When I hit the "Publish" button on my blog post"Social media suicide - the conclusion" the other day I thought I was done with that topic. I had found out what I wanted and it was now time to move on... that was until I found myself sat on the train tonight, reading my feeds and sharing the stuff I like with my Twitter buddies, such as I do.

Sharing is caring

On my phone I have this great app called my6sense which by way of clever algorithm surfaces content from my RSS feed subscriptions that is most likely to be of interest based on what I've previously shared using the app. I scan, I read, if it's good I share. The more I share, the more the app knows about the kind of stuff I like. It's just full of shareable win. In fact today, it would appear that it was a little more full of win than normal as my good friend and colleague Hamid (@HSirhan) got all excited and came as close as you can get on Twitter to looking like something from Dawn Of The Dead but with a hankering for links rather than brains. This was what got me thinking... he was loving it but was everyone else?

Like it or lump it

Prior to my social media suicide experiment I took the view that if someone didn't like my content, they could simply unfollow. If they are not interested in what I like, they aren't interested in me and that's fine. No skin off my nose. I really didn't care at all but now my network is smaller and the relationships I have with those that are a part of it is essentially stronger, should I perhaps reassess this? Perhaps it's time I dropped that ridiculous, egotistical attitude. While I know I can't please all of the people all the time, I could probably do better in trying not to piss them off. Because my followers aren't all 30 something male tech geeks with a passion for social media and digital marketing, chances are that when I spray Twitter with links that interest me, most of them are probably of no interest to most of my followers and in some cases may even flood their timeline. This would piss me off if I were in their shoes.

What about those that do like it?

Amongst those that I'm connected to there are a few (Like Hamid) that really do like the links I churn out and there are even a few folks that follow and engage with me because we have those things in common. If I were to stop sharing these links, they would be missing out on the cool stuff I really enjoy sharing with them. Often it's a conversation starter and that's where the real value in all this social stuff really is, right?

I have actually been here before

It's not the first time I've had this little moral tug of war. I've been here before. A while back I even set up a Twitter account exclusively for sharing links and sharing links only. Conversation over here and links over there. Everybody's happy. Of course, it didn't work because the content and the conversation actually go hand in hand. It was a silly idea.

The solution

I've not really got a solution; that's why I'm writing this rather rambly blog post. With a bit of luck you might leave a comment and help me out on this one. I will be doing a couple of things differently from now though. Firstly, I'm going to share a bit slower. Bombarding my timeline with links probably isn't a good idea. Secondly, I'm not going to rage so much when someone I follow bombards me with irrelevant links. I now understand this and know that they are only doing as I once did.

The moral of the story is simple:

Treat your followers as you wish to be treated by those you follow yourself.

If you liked this blog post, you may also like:

Should I commit social media suicide?

Tweet silly!

A Twitter follower is for life

Blogging for normal folk

Four weeks ago I decided to commit social media suicide by shutting up shop on my old, bloated Twitter account and starting afresh with a new one (I had to juggle a bit to keep the same username). The reason for doing this was to see if I would lose any value by cutting down those that I follow to just those I really care about or interest me in some other way and at the same time as take my following down to nothing. In theory those that really care or are genuinely interested in what I have to say would see what I was up to and follow the new account.

I thought I was already following you

One thing that I find is happening quite a bit recently is that I'll engage with someone I'm following and they will somehow notice that they aren't following me anymore. More often than not, this causes a little confusion. In some cases I'll point them to my original blog post, in others (because it's how I roll) I'll just say nothing and see if they can work it out for themselves. Usually they don't. It appears that several of the people that used to follow my old account didn't see any of the announcements I made about this experiment or any of the blog posts I published via the old account before I killed it off. There are two probable reasons they didn't see any of it:

1. They follow too many people. There is a good chance that if someone following you also follows a lot of other accounts, your tweets will wash away from their timeline in seconds. The more accounts you follow, the less value you get from each one.
2. They don't use Twitter often enough. Not everyone is plugged into Twitter all of the time so if you tweet something while one of your followers is away from Twitter, they are unlikely to see it as their timeline will move on.

