Social media marketing experts are expected to talk the talk and also walk the walk.
But, how would you know which ones would respond if you reach out to them?
We took the initiative to examine one of the most interesting parameters on social media – who are the social media experts that use twitter to engage on a personal level, and actually talk with people?
When we say, “talked with” we are referring to people having two-way conversations on Twitter. Some of these conversations are people discussing topics of mutual interest, or industry news and events, e.g. the Apple Watch Launch, interesting content or just chatting about life.
If you are looking to build relationships on twitter (which you should be!) you want to be connecting with people that would return your call.
While this type of analysis can be done on many different and interesting verticals, our mission here was to look at social media marketing experts.
Some of the accounts we looked at had conversations with thousands of people. Among the people on our top list, all talked with more than 1,900 people.
Gary Vaynerchuk, an entrepreneur who’s built a super successful online wine business using social media, has had conversations with (the insane figure of) 23,498 people!!
That’s a lot of people and a lot of conversations.
| # | Name | Twitter Account | Followers | Talked With |
| 1 | Gary Vaynerchuk | garyvee | 1,121,867 | 23,498 |
| 2 | Kim Garst | kimgarst | 328,110 | 11,223 |
| 3 | Chris Brogan | chrisbrogan | 304,078 | 9,472 |
| 4 | Jeremiah Owyang | jowyang | 158,634 | 7,690 |
| 5 | Brian Clark | brianclark | 172,754 | 7,576 |
| 6 | Mari Smith | MariSmith | 343,928 | 6,486 |
| 7 | Scott Stratten | unmarketing | 175,916 | 6,255 |
| 8 | Ted Rubin | TedRubin | 266,143 | 5,986 |
| 9 | Warren Whitlock | WarrenWhitlock | 202,350 | 5,982 |
| 10 | Marsha Collier | MarshaCollier | 105,554 | 5,486 |
Searching For the Top Social Media Influencers
In order to see which top social media influencer had the most conversations we first compiled a list. We used Klear’s Influencers Search Engine to provide us with the top 200 social media marketing influencers.
Then, we took the list and sorted by the total number of people that each influencer talked with. Next, we added some interesting information on each account, e.g. their amplification level (average number of retweets one gets per 100 tweets he/she posts) which we include in our infographic.
The results are summarized in the infographic above and the tables below:
The World’s Friendliest Social Media Experts #11-#20
| # | Name | Twitter Account | Followers | Talked With |
| 11 | Rand Fishkin | randfish | 217,232 | 4,690 |
| 12 | Jeff Barrett | BarrettAll | 179,133 | 4,525 |
| 13 | Ann Handley | MarketingProfs | 277,345 | 4,353 |
| 14 | Jason Houck | MJasonHouck | 132,729 | 4,207 |
| 15 | Jeff Sheehan | JeffSheehan | 303,415 | 4,101 |
| 16 | Scott Monty | ScottMonty | 108,000 | 4,095 |
| 17 | Sandi Krakowski | sandikrakowski | 281,058 | 4,091 |
| 18 | Glen Gilmore | GlenGilmore | 304,269 | 4,003 |
| 19 | Mark Schaefer | markwschaefer | 104,581 | 3,568 |
| 20 | Jay Baer | jaybaer | 147,756 | 3,470 |
The World’s Friendliest Social Media Experts #21-#30
| # | Name | Twitter Account | Followers | Talked With |
| 21 | Pat Flynn | PatFlynn | 106,685 | 3,453 |
| 22 | Dave Kerpen | DaveKerpen | 48,519 | 3,438 |
| 23 | Alex Howard | digiphile | 236,065 | 3,229 |
| 24 | Darren Rowse | problogger | 214,876 | 3,222 |
| 25 | Jason Falls | JasonFalls | 92,784 | 3,180 |
| 26 | Ted Coine | tedcoine | 433,649 | 3,174 |
| 27 | Danny Sullivan | dannysullivan | 438,353 | 3,172 |
| 28 | Michael Brito | Britopian | 128,015 | 3,146 |
| 29 | Neal Schaffer | NealSchaffer | 104,351 | 3,087 |
| 30 | Marie Forleo | marieforleo | 128,477 | 3,084 |
The World’s Friendliest Social Media Experts #31-#40
| # | Name | Twitter Account | Followers | Talked With |
| 31 | Pam Moore | PamMktgNut | 232,004 | 3,048 |
| 32 | Michael Hyatt | MichaelHyatt | 243,569 | 3,027 |
| 33 | C.C. Chapman | cc_chapman | 45,652 | 2,944 |
| 34 | David Meerman Scott | dmscott | 115,170 | 2,930 |
| 35 | Guy Kawasaki | GuyKawasaki | 1,444,245 | 2,856 |
| 36 | Beth Kanter | kanter | 404,570 | 2,793 |
| 37 | Hillel Fuld | HilzFuld | 28,735 | 2,729 |
| 38 | Sara Stewart | twowitwowoo | 160,150 | 2,378 |
| 39 | John Paul Aguiar | JohnAguiar | 142,621 | 2,246 |
| 40 | Brian Fanzo | iSocialFanz | 27,631 | 2,221 |
The World’s Friendliest Social Media Experts #41-#50
| # | Name | Twitter Account | Followers | Talked With |
