Quality vs. Quantity, pt 2 – More on the little bird we love

Several months back we discussed the need for strong social networking social capital (“How Strong is Your Social Networking Social Capital,” Dec. 2009).

At the time our argument was that it didn’t matter how many Facebook “Fans” (now “Connections”) or Twitter “Followers” you had, as long as the ones you have are of strategic importance to your mission, goals or objectives.

HP (yes, Hewlett-Packard) recently released a report titled “what makes a tweet influential?”

Here’s what they had to say:

Key Findings: “It is important to separate the concept of ‘influence’ from ‘popularity.’ While a user on Twitter may have a large number of followers, his or her influence is more strongly associated with their engagement with the network, rather than with the raw number of followers or retweets.”

They devised an algorithm that assigns “a relative influence score and passivity score to that user.”

* “Passivity” is the measure of how difficult it is for other users to influence him or her.

* “Influence” depends on both the quality and quantity of the user’s audience

The conclusion of the paper is that “the correlation between popularity and influence is weaker than it might be expected. This is a reflection of the fact that for information to propagate in a network, individuals need to forward it to the other members, thus having to actively engage rather than passively read it and cease to act on it.”

Think of Twitter like the water cooler in the office. People stand around talking, telling stories. There are some who are ready and willing to share what they heard (High Degree of Influence) and others who simply listen, telling no one else – the chain of information ends with them (High Degree of Passivity).

In short, increasing the number of Twitter “Followers” does not necessarily mean that a particular “tweet” will be seen or read by a greater number of people. Successful Twitterers will align themselves with influential “Followers” rather than passive ones.

So, the trick is to find those who are most likely to repeat your story, sharing it with others। Those are the people you want following you on Twitter। If you’ve got them, you can imagine why, as we have argued in the past, twitter can be one of the most valuable tools for PR and marketing professionals. Find out more about how we use Twitter by following us.