I created my personal twitter account in 2010, going into 2012 I think I had 5-6 followers. I know this because I remember how great it felt when my numbers reached double digits, then slowly I had 100 followers, then 500…and, you get the picture. My growth was slow but selective. I wasn’t in it for numbers and my ego didn’t need stroking. My feed was relevant to my interests, but my engagement wasn’t, well…high. All things considered, I was pretty happy. My experience was average, some tweets received high engagement while others, not so much. I received one of my highest tweet engagements from a tweet relating to the Real Housewives of Orange County, It had something to do with [the following statement is my personal “conspiracy theory”] BRAVO trying to manipulate us, the viewers, by showing the movie Stepmom again and again…click here for the back story. Obviously, it had nothing to do with my field or business, simply an observation as it related to pop culture. What this tweet did teach me was engagement, like most advertising, is high when there’s emotion involved-we as humans are emotional (yes men too) irrational beings. A truth I have to regularly remind myself of. Around fall 2015, I was almost at 1,000 carefully selected followers. My followers were a mix of industry influencers, and the like….FYI those influencers are not so engaging unless you’re close to their league. But their material is relevant to my business so I’ll keep them.
Like many others have experienced, life is really good at kicking you in the balls (whether you have a set of not). My move from Ohio to West Palm Beach, Florida didn’t have the success story of Sun, Fun, and Gainful Employment I hoped for. That being said, I was an Ambassador for the Chamber of Commerce of the Palm Beaches, very active in the Women’s Chamber of Commerce of Palm Beach County (WCC), on the Board of the Women’s Chamber Foundation (WCF), and Chair of the WCC Communications Committee. I’m really good at finding the need in a business or organization where I can excel, and the WCC’s online media was just the niche I was prepared and qualified to fill.
So what did come out of my year in West Palm was, some great contacts, a Fabulous friend, and She’s Online.
Within a month of creating my She’s Online @CaraJoyNash Twitter account, I had 800 or so followers, the next month, I had 2,000 followers. In a total of four months, I had over 8,000 followers. Yes, I went from 3,300-8,300 followers in just a few months. Note my personal feed fluctuates around 1,000 followers, depending on how often I use my personal account, but my strategies are/were completely different. I’ll outline my strategy in a different blog.
The most notable difference between my personal profile and my business profile is the experience. CaraJoy Nash @Shesonline is relevant to who I am as a person, my political interests, Tesla, Space, Fashion, etc…whereas my She’s Online @CaraJoyNash feed is a diverse mix of marketing, multi-language speaking people, and such. Why the vast difference? Because one account is based on the idea that I want my experience to represent me, and the other is for the purpose of driving business, being relevant, and SOCIAL PROOF. New clients see my 15k+ followers and think-she knows something about social media, follower growth, and strategy, and she’s someone I want to work with.
My partner found the indie publishers Write Publish Repeat, and now convinced he needs 1000 followers to be relevant, so that’s just what he did, he went from 7-1066 in a week. Impressive! But here’s the problem, he’s now convinced Twitter is a “house of cards,” his feed is wrought with boobs, craziness, and who knows what. He can’t figure out why posts are showing up in is feed on people he doesn’t follow, and topics he’s not too interested in. This puzzled me, because his experience with Twitter is completely different from mine, of course, it would be on some level we are different people with different followers, but WHY?
I looked into this and found the answer.
Right now, when Twitter inserts a tweet into your timeline from someone you don’t follow, it offers a short header that tries to explain why it’s there. For instance, you might see a tweet from a stranger, along with a label saying that a friend you follow on Twitter favorited the tweet, or follows the account that generated the tweet. Reasonable, right? Not really…
Sources familiar with the update say Twitter’s algorithm searches for popular tweets in your “social graph,” marked by actions like favorites and retweets. But it’s not showing you those tweets specifically because of one of your pal’s actions — it’s showing it to you because lots of your pals have shown interest in that tweet.
Even more interesting is this article from Social Media Examiner
In 2016, more brands will stop focusing on follower counts and likes and begin to look at social media channels such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter as pure syndication opportunities.
Why? We’ve learned over the past few years that we have no control over our connections on social platforms. The platforms control the flow of information and the data on your audience. They can show whatever they want to whomever they want, regardless of whether someone opts in to see your content.
What to do? Brands will continue to leverage these platforms but will do so with a firm goal of building their own audience of email subscribers (where they have the most control and can communicate directly with subscribers).The goal, whenever possible, will be to move audiences up the chain toward email and print subscriptions.
I plan to keep the strategy of my accounts separate. My personal profile will continue to represent who I am as a Foo Fighters loving, on Elon Musk idolizing, Mom to 1 amazing college kid. And my business profile will focus on my business using the six principles of influence by the leader in the field of influence and persuasion, and the most cited social psychologist in the world today, Dr. Robert Cialdini.