For a long time I have been passively gathering followers, gaining a handful a day. However, recently I noticed my number of Twitter followers plateauing. I was getting new followers, but apparently my new followers were equal to the number of people who unfollow me. I was stuck at 1090 follows. This went on for a week or two before I concluded this was a new trend for my account. I decided to start investigating why this was happening.

My first suspect was an auto-DM (direct message) directing new followers to this blog. An auto-DM is a standard message that is sent out automatically typically after someone follows you. I had set it up a long time ago when I was playing around with different tools and then basically forgot about it. I have heard arguments against auto-DMs but my Twitter followers were growing and hits to my blog was growing (albeit slowly). Since the trend was changing on my Twitter side I began to investigate the relationship more in depth. I dug into the data that my Google Analytics account had gathered on traffic for this blog. Hits were growing but where were they coming from? Search engine traffic was better than what I hoped. Facebook referrals were remaining healthy. Twitter referrals where a different story. In the past month Twitter had sent a whopping 1 hit. My Twitter strategy obviously needed rethinking. It also meant I can get rid of the auto-DM without hurting traffic to my blog. Within a day or two of turning the auto-DM off, my number of Twitter followers clearly broke the resistance level of 1090 and has returned to growth. It is now time for me to start working on improving my Twitter strategy.

This was a process and decision driven by numbers. The problem was identified through numbers (a flat trend of 1090 followers). A possible solution was identified through numbers (no one was clicking on the link in the auto-DM). The solution was confirmed by numbers (follower growth picked up again and surpassed 1090). I do however want to point out that the process was not completely numbers. It took a little bit of intuition and background knowledge to start off the search with the auto-DM. However, the numbers made the difference between a guess and a solution.

This process can be applied to any number of situations. The great thing about the Internet is that it is easy to track numbers. Where are visitors coming from? Where are they going? What are they doing while on your site. Many social media tools are even now providing in depth analytic tools. Make sure you are using these assets and apply the data to your campaigns. You’ll even be able to solve bigger problems than my 1090 ceiling of Twitter followers.

The next post will be April 27th.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 13th, 2010 at 1:25 pm and is filed under Google Analytics, Twitter, analytics, social media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.