Bryan Person and Chris Brogan are talking about something very near to my heart; the egocentricity and personal brand overload of Twitter. OK, OK…they didn’t word it that way, but that is certainly how I have felt the past few months. I’m so tired of the people on Twitter who are there to only post their latest blog entry.
Chris’ post has some great advice, as well as the suggestion that you Twitter at a 1:12 ratio. Meaning for every one post about your own stuff, Twitter 12 times about others stuff (or at least not about your own stuff). Bryan than took it to the test and looked at his last 100 Tweets to see where he stood and broke it into three categories; Posts About Me, Posts Not About Me and My Marketing Links.
I love the way these guys are thinking, as usual. So I decided to bring myself through Bryan’s #MeNotMe test and here are my results in my last 100 (which is 8.5 days):
Tweets About Me: 29
Tweets NOT About Me: 62
Marketing Links: 9
If you combine the first and last I would have a 38:62 ratio of About Me/Not About Me, far below the 1:12 ration that Chris suggested…however, most of the “Tweets About Me” are not pushing information, so it is more realistic to take the “Marketing Links” to get a 9:91 ratio or 1:10. Fairly close to Chris’ suggestion.
All of this had me thinking, what about my “Twitter Engagement Score”. I would argue that the 1:12 ratio is important, but you also want to see a 5:1 “Twitter Engagement Score”…meaning for every 5 Twitters about you, there is 1 @ response or direct message. (NOTE: I’m making this all up as I go along, so tell me where I’m wrong or what to improve)
Total Tweets to Date: 3,130 (On my Twitter profile
Total Direct Messages to Date: 305 (On my Twitter profile)
Updates beginning with @kyleflaherty: 780 (On my Twitter profile)
Updates including @kyleflaherty: 51 (From search.twitter.com)
Add it up and looks like I have a Twitter Engagement Score of 3,130:1,136 or roughly 3:1. Think about that for a second…for every 3 Tweets I’m getting 1 Tweet directed towards me from somebody else.
What does this all mean? It is a turn off to talk about yourself all the time, whether you are on a date, a sales call, a conference floor, or on Twitter. What is your Twitter Engagement Score?
P.S. I’m HORRIBLE at math as anyone who has worked with me can confirm, so if I’ve done any incorrect calculations let me know.
P.P.S. NONE of this is based on scientific method, it’s based on me going through Twitter searches, if I put one “About Me” in the “Not About Me” I humbly apologize, it was done in error.
P.P.P.S. “Twitter Engagement Score” is a copyright of Kyle Flaherty, Inc. ;)
2 Responses
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6 out of the last 20 were technically about me, though 3 of those deal with travel stuff. At the airport. Whatever types, you know?
But it’s a neat litmus paper, eh? How many @’s might be neat, too. Engagement.
Kyle:
I like where you’re taking this with your Twitter Engagement Score, as it’s a good indicator of how well you’re engaging others.
One recommendation: You’d probably want to factor in your outgoing direct messages, too, since those also contribute to the number of incoming direct messages you receive.
For your actual score, I might leave them out completely. So, how about 3,130:831? That’s still an impressive ratio!