As you know if you’re a regular reader…I’m a big fan of Social Media.  The power it has to connect people, spark conversations and allow anyone to share ideas and spread their message continues to fascinate me!  Whilst there are many social media outlets Twitter has grown to be my favourite platform!

So…imagine my excitement when yesterday I went over the one thousand follower mark on Twitter.  With 1000 followers on Twitter, over 950 connections on Linkedin and Facebook I realised that I’d started to build my own tiny little ‘platform’ (if you’re not sure what I mean when I see that check out Michael Hyatt’s book – Platform.  A great read)

However after my initial excitement it hit me.  The number didn’t matter…..having a bucketload (or two, three or four bucketloads!) of followers on Twitter doesn’t mean much at all.

What was important is whether my content was interesting enough to be engaging, helped someone or shared a useful idea….and hopefully some of it has done this!  I’ve had a fair amount of positive feedback both online and face to face which tells me some of it has been relatively useful.  This engagement gives me far greater satisfaction than the perceived popularity of having relatively large numbers of followers…and helps motivate me to continue!

The other benefit I’ve gained from getting involved in the world of social media is what I’ve learned from other people.  The people I’ve built relationships with online are normally happy to share good ideas, provide tips, build connections and help each other out….it’s what business should be all about!  I’ve listened loads, learned a lot and garnered inspiration from a number of people I originally connected with online.

I know there are ways and methods to get a lot more twitter followers that I don’t use.  Now, surely it makes sense to use these techniques to boost your audience…so why don’t I do it?  Because I don’t want ‘followers’ for ‘followers’ sake….I want people to challenge my ideas, share their ideas and work together to come up with better ideas.

You could argue that if the Pareto Principle (the 80/20 rule) applies it’s likely that you regardless of the number of connections you make only a few will engage anyway.  So, why not make that number larger and therefore make the number of engage individuals greater by default.

There’s some validity in this argument if you believe the Pareto Principle applies to social media.  I don’t believe it does.  I believe a more engaged audience is far better than followers who don’t care about what you write and ‘follow for following’s sake’.

As ever there are just my thoughts and I’m interested in yours.  Do you think the Pareto Principle applies to social media?  What’s your approach to social media?  Do you look at just the numbers or aim for an engaged audience?  I look forward to hearing from you.