Increased engagement

Since taking the plunge, my own engagement has increased. I now miss a lot less due to following less people. Although previously I used to filter my timeline only to show those that I cared about, this added an extra level of inconsistency to the stream and clearly meant I missed a fair bit. Some of those that I followed on the new account said they felt a stronger bond with me because I was following fewer people.

My own influence

You would think that by being followed by less people, in many cases people with less followers themselves would mean that I have less influence. According to various "industry standard" influence measurement tools such as Klout and Twitter Grader this appears to be the case but this is where I can say I have first hand experience that shows the contrary. I get no less clickthroughs on any links I post and I get no less hits on any blog posts I write. I can safely say that my own influence has hardly changed at all. The "industry standard" tools are wrong.

What about the stragglers?

There are still quite a few folks with whom I used to share a mutual following on the old account that haven't followed back on the new account. There are a couple of possible reasons for this:

1. They are completely unaware of my experiment and new account due to one of the two reasons above.
2. They have no interest in what I have to say and haven't bothered to follow.

I'm fine with both to be honest. If it's down to reason 1, they will work it out eventually because I'm probably engaging with them on a regular basis anyway. If it's down to reason 2, I'm happy to no longer be polluting their timeline and lowering the value of their stream.

Final summary

As a reader you will get more value from each person or account you follow if you follow less accounts.

As a publisher you will get more value by building your following slowly and organically with real people. It's worth knowing that people who follow less accounts are more likely to see what you have to say and take notice of it.

If marketing via social media is your thing, perhaps you should think about targeting those with less connections rather than more. You should also be aware that these people prefer to engage rather than be marketed to.

I'm here for the conversation. What are you here for?

Related blog posts

• Social media suicide - and what about influence?
• Social media suicide - @LStacey is dead, long live @LStacey
• Should I commit Social media Suicide?

You may also be interested in these

• A Twitter follower is for life, not just for Christmas
• Twitblock - winning the battle against spam on Twitter
• Actually you're probably all wrong
• How to get retweeted
• Twitter ID is the new dot com

Influence is a funny old beast and I've got to admit, narcissistic as it may sound, losing my influence was one of my biggest worries when deciding whether or not to take the plunge and start again with a brand new Twitter account. The funny thing is that I really don't think I have lost any at all. It would appear that even though I currently have 1/75th the number of followers (200) that I had before (wow, that's a big difference), I'm still getting about the same number of retweets, mentions and clickthroughs on content I post.

Echoing the sentiments of Nik Butler (@Loudmouthman) in the latest Social Media White Noise podcast, influence isn't quite as simple as "he who has the most followers has the most influence" in fact it's a lot more complicated than that. In the podcast he goes on to explain that a person with less followers is more likely to see and pay attention to what you post and therefore more likely to amplify it, this means someone followed by more of those kinds of people is more likely to have more influence. To me that makes a lot of sense and goes some way to explaining why traditional celebrities accounts have more impact than those that are simply big in social media.

Still missing a few

I'm still missing a few of my old followers that I really want to stay in touch with and it should come as no surprise that most of these are folk that work in social media and/or digital. Chances are that they are following so many people that they've missed this whole experiment... or they simply don't care enough. Either way, I'm not going to give up on them which is why I'm still going to tweet a link to my new account once a day from my old account.

Last night a colleague of mine (@rcownley) asked "Doesn't promoting @LStacey with the old account defeat the point of leaving it in the first place?" In a word, no. The only people that will click on the link, read the blog post and follow the new account are those that are genuinely showing an interest. These are the people I want to stay in contact with. One simple but solid rule will remain in place: I will only follow people that I engage with or that interest me in some other way.

In case you're wondering, it still feels good!

Related blog posts

• Social media suicide - the conclusion
• Social media suicide - @LStacey is dead, long live @LStacey
• Should I commit Social media Suicide?

