I really don’t care if you’re ‘big’ on Twitter

So, you have 4.5 billion followers on Twitter. You’re following about 4 billion people. You have 250,000 tweets to your name. So what?!

Yes, I admit – I do take note of how many followers I have, it interests me. I practically ignore how many people I follow, if I know a person, if they’re in my sector, etc. I follow them. However, I’m not obsessed with follower numbers and making them grow.

There are people who are.  There are people who let those numbers go to their heads too.

I don’t care that you have enough followers to populate a small nation, I don’t care that you tweet every life detail  I really don’t.
What I care about is, are you relative to me. Do you answer questions, comments, concerns, and thoughts that I might have? Do you talk to me? Do you @ me? do you respond to me? Do you even know who I am?!

Yes, you have an legion of followers. When you tweet a link you make entire datacenters crumble but how much good are you really doing? exactly how social are you?

You have a twitter stream that flows like whitewater rapids, so fast it makes your screen warm. If you can’t manage it, what good are you?

Your twitter follow/er numbers aren’t an indicator that you’re a ‘Social Media Expert’ or ‘expert’ in your field, possibly far from it. Much of the time they show that you know how to follow back.
Yes, there are those twitter users out there who have a large number of followers because they’re respected for what they do and how they do it. I’m willing to bet that, if you were to ask these people how many twitter followers they have, they wouldn’t be able to tell you. Hopefully they wouldn’t know and wouldn’t care to know.

Don’t let your twitter follower count go to your head. Don’t put it on your resume. It’s not a credential, it’s not a show of power.

Twitter is, essentially a free, microblogging platform.
When we say platform, we mean it’s usable software, not somewhere for you to stand and broadcast whatever flows from your head.

Why do you follow who you follow on twitter? how much does your follower count matter to you?

Some of the ‘A-Level’ twitter users who I’ve found manage the platform wonderfully (in my arena at least) include Robert Scoble, Gary Vaynerchuck, Jeff Pulver, Chris Brogan, Cali Lewis, Leo Laporte and of course a number of others.

What do you think?