Twitter Engagement Correlation by @DanZarrella
Dan Zarrella of HubSpot posted some really interesting Twitter metrics yesterday. He was exploring whether engaging on Twitter was as important to gaining followers as just tweeting links. The result: the more links you push, the more followers you get and engaging with followers is a waste of time.
Wait…what?
This flies in the face of what many in social media preach, including me and my fellow Cision Bloggers. For years now, we’ve been preaching that you need to engage with your Twitter audience, be real, and let some personality shine through your social profile. And we’re not alone. The consensus for the past few years has been that engagement is the cornerstone of social media.
So have we all been duped?
I don’t think so. The way I see it, Twitter is a giant sandbox, and everyone uses it differently.
One way to leverage Twitter for your business is to use it as an outreach tool. To talk to your customers and prospects to answer their questions and give them help when they need it. This is a highly engaging practice, and I would argue that each @reply has an impact on the person to whom it is directed. It’s a personal touch that businesses can now give to the masses.
Another more prominent use of Twitter is to find and share news. Here’s where Dan’s correlation between links and followers makes sense. Twitter is full of people who filter news and post links to the news stories that matter to them and to their audience. I personally follow hundreds of them. While each of these tweets doesn’t carry the same weight as the @replies from someone reaching out to an individual, it’s far more marketable.
Hence, it makes sense that tweeting a higher proportion of links to @replies would result in more followers. If you’re posting good links to good content, people will follow you. But we can’t throw the baby bird out with the birdbath water. Engagement on Twitter is very important, and makes a strong impact on your customers.
