You might forget this fact if you’re the competitive type or if you’ve been reading all about Power Twitterers. For example, David Gregory, the new host of NBC’s Meet the Press, has 158,328 Followers, as of this writing. That’s the population of a small country. Note that he’s only following 87 people back.
Honest, it’s not about how many Followers (Twitter), Subscribers (blogs), Friends (Facebook) or Connections (LinkedIn) you have.
My non-digital, non-twittering, non-blogging husband (he’s cool, really) is a Doonesbury follower and he points out that Garry Trudeau has been making this very point in recent strips.
Doonesbury character Roland Hedley keeps talking about how many connections he’s got on Twitter, Facebook, etc. But he never gets around to reporting the news. I.e. he’s missed the point. He’s not connecting with or delivering any value to his supposedly adoring audience.
In sales they call it ABC (Always Be Closing). In social networking – not the same thing as sales – it’s continually answering the “Why should I care?” question for your audience or followers.
It’s not how many; it’s what you do for your connections. Are you useful in some way? Are you providing value? If the answer is yes, and you create value over time, then you will be able to go back to your network and get something of value to you – whether it’s information or a sale.
In sales they call it ABC (Always Be Closing). In social networking it’s continually answering the “Why should I care?” question for your audience or followers.
It works this way on every social network I can think of. It’s helpful, of course, to have a big enough network. But it doesn’t have to be the biggest. It has to be people who want to be engaged with you. And for that to happen, you have to be thinking about them as well as yourself.
Trudeau’s Doonesbury strip is smart, provocative and entertaining. It gives us a little something everytime we read it. If Trudeau were on Twitter and asked us something, would we respond? You bet.
And it works this way offline as well as on.
Seth Godin nails it in this little interview I did with him.