The "Suggested Users" feature of Twitter has left many souls unhappy and rightly so because the moment your Twitter profile shows up on the suggested list, your follower count can grow almost exponentially thus making you look all the more "influential".
A high follower count on Twitter can certainly give an ego boost but will your servers crash if a popular Twitter user with half a million followers tweets about your web site?
I did a quick and very unscientific study to determine the relation (if any) between "Twitter follower count" and "web traffic" using random tweets of popular technology bloggers and here’s what I found:
If Mashable or TechCrunch (each having >300k followers) share a link on Twitter, the target website can expect anywhere between 3.5k to 6k visitors. On the other hand, someone like Steve Rubel (with ~20k followers) can alone send 1.1k to 2.2k new visitors from a single tweet though he’s just 5% the size of Mashable in terms of Twitter follower count.
And here’s some more data to suggest that 10x more Twitter followers don’t necessarily mean that links mentioned in their tweets would get 10x more clicks.
Mashable (Pete Cashmore) – 345,606 Followers
- Why Brands Love Mommy Bloggers – 3,729 clicks
- Picli, a Hybrid of Digg and Flickr – 3,146 clicks
- Fring Launches a Better Twitter Mobile Experience – 4,899 clicks
- MySpace and Microsoft Team Up – 6,149 clicks
- Microsoft Encarta Succumbs to Wikipedia – 5,329 clicks
TechCrunch (Michael Arrington) – 314,985 Followers
- Dell 24-inch monitor for $209 – 4,484 clicks
- Habbo Pulled In $74 Million – 3,211 clicks
- TinyURL Is Worth At Least $46m – 3,844 clicks
- JK Rowling Attacks Scribd – 3,693 clicks
- Is Facebook Lowballing Numbers – 3,178 clicks
Om Malik – 28,341 Followers
- Google’s Market Cap Bigger Than GE – 1,278 clicks
- bit.ly raises around $2 million – 1,344 clicks
- BlackBerry to Launch TV Episodes – 620 clicks
- MacBook and 460 kgs of CO2 – 720 clicks
Robert Scoble – 77,152 Followers
- Help @loic and @furrier find hosting – 1,859 clicks
Dave Winer – 20,773 Followers
- If I deleted my Twitter account – 894 clicks
- Encarta, then and now – 653 clicks
- Digg for Ads – 525 clicks
- Is Firefox slower than other browsers – 783 clicks
Steve Rubel – 20,745 Followers
- Twitter could own your Google footprint – 2,203 clicks
- Twitter Tweaks Its Title Tags – 1,121 clicks
- Twitter Gadget features – 1,196
Fred Wilson – 17,240 Followers
- Blogger Jessica Wilson – 869 clicks
- Plan to save local newspapers – 705 clicks
- Thoughts on Bit.ly funding – 2,842 clicks
Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/internet/twitter-follower-count-and-user-clicks/8078/
Tags: bit.ly, exclusive, feature, influence, twitter, Internet
Reader Comments
Great analysis.. Thanks for the useful information … By this we can come to know how much a tweet can drive traffic..
Written by fasil on 03.31.09
Well, the analysis is really helpful in terms of understanding the Tweeter, Tweets and RTweets. Most of us here [except, Amit] stand nowhere in comparison to the analysis [I would say, there is no comparison at all!].
Still then, I think, Twitter is one of the great source generating traffic towards your website/ blog. If one gets some good traffic from Twitter followers, he/ she should not mind in increasing the followers!
Cheers and happy tweeting!
Written by Netwala on 03.31.09
Great analysis, you help me stop increasing followers and it is closely related to another post of problogger about twitter followers or blog readers
Written by Tinh on 03.31.09
It’s all about the quality of your following. Just like your email list or your blog. Our email list outperforms lists of hundreds of thousands. Ours is around 40k subscribers.
Written by Jack Humphrey on 03.31.09
Another look at this issue which would be interesting to see is the difference between the click rates of “broadcasters” who only send OUT tweets and the quality of clicks from Tweeters who interact with their followers.
My hunch is that interactive Twitter members get more clicks, pound for pound. Broadcasters create a “blindness” effect because you know they are just phoning it in even though some of their stuff is pretty interesting and clickable.
Written by Jack on 03.31.09
Incredible report. Thanks for doing this.
I wonder what the Twitter Law of Diminishing Returns is? At what # does the amount of followers not really matter anymore since so many of them aren’t really paying attention? And also what the relation is between click-thrus and the amount of times you post (i.e. does overposting cut down on followers’ interest in clicking thru)?
Written by Gerard Babitts on 03.31.09
Hello Amit,
How do you get the nb of clicks per tweet ? I can’t find the tool to do so …
Thanks for your help and great post,
Amaury
Written by Amaury on 03.31.09
I think several of these uber-bloggers could increase their clicks by learning to write better headlines, i.e., direct-marketing headlines vs. newspaper-style headlines.
Written by don on 03.31.09
I’d suggest adding the number of RSS readers in the chart.
My argument is: tech-savvy readers might prefer reading blog posts from their feed reader to following a tweeted link.
Cheers,
TaiTran
Written by TaiTran on 04.01.09
Great job Amit. This article shows why I think bit.ly is such a great url-shortening service. Nice to see it’s wide adoption in the spirit of the Open web – which enables you to do such interesting research.
Written by Charanjit on 04.01.09
now I don’t feel so bad, lol
great research man
Written by Phillip Gibb on 04.15.09