to a huge e-mail distribution list that receives updates every time you post a Tweet – making it a powerful and effective content delivery platform.
Truth be told, there is no hard and fast rule for the number of people you should follow. It depends on how much information you want/can consume, and your personal/corporate goals.
3 Comments
At first glance, my reaction to this entry was, "Gee, I didn't know that Captain Obvious had moved to Canada."
Then, I started to think about it and remembered the many people I know that have gotten into Twitter and become overwhelmed or gave it up after getting "TMI disease" before finding its delights and usefulness. At least for people that tweet on non-commercial subjects (as I do), here's my three basic beginning rules of thumb for getting the most out of Twitter for those that don't spend a lot of time thinking about these communications-related matters.
1. Don't feel obligated to follow everybody that follows you.
2. Take the time to block obvious spammers.
3. Always remember that the size of one's genitals does not increase with the amount of one's followers.
Kevin,
Thanks for the feedback. I've never been called Captain Obvious so thanks for that too.
Mark
Mark, I'm glad that you liked my comment and took it in good humor. Your entry was a good reminder to me that sometimes the painfully obvious to we that keep up on these things is not always obvious to everybody else.