Recently a report was released that indicated that the number of followers doesn't prove influence on social media. However this report is wrong. The number of followers is significant to the social influence a person has, with the caveat that the followers have to actually care about what the person is tweeting about. The problem with the findings of this report is that its limited to the month of August in 2009. So the findings are limited to a very specific period of time.
Here's another perspective to consider. Companies that tend to respond to social media critiques usually respond as a result of someone who has lots of followers getting involved. That person tweets about an issue and those followers take up the cry. Now certainly it matters that the message speaks to values that the followers can agree with, but the sheer number of followers who are responding is what ends up creating a situation where social influence can be leveraged to make a company respond.
The quality of tweets does matter, specifically what people will respond to and retweet, but ignoring the number of followers is foolish to do. Size matters in social media, if only because it's that many more people who can take up the cry and raise awareness in their networks about a situation which is occurring. To write size off, especially on the findings of just one month is unrealistic and rather naive.
This isn't to say that you should try and add as many people as possible. If anything it's important to recognize that while social influence is created by how well known a person is, it's also determined by the quality of messages. It's very easy to skim over anyone's tweets, so a tweet has to include some kind of call to action that motivates interest on the part of the followers.
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