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Twitter Power Poll: What Makes A Brand or Person Influential on Twitter?

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Categories: twitter

Twitter 5A few days ago I wrote a blog post that was on the Topic of “How Do You Measure Twitter Influence: Is It Worth Measuring?”  that discussed “What is it, that makes people or brands influential on Twitter”. As Twitter grows and with its visitor numbers continuing to climb with over 50 Million unique visits in July, 2009 according to Commscore and now ranked the 47th largest site by traffic, it is becoming a cyberspace force. Its expanding influence and power as a communication and delivery platform for conversations, engagement, social media, web content and real time opinion and real time search..such as the Iranian election protests, has become substantial and significant.  

Now I would like to hear your opinion on what are the most important factors to being influential on Twitter .

So what do you think are the most important elements that make a person or brand influential on Twitter and give them “Twitter Power”?  

Vote  Now and see the responses at Twitter  at #twitterpowerpoll and you can come back to check the results by clicking on the “View Results” button on the poll form below at this blog post at any time.

What do you think makes a brand or person influential on Twitter? Would like to hear your comments.


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  • http://www.speakersite.com/profile/CatherineWhite The Divine Miss White

    Interesting, although I think the questions are a tad obvious, therefore present predictable answers.

    • http://jeffbullas.com jeffbullas

      So… The Divine Miss White what would be a good question?

      • VAL

        I have to agree with The Divine Miss White. Rather than a Poll Question, a more subjective inquiry would have been “Fill-In-The-Blank” or something like, “Post a reply and tell me how YOU measure someone’s personal influence on Twitter”. Allow the reader to present their own criteria, ideas, and conclusions. Again, the fundamental reason of Social Media is to share and learn ideas from the perspective of others.

        • @ArabBrands

          Quality posts and number & quality of followers are of little value if the messages go unread. Who has time to read the Tweets of 4500+ people they follow?

    • Thomas Moradpour

      Not that obvious to me seeing how diverse the answers are… I’d argue it’s “none of the above” or “all my general”.

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  • http://www.rich-baker.com Rich Baker

    Jeff, an interesting post; thank you! I blogged about this today on my site Social Media Influence and am hoping that we don’t all ‘ignore the little guy’ in our rush to measure influence. Social Media is the ‘democratisation of communication’!

    • http:20century.tumblr.com Joanne Capella

      Good point, Rich. I’m just starting out in the blogosphere and social media world. One of the hardest things is to keep focused and to not get intimidated. I think becoming an influencer is much like the tortoise running a race “slow and steady” does it.

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  • http://twitter.com/mnburgess Mark Burgess

    The quality and value of the link is my favorite. If you were to view these choices as metrics, this would be more meaningful than raw numbers.

    • LadyBizBiz

      I’m definitely with you on this Mark Burgess, I spend the first hour on Twitter going to my list called ‘Bullseye’ – those tweeps that are right at the heart of my Twitter activity, viz. they are engaging and interact with me, and I select things to follow up on from what they have said. I usually have a list of between 25-30 items to track and take action on.

      I don’t have time to look at what all of my followers are saying and personally I’m not in it to hear what people like Davina McCall has to say though I appreciate the point Sanya is making.

      I would add that when the time comes to prune the dead-wood in my follower numbers,that is those that provide nothing in the way of interaction or interest for me, if they have a large following I would probably keep them in my followers until I had looked closely at those people following them so that I could identify other more interesting folk. Then I would dump the uninteresting person. This is the only time that size of followers enters into the equation for me. Some people I know use MyTweeple and Klout for the same purpose.

      LadyBizBiz

  • http://teaandtalks.com Kaushal

    The quality of tweets is my favorite. I judge my followers on their tweets.

  • Sanya

    A good example of influence: yesterday Davina McCall (250,656 followers) suggested that we should all follow Xmas_tree_man , just because he is a nice guy: he delivers a live Xmas tree to your house and then replants it somewhere after Xmas. When she tweeted that, Xmas man had about 200 followers. I have just checked – he’s got 1,657 now. Davina was joking when she said she’d like to bring him 1 million followers by November, but I think if she really put her mind to it, she could do it. Do you think this would be possible if Davina weren’t a celebritiy?

  • http://www.rafaelfarinasve.com José Rafael Fariñas

    The quality and value of the link is my favorite, but i included quality and value of their tweets too !

    • http://www.rafaelfarinasve.com José Rafael Fariñas

      The quality and value of the link is my favorite. I included quality and value of their tweets too !

  • Alonzo Byrd

    The success of any brand (or person) is how well it keeps its promise — whether on Twitter, in the board room, or on the golf course. Keep your promise, and you’re all good.

  • http://www.nashandassociates.com Brian Nash

    Jeff – it would be interesting to see what people chose if they only had ONE choice to make.

