It´s giving me a burning headache. If you look at the coverage on social media, there seems to be a frenzy around numbers. Big numbers. When people talk about Twitter-VIP´s, they add the magic number of followers almost reverently. Oprah has more than 1,8 million followers now, BritBrit 2,4, Barack´s ghostwriters1,7 million. Connecting to these Big Whales is what Tweeps want to do, forgetting that this usually is valuable for one person: mister Big himself.
Climbing higher on the social media ladder, deciding who to connect and interact with is extremely important. Where do you put your time and energy? What will get a maximum spread of your messages? What will effectively enhance your reach, impact, and social velocity?
Let´s get real, chances that the Oprah´s, Kawasaki´s and tutti quanti of this world will even notice your tweet, let alone retweet it to their followers is extremely remote. They are industrial machines, programmed to push forward their personal or business purposes, and clearly too swamped being big to notice you at all. 6 digit follower people look nice in your followship, but they will not get you in the charts spreading your precious messages.
Aim for the little fish. People roaming in their first hundreds of followers. Reach out to them, help them grow their turf. Give them tips. They will notice you, as they do not have to skim (yet) through a gazillion tweets. They have time clicking on your links, and most often happily retweet good content, (which you provide J)… and by connecting to them at their early intro you will make it to their favorites easily with a good chance of staying there while they go up the charts.
My personal rule? 8020. I spend 20 percent of my effort learning from big whales, 80 percent goes into interacting with the shiny silver fish.
