1000 fans

Over the weekend, the number of my followers on Twitter passed the 1000 mark.

In social media speak, I am now popular. In fact, according to Sysomos I belong to an exclusive club (only 0.68% of users have more than 1,000 followers).

But what does this digital milestone mean? It certainly doesn’t mean 1000 customers. In fact, I do not have close relationship with majority of my followers, yet. This isn’t a rant. I certainly am not against having more fans on Twitter (thanks for following). The point is getting attention is good, whether its on Twitter or elsewhere, but it doesn’t means much if  it doesn’t translate to results.

What’s important is having true fans. Followers who care, will engage and open to long-term relationship.  It’s probably better to have a few highly engaged followers than have a fickle relationship with thousands of pseudo fans.

As Seth puts it:

So much time and effort is now put into finding followers, accumulating comments and generating controversy… all so that people will notice you. People say and do things that don’t benefit them, just because they’re hooked on attention. Attention is fine, as long as you have a goal that is reached in exchange for all this effort. 

Nevertheless, 1000 is a good number. In fact, Kevin Kelly thinks in a long tail world, all you need to flourish is to have 1000 true fans. The beauty of the long tail is 1000 true fans are within the reach of anyone. 

In a world where attention can come and go easily, the real focus should be to win true fans. And if you can get to 1000, that’s all you need to thrive.