You may also be interested in these

• A Twitter follower is for life, not just for Christmas
• Twitblock - winning the battle against spam on Twitter
• Actually you're probably all wrong
• How to get retweeted
• Twitter ID is the new dot com

After some great comments on my last blog post "Should I commit social media suicide?" and from Twitter, I've decided to go ahead with the experiment and start again with a fresh new Twitter account. Just to keep things simple I did some name swapping so that I could keep my ID @LStacey and not lose my (and I hate this term but...) personal brand completely. I've also followed all of the people I engage with on a regular basis. These people are important to me so I don't want to lose them! I guess this is a kind of pre death resurrection, if such a thing is possible.

The story so far

I'm pleased to say that so far the results have been good. Within an hour of setting up the new account almost 50 of my contacts have made the jump. This will probably have a positive effect on my relationship with those followers. I can imagine some of them may have felt like they were just 1 in 15k when really they meant a lot more than that but probably couldn't see it.

A good feeling

It's funny but I feel slightly refreshed. Once again I am able to use the "All friends" feed instead of a favourites list. Everything feels much faster too although I suspect that's more placebo than anything else.

Next steps

I guess the next step is to sit back and watch. Not sure if I'm going to kill the old account off altogether or just let it rot. My be worth leaving it with a message saying that I've moved home.

It may take me a little while to get all my different social media services connected again as I do use quite a few tools on a regular basis. I'm bound to forget a few!

I'll keep you informed as things develop!

Related blog posts

• Should I commit Social media Suicide?
• Social media suicide - and what about influence?
• Social media suicide - the conclusion
• A Twitter follower is for life, not just for Christmas
• Twitblock - winning the battle against spam on Twitter
• Actually you're probably all wrong
• How to get retweeted
• Twitter ID is the new dot com

Having almost 15,000 Twitter followers is great sometimes. I get an enormous amount of exposure every time I write a blog post and so does anyone I retweet and that has come mostly from growing my Twitter contacts.

Growth?

I started collecting Twitter followers en-masse a couple of years ago as an experiment to try to prove that having lots of followers was meaningless and had no value. It didn't take me long to realise that I was wrong. Or was I? Maybe it wasn't the number that was important after all. Perhaps it was the growth.

These days I gain followers at a rate of about 20 per day, this obviously fluctuates in line with how active I am on Twitter. A lot of it is bot traffic which I do my best to cull from time to time but not unlike Pokemon, it's hard to catch 'em all. I also auto follow back because people like to be followed back when they follow someone... unfortunately, so do bots.

The question I'm asking myself is: Is the value of this large follower base proportional to the effort I put into it's continual growth? At the moment, I don't believe it is. This brings me on to my next experiment...

The new experiment

What I plan to do is set up a new Twitter account and start again. I will follow everyone that I already interact with regularly and hopefully they will follow me back.

I will not auto follow back on the new account. I will be much more selfish and will only follow those that interact with me or those accounts that I find particularly interesting or care about for some other reason.

I will do some username shuffling so that my new account has my old username. This way I won't kill my "personal brand" in the process.

What am I trying to find out?

As with all good experiments, this is not real science. I'm not going to end up with some amazing piece of objective analysis. Let me try explaining it:

I plan to find out whether the value I get from Twitter is from what I consider to be my "real" contacts or from the vast masses of near anonymous hangers on.

When I've built the account up to "normal" status, if I tweet a blog post and it gets less than 100 hits within a couple of minutes of posting I will have some idea.

Back to the original question

Should I do it or shouldn't I?

I'm still undecided. There is a possiblilty that I might end up losing "real" contacts or even lose some of the influence that I've built up. I may be completely wrong about the whole thing. It has been known to happen.

I'd be interested to hear your views on the matter before I take the plunge and kiss my Klout score goodbye.

------------------------------------------------

Addendum

I went and did it! Read the next three blog posts in this series:

• Social media suicide - @LStacey is dead, long live @LStacey
• Social media suicide - and what about influence?
• Social media suicide - the conclusion

Related blog posts

• Social media suicide - @LStacey is dead, long live @LStacey
• A Twitter follower is for life, not just for Christmas
• Twitblock - winning the battle against spam on Twitter
• Actually you're probably all wrong
• How to get retweeted
• Twitter ID is the new dot com