We're not generally ones to blow our own trumpets here at Econsultancy, but last week our main Twitter account (@Econsultancy, feel free to follow us!) sailed past the 100,000 followers mark.
That's quite a milestone in anyone's books, so I decided to take a closer look at our followers, who they are and what they do (and of course, what they're worth... ).
It turns out, there are a LOT of facts and figures flying around that are fascinating to look at, and what better way to compile them than in that most tweet-worthy way: An infographic.
We'd also like to say thanks to everyone there for helping us get to this point, we've learned a huge amount about every aspect of our business thanks to your feedback and had a great time along the way.
Anyway, enough gushing, check out the stats!
If you'd like to use this image on your own site, please feel free to use the following embed code:
<a href="http://econsultancy.com/blog/10202-how-econsultancy-got-100-000-twitter-followers-infographic"><img src="http://assets.econsultancy.com/images/resized/0002/0272/my_infographic-blog-full.png" alt="How Econsultancy Got 100000 Twitter Followers - Infographic" title="How Econsultancy Got 100000 Twitter Followers - Infographic" width="615" height="4459" /></a><br/><a href="http://econsultancy.com">Econsultancy.com – Become a smarter digital marketer</a>
Reader comments (22)
Freelance SEO at Morgan Online Marketing
12:07PM on 27th June 2012
Fantastic post. Everything an infographic should be: informative, well laid-out and also humorous. Bonus points for being personal to your company and its experience, too!
Also, as an aside... Consider me your first "Grand Vizier" follower! ;-)
12:45PM on 27th June 2012
Awesome graphics and good tidbits of information. Just one thing I'd like to point out: the title is a bit misleading, you're analyzing your 100k followers, not telling us how you got them :)
Head of Customer Care at Peto
1:32PM on 27th June 2012
Great graphic! I like the fact you don't take yourself too seriously. Looks like i need to remove the word 'potato' from my profile though and replace it with Grand Vizier...
7:02PM on 27th June 2012
Good One! Simple explanation with step by step approach.
11:03PM on 27th June 2012
Dare I say it...you guys are rock stars!
3:35AM on 28th June 2012
Lovely infographic! Had me chuckling all the way to the end until I realized I still don't know the answer to the headline. oh well, point well made! btw - Congratulations... now on to the next milestone 1MM!!! Good luck!
7:42AM on 28th June 2012
Just loved the way it has been described..Infographic is bang on and visually so strong..Congrats :)
11:52AM on 28th June 2012
As my colleague has just said, this infographic is incorrectly titled - this is not HOW you gained followers.
I'd like to have seen figures on total number of conversations, retweets and favourites.
The only thing I have learnt from this on the HOW you got that many follows is - follow millions of people and hope for the best.
Head of Social at Econsultancy
12:13PM on 28th June 2012
Hi all,
Yes I admit, this doesn't quite cover how we went about getting all those followers, I'll make sure I post a more in-depth follow-up shortly with more analytical data on our measurement stats.
@Avangelist - we follow 346 people, hardly millions -following back isn't always valuable, we do use Twitter for CRM, but we don't have the kind of audience that would really benefit from this. We don't use Twitter as a sales channel - it falls under the banner of editorial. That said, it currently features as an attribution point in 10% of all our online conversions (Paid purchase, as opposed to secondary goals such as unpaid downloads). Total final point attribution would be around 3.5% monthly (I should also point out that this isn't the only source of revenue for the company)which may seem relatively low, but we wouldn't expect someone to see a tweet and think "Sounds good, I'll spend $400", it's part of the wider journey for customers and has a lot of brand value for us. Twitter is the widest point in our sales funnel, driving recognition so that we can convert on page.
Retweets - around 300 per day(give or take). Hope that helps a little -again I should point out that there's no consistent nodal value to a Retweeter's network though so this would be a cloudy metric at best without granular examination. What works for a large FMCG won't have value for us because not everyone is a potential customer.
As for 'how'. We post useful stuff, talk to people and keep an eye on those we value. I see our Twitter account as a combination news channel, PR voice, customer service point and listening post (and a lot of fun too).
Thanks for all your comments - glad you liked the graphic!
Director at Fitter Consulting
12:43PM on 28th June 2012
Great infographic. Love the language :) Congratulations!
Social media guy at CSC
1:20PM on 28th June 2012
Matt - "it currently features as an attribution point in 10% of all our online conversions (Paid purchase, as opposed to secondary goals such as unpaid downloads). Total final point attribution would be around 3.5% monthly"
- are you using Google Analytics Social to atribute those figures or something else? We've just done some atribution modeling using DC Storm and I'm about to go and compare it against GA as a sense check. Just wondering.
Head of Social at Econsultancy
1:27PM on 28th June 2012
Hi Jim, that's based on GA's multichannel tracking. The exact point percentage can be a little muddy with social as it has a tendency to swing around a bit month by month so I tend to rummage around in the transactions, landing pages etc to clarify -it's never a perfect picture but on a yearly basis that 10% figure seems quite accurate - would be good to hear more about what you're doing as well, always fun trying to puzzle these things out!
Social media guy at CSC
1:35PM on 28th June 2012
If I remember, I'll come back to this thread and post up any interesting points of comparison we fine. We got DC Storm to help us refine how much value we attribute to each stream of referral/affiliate/search traffic - it will be interesting to see what it reveals.
Head of Social at Econsultancy
1:41PM on 28th June 2012
Cool thanks -look forward to reading :)
12:12PM on 29th June 2012
Hi Matt, a great info graphic, thanks for creating it. I'm curious what you used to extract the stats or did it just boil down to grunt work?
Head of Social at Econsultancy
12:36PM on 29th June 2012
Hey Nick - thanks,
Bit's of both really. I used a combo of Google analytics, Twitter's back-end analytics, and a few free apps like followerwonk and socialbro, plus lots of digging!
Consultant at Dubai Business Consultancy
1:26PM on 2nd July 2012
WOW!! Many congrats!! Great post, and good humour too, keep it up!! :)
Head of Search Marketing at Confused.com
1:42PM on 2nd July 2012
Great infographic guys :)
3:12PM on 2nd July 2012
Love this infographic. Not only does it explain how to get followers (it really does), it also reminds us that graphics are powerful means to tell a story. This infographic actually does walk you through a story - rather than just sharing bits of data. Love you @econsultancy.
with love from @kimberlymccabe :)
Digital Marketing Manager at Elsevier
2:42PM on 4th July 2012
This is brilliant.
Out of interest which tool did you use to work out the gender ratio of your followers and also by country?
Head of Social at Econsultancy
2:49PM on 4th July 2012
Hi Daf -thanks! Twitter gave me that info, they provide location analytics for advertisers, including gender :)
11:50AM on 5th July 2012
I love this infographic! Well done chaps... It's got great information, insights, is nicely designed, humourous and it shows that by providing brilliant information on a regular basis for free, you actually create an awesome business... Worth about £50 million in fact!
Log in to post a comment