The Million Follower Fallacy: Audience Size Doesn't Prove Influence on Twitter, on Read Write Web, cites a recent survey that found "Twitter follower count is somewhat of a meaningless metric when it comes to determining influence." I was excited that finally someone realized that these numerical measures were totally unrelated to influence. My excitement was short lived, however, as I read:
"They then went on to measure various statistics about these accounts, including audience size, retweet influence and mention influence. The conclusion? Those with the largest number of followers may be 'popular' Twitterers, but that's not necessarily related to their influence. High follower counts don't always mean someone is being retweeted or mentioned in any meaningful ways."
"Retweet influence"? "Mention influence"? I have yet to see any of these things linked directly to real influence. The primary definition of influence is "the capacity or power of persons or things to be a compelling force on or produce effects on the actions, behavior, opinions, etc., of others." It's difficult to show that a 140-character item flying by in a Twitter stream or RSS feed has, by this definition, any influence whatsoever, and if one doesn't, one million 140-character items don't either.
The ability to measure a path from any marketing or advertising effort to a successful endpoint is extremely difficult, and has plagued professional online marketers for over a decade. The tools and expert analysis required to do this correctly are out of the reach of most individuals and small companies.
That's why people use web metrics instead. Because it's too hard to measure the things that matter. How high can I get on a Google search? How much traffic can I get to my blog or web site? How many people played my video or downloaded my free game?
These are "soft" metrics. And it's disingenuous to call any of these things "influence." They are raw web metrics, and in many cases, hard to authenticate. (There are multiple types of RT for example. Which ones are "better"? Do you count them all?)
They are useful, but they are removed from your business goals, which might be things like grow revenue, add new subscribers, sell into new markets. But how do you tie these objectives, and gauge your success in achieving them, by counting tweets? I'm not sure you can.
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