For more data on social media and busting of unicorns-and-rainbows social media myths, be sure to register for the Science of Social Media webinar that is being held on Tuesday, August 23rd at 2:00pm EST. This webinar is actually going to be certifed as the largest online marketing seminar ever by the Guinness World Records folks.
The easiest social media myth to bust is “don’t call yourself a guru.” Proponents of this myth argue that self labeling yourself as an expert makes you sound pretentious. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. But the data clearly shows that telling your audience why they should listen to you absolutely works to increase your reach.
When I first started analyzing Twitter account data, one of the first things I noticed is that a surprising number of accounts don’t include profile pictures, bios or homepage links. But when I looked at the number of followers accounts with and without those things have on average, I found huge differences.
It may sound pretty obvious, but users who’ve taken the time to identify themselves with a bio, picture and link tend to have many more followers than those who haven’t taken that time. The above graph shows the effect of including a photo, but the effect is the same with bios and links. In real life and in social media, if I know who you are, I’m much more likely to listen to what you have to say.
Taking the identify yourself suggestion a step further, I analyzed common words found in Twitter bios. I found that users who included authoritative words like “official,” “founder,” and the dreaded “guru” tended to have more followers than the average Twitter user.
Once I know who you are, if you’re someone important I’m even more likely to want to hear what you have to say. If you’ve founded a company or authored a book, I’m interested in what you think.
Social media isn’t that different from the offline world. Introduce yourself, tell us who you are and why we should listen to you.
Dan desperately needs to study the difference between causation and correlation.
Could it just be that if you call yourself a Guru you are likely to be the type to market the hell out of your page? I personally block anyone who calls themself an influencer, innovator, guru - any of those wanky terms :) But then I'm Australian, we hate that crap :)
Well said.
In my experience:
At the end of the day, what people call you is more of a sign of authority than what you call or label yourself.
Unless you are a celebrity, with access to a 'Verified' status, it's pretty rudementary to state that by describing who you are and showing a picture of yourself will mean people will be more interested in listening to what you have to say, rather than a random twitter account that could be created in 24 seconds.
In other words, I personally found this article, based upon a 'guru' myth (to whom?), to be empty of value.
I agree with ucfool, the data captured by Zarella inidcates correlation and not causation and the correlation is obvious when a figure is truly a celebrety or a really authorative figure.
This is precisely what I was thinking the entire time. Those that have a profile picture and take the time to write a meaningful bio and consider themself an expert are those that commit to the medium and make insightful posts. Thus, they have more followers. It was still an interesting post though and should reinforce to all of us the importance of details.
I can see there being some truth in it though. I'm more likely to assume someone is a spammer if they just have the default Twitter egg avatar, and there is the saying 'Friends don't let friends follow eggs' which suggests it's not just me who feels that way. Twitter is heavily based on personality, and you show that at a glance with your picture and website. Spammers and people who set up bot accounts realise that too, which is why they go to the trouble of changing avatars to attractive girls and creating a persona, even if their content is still automated/spammy.
Correlation is not causation. It would make sense that people with a profile picture and biography have more followers as those people are more likely to have been consistently tweeting and been active on Twitter. Someone who doesn't have a profile pic or biography likely doesn't tweet very much at all.
Completely agree with jimmyc85 and Benj25 - correlation is NOT causation.
I appreciate the effort, and the presentation was very well done, but the thesis here is pretty weak.
The bio words section may be slightly misleading, as the people that include the terms that you've highlighted will probably be the best self-publicists out there, who will naturally have more brand equity/authority in their own name - therefore making them more likely to be followed.
Can't do any harm though, I've added the word Official to my bio :)
While the stats make sense, I'm not sure there's really a correlation between these words and Twitter standing - take this example. Basically, people who use these words in their profile happen to be hustlers and influencers - it is not because they use the words that they are this.
Suppose, I agree for a moment that people who writes Experts or Gurus in there bios tend to have more followers then usual profiles but the problem comes a step further… When people start to follow those Gurus and Experts on twitter and expecting to get some insight information about the particular subject and all they got is a bullshit things and opinions about that subject then things started to change and people not only lost their trust on those profiles but these tags in general… This has happened a lot for Social Media and SEO Industry!
I think it is hard for any one to be a guru at something, I mean I have easy 7 years experience in SEO and Social yet every day their is something new to learn.
I think classing yourself as "Authority" in a niche is a far nicer label to hold.
But yeah cool study you sure do love your social data, I remember your post on Facebook account data, only think which skews this data is the difference in private and public profiles. If people are gurus they will want to share and spam every one with their messages if they are a more general user then they will probably have their twitter profile on private.
Thanks, always nice report. Btw, I've downloaded your Re-Tweet free pdf on your website... very good guide, I've forwarded it to lot of co-workers.
I think its more likey that founders, gurus, etc all have a natural way of attracting followers. A speaker, for example, probably attracts many followers from speaking engagements. I don't think the presence of the word speaker on that person's profile has a great effect on follows.
Yes every day is something new to learn , this is SEO.
I kind of agree with everyone above... I don't think that this correlation data is very accurate.
Unless you're just not mentioning your process, there's way too many variables here for this to mean anything.
I'd like to see the profile pic graph with variables likes # of tweets, how often they tweet, and time since signed up normalized. Isn't it pretty obvious that the thousands of squatters and inactive accounts with no pic will have less followers than anyone else?
This statistics are new for me. Nice to know. Unexpected that a picture was soo important.
Did you test Though Leader? That is one of my favorite self labels to read. So self promotion still works and is effective. Thanks. :)
thanks for the info Dan. I think what you're saying is that by adding all the things mentioned above will help convey the perception of who you are. Non bias approach the data tells us this is what the majority of numbers on twitters and social world looks at and can help further your reach. This may be the "best practices" model for social media.
Just my thoughts, thanks again!
Dan, I love this post, but I got a different takeaway than some of the other folks. You're saying simply to "Introduce yourself, tell us who you are and why we should listen to you."
Everyone has a uniqueness about them. If your goal is to increase Twitter followers - a legitimate goal of online marketers - then describing yourself using detailed, accurate and descriptive language works to your advantage. There are too many boring Twitter bios that are full of words but say nothing.
If folks have any doubt about your authority on the subject, they should look at your own Twitter bio. It's brilliant.
Do we need more fake experts, gurus and so?
Another one I dislike: 'entrepreneur' Everybody is such a thing since you are born.
Individuals can call themself whatever they want to on the internet.
I would rather jugde an individual by what advice they offer what information that share etc. Rather than what words they use to sell themself.