On Twitter we usually measure the entity, influence, or "success" of an account by its number of followers.

But is the size what counts? Or the quality?

It is very easy to get followers without quality on Twitter. There are companies that sell thousands of followers for a few euros. Searching "buy followers" in Google we see multiple websites that sell us followers for very affordable prices. Even on Ebay we can buy 5,000 Followers for € 9.90 or 100,000 followers for € 119.90, as shown in the screenshot below.

¿Para qué compran algunas cuentas seguidores? Podríamos pensar quizá que para "presumir" de liderazgo, influencia, o de que su marca es querida y seguida por muchos usuarios reales, es decir que es la marca de la que son fans o seguidores miles o millones de usuarios. Si una marca es líder podríamos inferir que será porque la satisfacción de los usuarios es muy positiva, y si muchos usuarios siguen a una marca, quizá sería porque que la "quieren"

Pero, ¿cómo sabemos si nuestros seguidores nos quieren?

Si nos dan muchos besos, abrazos y mimitos. Esto en twitter se traduce en comentarios positivos hacia la marca (menciones), prescripción de nuestros productos o comunicaciones (retweets), mimitos (añadir nuestros tweets a favoritos, añadirnos a sus listas clasificadas...)

Los seguidores obtenidos de modo no orgánico (no natural), como los comprados, son zombies. Esto significa que nos siguen pero no interactúan con nosotros, no nos dan besos ni abrazos! 

Existen seguidores inactivos y seguidores falsos. Los falsos son realmente cuentas que no están gestionadas por humanos, sino que son bots o robots. Son cuentas gestionadas por programas informáticos que siguen a quiénes sus creadores les dicen. Los seguidores inactivos suelen ser cuentas de humanos reales, posiblemente de otros idiomas y países, a los que no les interesan nuestros tweets, sino que nos siguen por otro tipo de interés (como por ejemplo pagarles porque nos sigan, o participar en esquemas Followback). Estos seguidores inactivos no twitean, ni mencionan, ni retuitean. Son cuentas que utilizan personas para seguir a otras cuentas y así obtener algún tipo de beneficio. Existen personas que crean cientos o miles de estas cuentas para vender sus follows, menciones, retweets... (buscando en Google "comprar retweets" o "comprar menciones", les encontraremos, así como sus bajas tarifas)

Ambos (seguidores falsos e inactivos) podríamos calificarlos como zombies, al ser inmunes a nuestros tweets y vagar en twitter sin emociones hacia las cuentas que siguen.

¿Cómo valorar la calidad de una cuenta en twitter? En primer lugar, si tenemos acceso a ver el nº de menciones, retweets y listas en las que ha sido agregada la cuenta, nos dará una idea del engagement o vínculo con sus usuarios (los besos y abrazos). Esto puede verse con la herramienta klout.com si tenemos el usuario y contraseña de twitter de la cuenta. Es útil si nos ofrecen vendernos una cuenta de nuestro sector, ya que podemos exigir ver estos datos para determinar la salud de la cuenta.

Sin embargo las empresas spammers avanzan como hemos indicado, vendiendo no sólo seguidores, sino menciones y retweets, por lo tanto debemos seguir indagando para evitar el posible fraude.

Otra opción es utilizar klout.com para ver la valoración que esta herramienta otorga a cada cuenta. En este caso, klout utiliza un algoritmo que valora entre 1 y 100 a cada cuenta. Este valor es logarítmico, por lo que una diferencia de un punto no es un 1%, sino un 100%, y por ende una diferencia de 10 puntos, implica un 1000% más de relevancia de la cuenta. Lo que hace klout a grandes rasgos es medir el 'engagemente' en varias redes sociales, y tiene en cuenta, no sólo las interacciones (menciones, retweets, añadir a favoritos, Me gustas, Compartir....) sino el klout (relevancia) de estas cuentas que nos dan abrazos. De este modo los besos falsos de personas con klout bajo (spammers) no influyen apenas, respecto a los cariñosos besos de quienes realmente son líderes/prescriptores de un sector y nos hacen un merecido retweet.

Realizada esta breve introducción, y como interesante práctica, analicemos las cuentas de los principales líderes religiosos.

