How Posting A New Interview Every Weekday Impacted My Twitter Follower Count [chart]
on Feb 18, 2010 - 10:30 AM PSTThis is part of the behind-the-scenes section of Mixergy, which I call etc.
Posting a new interview every weekday is exhausting. (Today, for example, I’m so tired that I just want to go home and sleep.) But I do it because I know it’s helped me become a better interviewer and land better interviewees.
This morning I realized how much it’s growing my audience engagement. You can see that in the growing number of positive tweets about my work, and in the chart above, which shows how my twitter audience is growing.
All of this participation makes doing these interviews so much more fun than when I had just 2 viewers for every interview.
Thanks guys!
If you’re not following me on Twitter, you can do it here.
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February 18th, 2010 at 10:51 am
Heya Andrew,
I'm trying my best to keep up even to keep up with every new interview (your feed shows 340 to 380+ items from the very beginning). Listening to about 1 to 3 audio clips like once to twice a week while working away on my netbook.
Totally liked how you kept asking and probing your way to get answers out from every interviewee.
You deserve the huge increase in following on Twitter. At 16k followers today, that's huge. :)
February 18th, 2010 at 11:24 am
Really impressive. Hard work pays off.
February 18th, 2010 at 12:06 pm
Wait; so why exactly is your Twitter follower count going up? I'd like to get to the bottom of this, just like you do with within your interviews (because I'm also trying to increase my follower count.)
So is this related to momentum and buzz? Sounds like you're saying that by having frequent interviews, people are more engaged and eventually make enough of a connection to follow you. So you're *earning* your followers. Is that right?
February 18th, 2010 at 3:32 pm
Interesting Andrew. I'm curious as heck to know if folks are watching all your interviews as frequently. I'm not able to keep up each day but I do pick and choose which ones to watch now. It would be interesting to know if you would have gotten just as much traction with, say, 3 interviews a week, or even 2 interviews a week.
One of the things I'm studying on my own content sites is where the line is where producing so much content begins to have diminishing returns or at least levels off in terms of consumption by my members and site visitors.
If you have any insight on that, I'd love to hear it.
All the best,
Tim
February 18th, 2010 at 5:39 pm
Hey Tim,
Thanks for linking us here from your Tweet.
Each niche will be different in the amount of content they can consume, so, we like to just plain ol' ask them.
At times like this, I feel it's okay to use multiple choice, such as:
a) 2 times per week Monday and Thursday
b) 3 times per week Mon-Wed-Fri
c) 3 times per week Tue-Thur-Sat
d) Other – You tell me what's best
Then just go with the majority, since they're the one's paying. Not everybody will be happy, but setting an editorial schedule and sticking to it is very comforting to a member.
Comfortable members keep paying.
February 18th, 2010 at 9:53 pm
I have to say Andrew, I'm still a twitter-cynic (and that's almost as bad as saying you're a climate-change-cynic these days). There's just so much noise on twitter and in a world where time is precious, are you better off with all this noise? For example, you follow say 16000 people on twitter. For what?
Okay, so rather than postulate, what about the claims by Tim F and Gary V that they don't even consume this type of media because they have bigger fish to fry?
I know I'm probably wrong, so I'd like to hear how people get real tangible business value from twitter. How much less popular would Mixergy be if Andrew never created a twitter account? Or would Mixergy be more popular because that time may have been spent elsewhere?
Just my opinion; likely to change frequently.
February 19th, 2010 at 6:46 am
Thanks. I always wonder where people are when they listen.
February 19th, 2010 at 6:46 am
Yeah, if it doesn't kill us. Thanks!
February 19th, 2010 at 6:48 am
Now you're really making me think.
Hmmm. I think it's more than just from posting a new interview every day. I think it's also being engaged daily on Twitter, email, here, etc.
But doing a new interview, gives me an opportunity to bring in new people since every interviewee tweets their interview and/or blogs it and/or causes their fans to tweet and talk about it.
February 19th, 2010 at 6:54 am
I don't know the answer to that since it's hard for me to test. What I can say is the more I tweet and post and interview, the more people engage back. And sometimes that engagement is measured in followers, other times its measured in comments, other times something else. But the numbers almost always go up the more I put out there.
February 19th, 2010 at 6:54 am
I agree. I think telling people what to expect and then showing them that you're dependable by being there when you promised helps a lot.
February 19th, 2010 at 6:57 am
I tweeted that I needed help getting etherpad installed on my own site since etherpad.com has been acting weird since it was sold to Google.
I got about 15 offers to help, including one person who installed it for me on his server without even waiting to hear back from me.
I have lots of examples like that. Many of the guests here on Mixergy came because I tweeted that I'd like them on and a few twitter followers who wanted to see those guests here helped make the introduction.
February 19th, 2010 at 7:11 am
As I said, you will need a team to scale. You concentrate on the interviews and let someone else cope with editing, uploading and all that jazz.
February 19th, 2010 at 7:15 am
You have to think about what Twitter is for most people. Not necessarily a tool to engage but a tool to get filtered news. So I guess that most people follow Andrew on Twitter to get a personal reminder that Mixergy is live right now.
Following someone on Twitter can also be something like social bookmarking. Hey, this is interesting and instead of bookmarking Mixergy I follow the site. This way you have a bookmark with included newsfeed.
February 20th, 2010 at 1:45 am
That sounds pretty material. I guess then, the question isn't, “should we use twitter or not”, but maybe, “what's the most productive way to use twitter”. Presumably, it would take 5+ hours a day just to skim the posts of 16000 people. But it doesn't sound like that's what people do. Back to the drawing board.
February 22nd, 2010 at 9:53 pm
That makes a lot of sense. If I think back to when I first followed Mixergy and Andrew on Twitter, I remember noticing that he didn't use Twitter all that much, but I was ok with that. I wished he had, but I was willing to follow on Twitter because I figured I'd get links to new interviews and at the very least, other important announcements.
That being said, the amount of valuable content and the frequency of the interviews are part of why I felt he it was something I wanted to follow.
February 22nd, 2010 at 9:55 pm
That's a great point about also capturing followers from your interviewees, that's gotta be a great way to gain traction fast!
February 23rd, 2010 at 4:53 am
That makes a lot of sense. If I think back to when I first followed Mixergy and Andrew on Twitter, I remember noticing that he didn't use Twitter all that much, but I was ok with that. I wished he had, but I was willing to follow on Twitter because I figured I'd get links to new interviews and at the very least, other important announcements.
That being said, the amount of valuable content and the frequency of the interviews are part of why I felt he it was something I wanted to follow.
February 23rd, 2010 at 4:55 am
That's a great point about also capturing followers from your interviewees, that's gotta be a great way to gain traction fast!