Oh what an exciting life I lead! I spent my Friday night reading the latest issue of Inc. magazine. An interview with Stan Lee (yes, the Spiderman guy), another interview with someone who wrote a biography on Ayn Rand, and then a piece on Jason Fried of 37 Signals and what a typical day looks like for him.

With all due respect to Jason and to Inc. it was a pretty boring piece. You know how people complain about those mundane Twitter updates about what someone had for breakfast? That’s kinda what this article is like.

Except for this quote from Jason:

It really bothers me that the definition of success has changed from profits to followers, friends, and feed count. This crap doesn’t mean anything.

Thank you!! That’s got to be the most intelligent tidbit of common sense I’ve heard in a long time. Since when did success depend on how many Twitter followers or Facebook fans you have? Unless you’re actually having some kind of influence on all of those fans and followers, Jason is right…this crap doesn’t mean anything.

Quantity versus Quality

Take someone like Lynn Terry, for example. At the time of this post, Lynn has over 9,000 followers on Twitter. Sure, that’s impressive although when you look at someone like Darren Rowse a/k/a ProBlogger, it may not seem like a lot. But when you look at WHY Lynn Terry has that many then you can start translating those numbers into how successful she is. She doesn’t have that many followers because she spends all day on Twitter trying to pump up those numbers. Most of her followers are people who read her blog or have a membership at her Self Starters forum. She is successful because she provides value to her readers, subscribers, members and followers. She is successful because she learned the hard way what it takes to make money online and she continues to learn and share what she’s learned with those 9,000+ people. Lynn is successful because she is working.

On the other hand, I’ve seen people with just as many followers, if not more, who really don’t seem to be doing anything. I check my list of followers regularly and, before I decide to follow someone back, I check their Twitter updates. I don’t look at their numbers and think “Wow, they’ve got 13,000 followers, they must really be Someone Important!” I look at what they’re actually doing on Twitter. Are they interacting with followers and giving suggestions or advice? Or are they just spewing out their affiliate links for the Next Big Thing or sharing links to their own blog posts hoping that at least a handful of those 13,000 people will read it?

Having a ton of followers or fans is another one of those “quality vs. quantity” arguments. It’s about the message, not how many people you can shout it out to.

It’s NOT a Numbers Game

Don’t get all caught up in the numbers. Don’t compare yourself to other people and think they’re doing better than you because they have more followers. Look at it this way… if they’ve got all of that free time on their hands to spend on Twitter then they must not have very much work keeping them busy. Unless someone is paying them based on how many followers they have – and I know some of these ads or sponsors or PR people do take things like that into consideration but they’ll learn – then it just doesn’t equal success.

The next time you’re checking your own Twitter profile and you find yourself obsessing over how many followers you’ve gained or lost, ask yourself: Would I rather have 500 people who actually care about what I have to say or 5,000 people who don’t even listen to me?

Related posts:

1. Beyond My Space – Using Twitter
2. happy09