Originally written by Francois Karstel | Revised & updated by Carina Claassens

To answer the question in the title of this article is to answer the question “why am I using Twitter?” Is the social media platform an element making up the heart and soul of your marketing strategy, or is it a bragging tool? After answering this question it comes down to quality versus quantity.

Quality vs Quantity

In a previous article, One Twitter Follower Equals Ten Facebook Likes, I discuss the importance of quality followers. Quality followers are “the followers who will buy your product or service and they are engaging with you instead of filtering you out. Without quality followers there would be no point to using Twitter – they are the ones who re-tweet, to all their followers, and who will help you spread the word about your business”.

If you focus more on quantity, however, you create a striking image – even if it’s fake. Who can argue with 89,000 followers? Companies look more extraordinary the bigger their following, but it might not actually deliver any value to the company itself. This is because the following isn’t interested; some of them can’t be - because they’re bots.

How to Manage Your Account

Staying relevant
If you stay industry specific and constant with your tweets and the people you follow, you’ll reach the right target market. That’s the whole point isn’t it? 

When to follow back
This point links with the above of staying relevant. Apparently it’s Twitter etiquette to ALWAYS follow back people who follow you. I disagree, since many followers have absolutely nothing to offer me in terms of industry knowledge. If you manage the Twitter account of a florist, why would you follow a car part manufacturer? People follow irrelevant accounts with the hope of gaining more followers, but all of those followers won’t bring in more business.

Fake followers/inactive accounts
Buying fake followers is only for those who use Twitter as a bragging tool. Sure, it looks impressive but it doesn’t add any value to your business and defies the whole point of social media. Just because your following is massive, doesn’t mean it’s decent. 

These points are of course only to be considered if you use Twitter as part of your marketing strategy and not as a bragging tool.

What It’s All About

Social Media marketing is about making genuine connections. There is no reason to have thousands of followers if they are not engaging with your content. By employing a proper social media strategy and making it work towards a serious goal, you will quickly see a rise in figures.

So the moral of the story is, in a nutshell, quality trumps quantity every time. It might not seem that way at first. A massive fake and/or irrelevant following can seem worth it when all your colleagues seem majorly impressed with how popular you are in the social media sphere. When the figures don’t change and your website traffic and client list doesn’t increase, you’ll realise just how important a quality following is.

If you use Twitter to your full advantage you’ll gain real, quality followers with time. If your updates are constant, relevant and informative people will want to follow you, and what’s more, they’ll be industry relevant people who you can learn from as well.

Sound Idea Digital is a complete digital marketing agency. For more information, contact 012 66 44 227 or email to info@soundidea.co.za

Carina Claassens is a Writer for Sound Idea Digital l carina@soundidea.co.za l @SoundIdea | Sound Idea Digital l www.soundidea.co.za

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