The Tendo View

Everyone sure loves talking about Twitter. We’re certainly as guilty as anyone else here at Tendo Communications—just check out the tag cloud on the homepage for an inkling of just how much this chat-soup service has pervaded our business and personal lives.

For the longest time, I’ve convinced myself that the secret to success on Twitter is the f-word: followers. Back when I was in the 200s, I assumed that few people were sending traffic to my links and/or retweeting what I had to say because the audience pool was more akin to a drop in a bucket than a roaring river. As I’ve grown through the Twitter ranks, I’ve noticed a little more success coming my way, but nothing near the 500+ hits per link and 50 retweets that I would prefer to see. “Just hang in there, Dave,” I keep telling myself.  “Once you hit thousands of followers, your every word will be like scripture for the Twitter masses who follow you.”

Will it?

Thanks to one of Twitter’s little twists, you can see exactly how many people are clicking on the links passed from a specific Twitter account. And, unfortunately, it ain’t lookin’ good: Save for the usual outliers, Twitter traffic scales—and that’s not a good thing. Whether you have a million followers or a hundred, you just aren’t going to see the kind of massive clickthroughs that you’d expect given your direct connection to that many people’s lives and/or online chat environments. Forget about the message, forget about the audience. The Twitterverse just isn’t doing that much clicking.

Here’s a quick rundown of how this works. As mentioned, Twitter defaults to the URL shortening service bit.ly whenever you paste a huge link into your update box. One of the neater features of bit.ly is that it’ll give you a full breakdown of who’s clicked and talked about your link–in essence, a detailed statistical look at just how popular your shortened link has become. Acquiring this information for any bit.ly link under the sun is as easy as appending a plus sign (+) to the end of any hyperlink that starts with http://bit.ly. Voilà. Instant statistics.

Applying this information to a Tendo Tweet I sent around some time ago (http://bit.ly/info/AAhPm), we can quickly see that my post on Twitter generated a grand total of 67 outbound clicks. That’s not too shabby, I suppose, given that Tendo’s Twitter feed has 96 followers. And, for what it’s worth, we did have a single retweeter helping us out on his own Twitter feed (cough, cough). But if we want to widen the scope of Twitter click patterns, we might as well go for the big guns—the service’s most-followed users. After all, if Tendo can get a pretty good ratio of people clicking on a link, that must mean that a user with a million followers will essentially command an army of clickers, delivering massive traffic to whatever he or she links to on Twitter. Right?

Wrong. In the interest of time, I’m going to take a random sampling of links from Twitter’s top five users (as of this article’s writing) and show you just how the ratio works out.

Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk)

~3,800,000 followers

Link: 15 Funniest Videos Of Fans Rushing The Field http://bit.ly/6SriX
Total clicks: 5,328
Percentage of followers clicking: .14%

Britney Spears (@britneyspears)

~3,400,000 followers

Link: Check out Brit’s amazing cover of Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know” from her show last night. http://bit.ly/4lvpKe -Adam, manager
Total clicks: 25,768
Percentage of followers clicking: 0.74%

CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk)

~2,800,000 followers

Link: Rio to host the 2016 Olympic Games http://bit.ly/16L69T
Total clicks: 8,912
Percentage of followers clicking: .23%

Kim Kardashian (@KimKardashian)

~2,500,000 followers

Link: Check out my Letterman look!!! http://bit.ly/2lfRbM Had so much fun on the show!
Total clicks: 43,547
Percentage of followers clicking: 1.74%

Twitter (@twitter)

~2,400,000 followers

Link: Thanks to all our investors for sharing our long term vision. http://bit.ly/tWPDc
Total clicks: 9,130
Percentage of followers clicking: .38%

Obviously, different Twitter accounts will find different success rates with whatever it is they’re tweeting. But let’s not jump to conclusions and assume that everyone out there in Twitterland is hitting a 60-percent success rate with whatever it is they link to. There are still viral exceptions to the rule. There are still users who, for whatever wit or reason, can capture the attention of a large percentage of their user base. But, for the most part, even content that many could find engaging—fans of Kim Kardashian checking out her new outfits, breaking news like Rio’s Olympic Games victory, or a link that’s proven successful on other huge social media entities like Digg—simply isn’t. Forty-thousand people clicking on a link is pretty good. That’s still an insignificant amount when you have access to an audience of millions.

So how do you do it? How do you hit that Twitter golden age of immense popularity and user follow-through? You don’t. Twitter is not a panacea. It’s just one more tool in a marketer’s arsenal. If you can find some unique way to make yourself known on the service, that’s great. But don’t rely on Twitter as the end-all, be-all pathway between the general Internet world and your new marketing dreams. If you’re finding more and more that you’re getting increased attention on the service, then shift your resources to address your audience from that angle. Just don’t make Twitter the single tank in your army or you’re liable to get crushed…  by indifference.

Appendix

If the above Twitter accounts didn’t phase you, here’s a small sampling of follow-through percentages for actual corporate presences on Twitter. Enjoy!

Dell Outlet (@DellOutlet)

~1,200,000 followers

Link: Final question! For a chance to win a $250 Dell Gift Card: Who brought the Twitter idea to Dell Outlet in 2007? Hint: http://bit.ly/zvKIQ
Total clicks: 960
Percentage of followers clicking: .08%

HP (@hpnews)

~8,400 followers

Link: $HPQ Fiscal 2010 Outlook (press release) http://bit.ly/aaRVY
Total clicks: 113
Percentage of followers clicking: 1.3%

Zappos (@Zappos)

~1,400,000 followers

Link: 14 weird and unusual (and somewhat disturbing) shoes – http://bit.ly/hKBCz
Total clicks: 6,148
Percentage of followers clicking: .43%