Tonight I’m wrapping up a research study which has been under lock and key for the past few months, and I’m finally ready to let the cat out of the bag. As Twitter gains supernatural marketing powers by the day it’s up to us — Social Media marketeers — to stay on the ball.

A short while back I noticed a quite profound trend on Twitter, which I decided to research more in-depth. After perusing around 50 Twitter profiles for a client, I noticed that a vast majority of accounts have about the same number of followers as people they are following. Could this be a coincidence?

I spent the past 3 months conducting a little study on Twitter following/follower trends and found that, for the typical Twitter user, the amount of followers one has is closely related to the number of people they’re following. There is approximately a 15% margin of error (up/down) that I’ve documented, and most users fall into this zone with the exception of celebrities, large companies, renown marketers and other Twitter users that are widely known and therefore have more followers than people they are following. For example, the average Joe has 5,000 followers on Twitter and is following 5,500 people. A social media author has a 1,000 person following on Twitter and is following 1,100 people.

Ultimately, I have concluded that the amount of followers one has directly correlates to the number of Twitter accounts they’re following. This is partially due to the fact that Twitter users have a tendency to follow people/companies that are following them, which has almost become a best practice. Additionally, there appears to be an extra set of commonalities linking followers/following that I’m in the process of researching and will report on shortly.

I hope this information has been helpful and keep your eyes peeled for more on this topic.

Sincerely,
Aaron Schoenberger
The Brainchild Group