As discussed on HarfTime SEN today here is a short explanation that explains the explosive growth in Buddy Franklin's Twitter account.
Sources include TwitterCounter, Twitter.com
Sports Geek explains Twitter Following
Twitter is a one-on-one platform in the end, no matter how many followers someone has it won't make their tweets any more significant in your stream. Let's see who has been listed by their followers which is one method of testing influence.
Reply from Buddy
@HarfTimeSEN @sportsgeekhq @andrewbogut nice stats boys loving the work !!!
— Buddy Franklin (@Buddy_Franklin) July 4, 2012
Harf happy with himself
Harf (AKA @HarfTimeSEN) was quite happy to in front of Buddy listed 120 by his followers.
@Buddy_Franklin @sportsgeekhq @andrewbogut I got you covered he reckons!! #Harfismassivenews #notquiteasbigasthebuddyball #keepkickingsnags
— Harf Time (@HarfTimeSEN) July 4, 2012
Give Buddy a Follow
Until next week
Listen to Harf Time on Wednesdays (at 2:45pm) when Sean Callanan discuss sports digital with Daniel Harford.
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BREAKING DEVELOPMENT
@Buddy_Franklin deletes Twitter account
No reason to delete Twitter because it can be a powerful medium for Buddy to connect with his fans, luckily he will be able to reactivate over the next 30 days.
Happy to get him back on the Twitter tracks.
The #AFL360 crew weight in
//
And Buddy is back…
Due to popular demand the big boy is back #hadto
— Buddy Franklin (@Buddy_Franklin) July 5, 2012
Podcast transcription
HARF: Nine minutes to 3 o’clock, Ange Postecoglou, coach of the Victory will join us at 10 past three this afternoon in the Hour of Power with Rowan Connelly, so Victory fans stick around for that. Sean Callanan our sports digital media guru, follow him @SportsGeekHQ on Twitter or check out SportsGeekHQ.com for more details. Good day Sean.
SEAN: Good day Harf, good to have you back.
HARF: Good to be here mate good to be here.
SEAN: Action packed day.
HARF: Oh my word, my word. What’s happening in the world of social media?
SEAN: Um well I guess it’s something that’s sort of been swirling around a little bit about Twitter followers and athletes and people buying – – –
HARF: We’re buying them now.
SEAN: – – -Twitter followers yeah so.
HARF: This is on the back of the Bargwanna, the big Bargwanna.
SEAN: Well yeah.
HARF: Interrogation into Buddy’s Twitter account.
SEAN: There was a little bit on Eddie’s show on Fox and so I thought I’d go through a little bit of behind the scenes of what can happen around getting followers. So for people who aren’t on Twitter, not like yourself Harf, you’re very much a savvy operator.
HARF: Very savvy.
SEAN: You know you follow someone on Twitter and then you’re a follower, so there’s someone who follows your tweets. Another thing is you know following back; so if I follow you, you might follow me back and we’re reciprocal in rights, and they’re the main things. And then a couple of other things are blocking, so where I’ve talked to Schbecks the last couple of weeks about trials and stuff, if someone’s giving you too much guff you just – – –
HARF: Just block them.
SEAN: – – – block them, you know never see their tweets again.
HARF: It’s good.
SEAN: Another one that’s – this is where it’s sort of getting into is bots, and we’ve heard of – you probably would of heard of Spambot, you know so you see accounts that just keep spamming up stuff, so they’re just Twitter accounts controlled by a computer, by a program. So – and they are a little bit annoying and so they come in various forms. So when we work with people say “how do I get more followers, you know, how do I go and get more followers” and what we would say is just – – –
HARF: Just be out there.
SEAN: – – – be out there, create good content, create stuff that’s shareable, follow people that you might want to follow – that you might want them to follow back, you know and join in that conversation. Join in with hash tags and you know talk about the game or watching a TV show or anything like that and eventually your following will grow organically over time.
HARF: What if I need – what if I need 25,000 followers stat?
SEAN: Well if you – if you – you can – – –
HARF: I need them.
SEAN: – – – you can buy followers and this is where the rumours around Buddy have come around. In that he has bought followers, and if you look at his follow account since about March, it’s been on a steady march upwards, so around March he had about 20,000 followers, and then since then it’s just been steadily growing quite consistently to now where he’s up to 300,000.
HARF: 300,000 followers.
SEAN: Twitter followers, which just doesn’t quite fit with both the Australian Twitter market.
HARF: That’s not organic growth is it?
SEAN: It’s not organic growth, and it doesn’t quite fit with the Australian Twitter market, there’s not that many people on Twitter that would be into Buddy. So, and what you really need to do is to do a comparison with other sports stars. So I took the Bogey Man and I took Gary Ablett, and if you look at the graphs for those two you see Gary Ablett and Andrew Bogut, who, you know, they’re mad for a tweet, they’re tweeting with fans, they’re tweeting about what they’re watching, doing what a normal Twitter user would do, and they’re having that steady organic growth, you know, Bogey now approaching 93,000, Gary Ablett just about to hit the 60,000 barrier. But if you look at their graph compared to Buddy’s graph, Buddy’s just – – –
HARF: Very different.
SEAN: – – – on an upward curve there. And the other thing – the other way you can sort of check it – – –
HARF: Question does anyone care, why do we care?SEAN: Well that’s the thing, I mean everyone sort of – yeah everyone’s sort of going oh you know what’s it matter, and to me it doesn’t matter, it really doesn’t – because it doesn’t affect the amount of tweets coming out, it doesn’t make his tweets funny or anything, it’s just a number in the end. So really it doesn’t matter one thing you can look at to sort of see, from an influence point of view is how much people are listed on Twitter. So if we look at Buddy Franklin he’s on 117 list whereas Bogey is on 2230 lists, how many lists is Harf Time SEN on?
HARF: 120, we’ve got Buddy covered.
SEAN: You’ve got Buddy covered, so – – –
HARF: We are massive.
SEAN: – – – the thing is you can go and buy followers but it really doesn’t matter, I mean I think it’s a bit of a – a lot of people make a lot of fuss, but it doesn’t really matter in the end.
HARF: Check out the slide at SportsGeekHQ.com and follow Sean @sportsgeekHQ on Twitter. Mate got to get moving, appreciate your time.
SEAN: SportsGeekHQ.com is where the graph and everything is, so check it out.
HARF: You will see all of that there. Thanks pal we’ll see you next week.
SEAN: No worries.