Veamos cómo klout evalúa las cuentas de los respectívos líderes de dos de las principales religiones. Este dato es elevado, pero dado que son cuentas con millones de seguidores, para evaluarlas deberíamos compararlas con cuentas del sector, de tamaño similar, y en su defecto, con otras cuentas de un tamaño similar.

 

@DalaiLama tiene 7M de seguidores y @Pontifex cuenta con 2,5M de seguidores. 4 puntos de diferencia en klout que equivalen aproximadamente a un 400% más de relevancia. Teniendo en cuenta que tiene 3 veces más seguidores, concuerda. Aunque al tener 4 veces más relevancia y no 3, según Klout podemos deducir que dispone de una mayor relevancia no sólo por tener más seguidores, sino porque sus seguidores interactúan más con su líder espiritual, que los de @Pontifex. @DalaiLama tiene 901 tweets, mientras que @Pontifex tiene sólo 45 tweets, esto influye en que los seguidores de @DalaiLama interactúen (retweets, menciones...) más que los de @Pontifex (cuenta más reciente)

Comparemos ahora cuentas de similar volumen de seguidores. Si consultamos un ranking de cuentas de Twitter, por ejemplo: en twitaholic.com, podemos comprobar cómo cuentas con volumen de seguidores similar a 7M como @NBA o @PauRubio tienen Klouts respectivos de 86 y 85.

Acorde a este ranking, los valores de klout de los líderes religiosos son superiores a los de cuentas famosas con similar número de seguidores. Lo que implica un mayor engagement en los líderes espirituales. 

Why do you buy some followers accounts? We might think that to "show off" leadership, influence, or that your brand is loved and followed by many real users, that is to say that it is the brand of which thousands or millions of users are fans or followers. If a brand is a leader we could infer that it will be because the satisfaction of the users is very positive, and if many users follow a brand, it could be because they "want" it

 

 

But how do we know if our followers love us?

If you give us lots of kisses, hugs and mimitos. This in twitter translates into positive comments towards the brand (mentions), prescription of our products or communications (retweets), mimitos (add our tweets to favorites, add us to their classified lists ...)

The followers obtained in a non-organic (non-natural) way, such as those purchased, are zombies. This means that they follow us but do not interact with us, they do not give us kisses or hugs!

 

There are inactive followers and false followers. Fake ones are really accounts that are not managed by humans, but are bots or robots. They are accounts managed by computer programs that follow who their creators tell them to be. Inactive followers are usually accounts of real humans, possibly from other languages ​​and countries, who are not interested in our tweets, but who follow us for another type of interest (such as paying them because they follow us, or participating in Followback schemes) . These inactive followers do not tweet, mention, or retweet. These are accounts that people use to follow other accounts and thus obtain some kind of benefit. There are people who create hundreds or thousands of these accounts to sell their follows, mentions, retweets ... (Google search "buy retweets" or "buy mentions", we will find them, as well as their low rates)

 

Both (false and inactive followers) could qualify as zombies, to be immune to our tweets and wander on twitter without emotion to the accounts that follow.

 

How to assess the quality of an account on twitter? First, if we have access to see the number of mentions, retweets and lists in which the account has been added, it will give us an idea of ​​the engagement or link with its users (kisses and hugs). This can be seen with the tool klout.com if we have the username and twitter password of the account. It is useful if you offer to sell us an account of our sector, since we can demand to see this data to determine the health of the account.

However, spammers are advancing as we have indicated, selling not only followers, but mentions and retweets, therefore we must continue to investigate to avoid possible fraud.

 

Another option is to use klout.com to see the value that this tool gives to each account. In this case, klout uses an algorithm that evaluates between 1 and 100 to each account. This value is logarithmic, so a difference of one point is not 1%, but 100%, and therefore a difference of 10 points, implies a 1000% more relevance of the account. What klout does in broad strokes is to measure the 'engaging' in various social networks, and takes into account, not only the interactions (mentions, retweets, add favorites, I like, Share ....) but the klout (relevance ) of these accounts that give us hugs. In this way the false kisses of people with low klout (spammers) hardly influence, with respect to the affectionate kisses of those who really are leaders / prescribers of a sector and they make us a deserved retweet.

 

After this brief introduction, and as an interesting practice, let's analyze the accounts of the main religious leaders.