  • http://www.dotcalm.blog-city.com Sophmom

    You’re asking very interesting questions. I think the answer is more complicated, though, and that influence is comprised of as many intangibles as it is tangibles. I think there’s a component that is innate, something akin to charisma that makes up the maven/influencer/lynchpin/outlier. I’m not saying it can’t be cultivated, but I think that cultivation only works up to a point. Some people are just instinctively on the front side of the trend pendulum.

  • http://www.AnnieMame Ann Nyberg

    It’s all about trust and good info (links) Give people good info and they will follow.

  • http://iam-bc.com/ Shalini Bahl

    It certainly is NOT the number of tweets as many have automated tweets set up other people’s inspiring quotes, which feels pretty fake to me. I mean speak your own truth and if others quotes speak to you yes quote them, but I dislike automated tweets meant to inspire us with random quotes.

    That being said I think the quality of tweets and links is important.

    The authenticity of the tweeter comes through when they speak their truth and that is important to me.

    Twitter is a “social” media tool, which means people who participate and interact despite their big or small followings is really important to me.

    • http://saralwood.wordpress.com Sara L. Wood

      I totally agree. It would be interesting to do the inverse of this survey: “What Causes A Brand or Person to Fail on Twitter?” I have a feeling lack of authenticity would rank pretty high.

      - Sara

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  • http://rogerewingblog.com Roger Ewing

    Jeff, in your poll you left out an important Twitter concept. I always look at the ratio between followers and following. For example, I think someone who has 20,000 followers, and is following less than 100 is a sign that person has something important to say. The other way around indicates perhaps they are a better listener than speaker.
    R

    • http://mst3.wordpress.com Doc Campbell

      Exactly, Jeff. It would be possible, I think, to put each of us in one of a handful of categories, pertaining to activity. Like you, I shy away from those with 25,000 follows and 25,000 followers. The person with a lot of followers, and a handful of follows is typically more worth my time, UNLESS they’re a celebrity. In that case, all bets are off. After looking at that ratio, I look at their number of tweets. If they have 5, forget it. If they have 10,0000, I may also be put off. Highly subjective, but the trend seems to work for me.

      Good post, Jeff.

  • http://www.twitter.com/stephenmwhite Stephen

    Interesting little survey. Looks like the old adage remains true: content is king (well, after cash anyway…)

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  • http://www.flavordesigns.com Franziska San Pedro

    1) To me it is very important what someone represents, if I disagree with their website, I wouldn´t follow them, no matter how interesting their tweets are and how popular they are. And it needs to be relevant to me.

    2) I compare the follower-following-ratio, if they follow 10% more than they are followed, that indicates to me that they are not just putting their stuff out, they show interest in others, too.

    3) And last, I check how active they are, if someone hasn´t posted anything in the past 10 months, there is nothing for me to read. Also if someone posts 24/7 every 10 minutes something that means they got their auto-tweets on and again are just putting their stuff out and aren´t actively involved in real conversations.

    What I don´t like at all is “follow me and I will follow you back” or “check out my website and I will check yours and post something” -that´s not the idea of social media to me. I like being connected to people and I am on a mission, and I support people who are on a mission as well, It´s not just a numbers game because those kinds aren´t real. Do something with passion or don´t do it at all.
    Thanks Jeff for your blog, I enjoy reading it!

  • http://johnantonios.com John Antonios

    I think “The quality and value of the links that they tweet” is very linked to “the ability to make other people take actions on Twitter” – since quality and value is based on what follows – for example, it makes you think about something, it gets you to follow a link that will get you to do something – so logically one leads to the other!
    If we were to consider the meaning of the word influential for second – it comes from the verb “to influence”, the result of which is an action.
    But above all, i think that authenticity and sincerity is what counts the most, the rest will follow (pun intended).
    thanks for the thought-provoking post!

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  • http://Davekirkwood.com Dave Kirkwoo

    I’m really interested in how the poll answers will develop as the poll result volume increases. They had to be obvious questions because they nail the real life decisions we take. The only main determining factor missing is location, but again, it will be fascinating to see what issues come through in ‘other’.

  • jake collier

    Humour is an important factor for me, if you can convey something with an element of humour, it gets my attention more than the boring corporate delivery

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  • http://contentsgeek.com Donald Arinze

    All of the above, in my opinion. However, how often a person tweets, the quality and number of followers and the number of followers re-tweeting their tweets is of particular importance in determining the overall influence of any brand or person on twitter.

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  • http://twitter.com/himachhag hima chhag

    It can’t be any 1 reason. For any success, You have to cross many roads.
    Results are very interesting.
    But i totally disagree with 1 point that is the number of followers.
    Because i truly believe in quality not in quantity.

  • Badamazi

    I think that great content is sure to make a person or brand significant. It needs to be helpful by being informative or even entertaining. This is crucial. Tweets about minute details of your personal life may not always appeal to all comers, unless you’re celebrity.