How I Got a Six-Figure Twitter Following (and Why It Doesn’t Matter)

Twitter

It’s almost a running joke. Whenever my manager introduces me at an event, he always starts by saying how many Twitter followers I have, which is inevitably far more than anyone else in the room. Today, my follower number is a little over 175,000, and it grows by a few hundred every week.

How did my Twitter following reach six figures?

  1. I was an early adopter. I started my Twitter account (@JaneFriedman) on May 22, 2008.
  2. I’m active. Except for the first 7-8 months of joining Twitter, I’ve been actively tweeting for more than four years.
  3. I’m relentlessly focused. Mostly I tweet about writing, media, publishing, and technology.
  4. I mostly share links that I hope are helpful or insightful.
  5. I’m somewhat reserved. It’s rare for me to tweet more than 6-8 times per day. (My total number of tweets has not yet cracked 10,000.) The way I look at it: Each tweet is a potential waste of someone’s time.
  6. I joined Twitter while I was publisher of Writer’s Digest, and I also created the Writer’s Digest Twitter account. Writer’s Digest now has about 370,000 followers, and for its first two years, I operated its account in tandem with mine. It was helpful to have my name associated with a big brand when I got started.

However, none of that probably matters as much as what comes next. Here’s a graph showing the history of my follower growth on Twitter:

Jane Friedman Twitter growth graph

One immediately wonders: What was I doing from summer 2010 through fall 2011—the part where the graph is stepping up? A few things:

  1. I started blogging better (better headlines, better topics, better solutions for writers) and blogging more consistently. (This was during my years at There Are No Rules at Writer’s Digest.)
  2. I ran a weekly blog feature called Best Tweets for Writers. I curated a few dozen of the best online articles (for writers) I’d found via Twitter. The series started around May 2009 and concluded in summer 2011, when I asked Porter Anderson to take the reins, and he created Writing on the Ether.
  3. Also during this time I was actively live-tweeting conferences and other events, which usually results in a following boon.

My blog content reinforced what I was doing on Twitter, and what I was doing on Twitter reinforced the blog. I created a rather virtuous circle that I believe boosted the follower count. But most important, the Best Tweets round-up wasn’t about myself or my own content. It was about drawing attention to other excellent work, which resulted in a lot of mentions, links, tweets, and so on. Some call this link-baiting, and it’s a fairly well-known strategy for building blog traffic. If done well, everyone wins.

There was one thing out of my control, which I can’t track very well: At some point, I became one of Twitter’s “Suggested Users” in the Books category. If I’m still there, I believe my account is listed fairly close to the bottom. If I was being shown higher around 2010-2011, that could also be playing a significant role. But keep in mind, I probably would’ve never been listed if it weren’t for the activity I’ve just described.

Why the Size of My Twitter Following Doesn’t Matter

Some studies show that smaller, more loyal followings are more effective. Check out this ReadWriteWeb article from 2010:  The Million Follower Fallacy: Audience Size Doesn’t Prove Influence on Twitter. That aside, here’s a big reason why no one needs to be impressed by my following:

Fake Twitter Following

[You can check your own stats for free by clicking here.]

What does this mean? That my following is more accurately stated as 71,750, after you weed out the fake and inactive accounts. Of those “good” accounts that follow me, how many do I actually engage? Klout notes that, in the past 90 days, I’ve had more than 2,000 mentions and 1,000 retweets. That’s probably a better reflection of how many I influence via Twitter.

And now you know not to be impressed by that 175,000 number.

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Natalie Aguirre

Thanks for sharing this. Not only the numbers, but what you’ve done to build your following. I’m not on Twitter, but planning to join soon. But I think you’re right that the numbers don’t tell the whole story and it’s in part how many people you interact with. The reality is that if I follow 1000-2000 people, I won’t have time to read their tweets every day. At least that’s what I’m thinking.

Jane Friedman

That’s correct. Even if you follow a modest number of people, it’s impossible to keep up and still focus on other work.

bookofjoe

This is one of the reasons I like you so much. Anyone who’d put a Fake Follower graphic on their own site is someone… well, it sounds an awful lot like something I did. And we do love ourselves (sometimes).

Tyler

Those numbers are still a lot better than most even after the weed out! Too bad Twitter feeds are so hard to go through these days that it is becoming nearly useless.

Fantasy Scroll

Still most people would prefer to have a large number of followers, even if it means a lot of them are fake, because it sounds so good to others, especially those not very twitter-friendly. But I see your point! And thank you for the link to check the validity of followers. I will be using that!
Iulian

Jane Friedman

Indeed, people pay attention to appearances.

Jodi Lobozzo Aman

Really helpful Jane!

Bill Peschel

Also, note that she follows very few people (Although it will be interesting to hear from JF how much reading she does.). To be effective, to create work, you have to produce. You don’t have time to consume. She’s not the only one.

Jane Friedman

Very true. It’s impossible to keep up with even 200-300 people on Twitter, though I do keep an eye on the Twitter stream throughout the day.

I did start out following many more (up to 3,000+ at one point), but there are so many reading services (Flipboard, Zite, etc) that pull in reading material based on who you follow that I had to become ruthless to keep the aggregated content meaningful and valuable.

bookofjoe

tru dat. Precisely why I cap my followee count at 49 and ruthlessly prune back the week’s accrued excess every weekend. Quite fun, actually, seeing who makes the cut. Not so much for those tossed under the bus but hey, you can’t please ’em all.

bookofjoe

Norman Mailer, asked what he was reading, said “Nothing. You can’t read if you’re writing a book. It distorts your prose.”

bookofjoe

In the spirit of full disclosure, here are my Fake Follower stats as of six months ago: http://www.bookofjoe.com/2012/08/twitter-fake-follower-check.html

Teresa Robeson

Jane, your strategy for a well-oiled machine of a social media platform is amazing! It’s not something I can fully achieve currently without giving up on either sleep or child-rearing, but I love reading how successful folks like you do it. You are my definitive go-to for most of my writing-business knowledge. As one of your non-fake followers on Twitter, I want to say thank-you from the bottom of my heart! 🙂

Maryjo Mcgraw

Super helpful Jane! Thank you

Lisa Bartelt

Great stuff! Thanks for sharing.