Let's see how klout evaluates the accounts of the respective leaders of two of the main religions. This data is high, but since they are accounts with millions of followers, to evaluate them we should compare them with accounts of the sector, of similar size, and in their absence, with other accounts of a similar size.

 

@DalaiLama has 7M followers and @Pontifex has 2.5M followers. 4 points of difference in klout that are equivalent to approximately 400% more relevance. Taking into account that he has 3 times more followers, he agrees. Although having 4 times more relevance and not 3, according to Klout we can deduce that it has a greater relevance not only for having more followers, but because its followers interact more with their spiritual leader, than those of @Pontifex. @DalaiLama has 901 tweets, while @Pontifex has only 45 tweets, this influences the followers of @DalaiLama to interact (retweets, mentions ...) more than those of @Pontifex (most recent account)

 

Now compare accounts with a similar volume of followers. If we consult a ranking of Twitter accounts, for example: in twitaholic.com, we can check how accounts with followers volume similar to 7M like @ NBA or @PauRubio have respective Klouts of 86 and 85.

According to this ranking, the klout values ​​of religious leaders are higher than those of famous accounts with a similar number of followers. What implies a greater engagement in spiritual leaders.

  

  

 

How to detect if the followers of an account are false, inactive, or true? There are tools that take into account algorithms that detect the frequency with which they tweet, the followers / followed ratio, their interaction, etc. It is an algorithm that detects the unnatural operation of the accounts, like Google, which orders the search results by detecting the pages that trick their links and perform black hat seo (or non-natural techniques of search engine positioning)

 

The Status People tool, gives surprising results, since both accounts according to this tool, have a large percentage of fake and inactive users. What could this situation be? If we think about how these tools work and the techniques that exist to artificially increase the number of followers we can deduce our own conclusions.

We verified that according to this tool, 60% of followers of @Pontifex are false and inactive. In the case of @DalaiLama it is about 48%.

 

 

One possible interpretation is that those responsible for the marketing management of these accounts have artificially obtained a large volume of followers, either by buying them, participating in FollowBack schemes, or in some other non-organic or natural way.

 

If this were so, what confidence could we have in a brand that would have us believe that it is wanted or followed by millions of people, when it would really buy or artificially obtain its followers?

What if this brand was a religion? Would they be breaking the 8th commandment?

 

But before making such statements, compare the results of these tools with the rest of the accounts.

 

In light of these results we can infer the following hypotheses:

 

1. 1. The main accounts in the ranking of accounts with the largest number of followers, use inorganic (not natural) ways to generate millions of followers, and this would be the reason why they are in said ranking. In this case it could be interpreted that they would not comply with the 8th commandment.

 

2. 2. The accounts of spammers follow the largest accounts on Twitter, so these accounts are those that agglutinate the highest percentages of false and inactive accounts. Normally the accounts of spammers if they do not receive the FollowBack stop following us, so this hypothesis has this question that weakens it.

 

3. 3. When a user is new to twitter, in the process of creating the account, he is suggested to follow several accounts. The accounts with the highest notoriety "top of mind" (the first one that occurs to us) would be the most media or famous, so some of those users who do not understand twitter and leave their accounts inactive, would always be following these famous accounts, without making the logical Unfollow that spammers do when they are not followed back.

 

4. 4. Suggestions of accounts to follow. Twitter constantly suggests accounts to follow based on our followings (among other criteria), therefore, the accounts with the largest number of followers would generate a virtuous circle, being those that appear most frequently as they are the most followed. A percentage of users who follow these accounts, would be new users who would eventually become inactive for not understanding or abandoning Twitter, generating the same behavior as option 3.

 

In any case, those responsible for social media of these large accounts, would do well to analyze why a large percentage of their followers do not interact with them. And yet, there are tools to clean inactive and false followers, thus debugging our account and having a real statistic of the real users who follow us. Although in this case, would leave the famous ranking, which surely provides media advertising and visits to their profiles.

 

Would this then be an omission of the truth, in breach of the 8th commandment?

Do you have any other hypothesis or suggestion? It will be a pleasure to share it.

 

PD: This article is a mere didactic research, using free tools available for any user, with possible subjective interpretations that do not intend to evidence the holders of the accounts mentioned or responsible for their management. In any case, it would be a feedback for those responsible for digital marketing of these accounts to evaluate the suitability of the strategies applied, or why these tools offer these results.