| 41 | Eric T. Tung | EricTTung | 138,783 | 2,164 |
| 42 | Lewis Howes | LewisHowes | 97,422 | 2,121 |
| 43 | Brett Relander | BrettRelander | 125,952 | 2,116 |
| 44 | Bryan Kramer | bryankramer | 111,937 | 2,084 |
| 45 | Michael A. Stelzner | Mike_Stelzner | 93,438 | 2,074 |
| 46 | Ann Tran | AnnTran_ | 445,954 | 1,982 |
| 47 | Calvin Lee | mayhemstudios | 91,842 | 1,950 |
| 48 | Jeff Jarvis | jeffjarvis | 145,388 | 1,937 |
| 49 | Sarah Evans | prsarahevans | 104,815 | 1,925 |
| 50 | Scott Levy | FuelOnline | 354,955 | 1,900 |
What Have We Found?
It was immediately clear that social media influencers are talking with a high number of people.
They are actually using social media networks to create, maintain and encourage connections and relationships.
We included the following metrics:
- Number of people they talked with
- Amplification level (for the top 10 accounts), which represents the average number of retweets that account receives for 100 tweets it posts.
- Picture
- Twitter account
- Number of followers
Its one thing knowing how many people one speaks to, its another knowing who these people are. Each of the accounts selected in our list above includes a link to the account’s public Klear profile which shows that info as well.
What Useful Insight Can You Access In the Klear Public Profiles?
- Top influential skills (based on analyzing content they shared and engagement around each piece of content)
- Activity, as measured by the average number of posts per day
- Popularity level, as measured by the number of engagements they get per post
- Responsiveness, measured by the frequency these people reply to their audience
- How many people they talked with, and who these people are
- Their audience demographics
- Their top followers
- Their top content as measured by the number of shares on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram
Social media has created a new class of experts, the social media marketing expert, and businesses are only recently acknowledging their presence and influence over consumers and the industry as a whole.
Whether you are building your personal brand or trying to grow your business, we urge you to use social to connect, build, and nurture relationships.
I just wrote Twtrland about problems with their system. Now that I see this, I suppose I ought to say they are perfect 🙂
Thanks Warren! You did all the heavy lifting, we only pointed it out.
What’s your take on using twitter to build relationships?
I look at relationships and sharing as LIFE. The more I do it, the more life I have. To strengthen a relationship I know that I have to be connected and involved.
I used to call on accounts monthly to keep up a relationship even when the client wasn’t buying much. I replaced some of that with phone calls, letters, post cards, fax, email, newsletters and now social media.
I do measure things when I can. That’s important. But I don’t expect that a 10 seconds tweet is something I measure against a personal visit.
What I’ve found is sales traced back to a person I met on Twitter, old friends and customers who reconnect and much more frequent contact with the people I care about.
I’m not always a fan of “expert lists” (except where I’m listed in them!) but I do think they have their place, and this one in particular is very interesting. It’s all too easy for so-called “social media gurus” to adopt switch on and forget digital marketing automation tactics including auto follow back, “thank you for following me” direct messages and more. However, the guys in this list really get community. They are all actively engaging with their followers and fans. They do an amazing job, because most of these guys are very busy people too.
It would be great if twtrland allowed us to export the influencers data with the “talked with” metric included. I’ve not really paid much attention to that before, but it’s a really useful number.
I wanted to ask, what time period is the “talked with” metric based upon? Is it all time, a month or less? I’d also be interested to know which tools these guys use to engage with people. I assume most are using either a standard social media management tool (eg Hootsuite, Sprout Social, Tweetdeck etc) or the social platform itself. I wonder if any of them are trying to automate engagement (a big no no in my book) using the likes of Social Oomph, IFTTT or Zapier. I’d be interested in the stats on that one. Twitter does include the app used for the post in the Twitter API, so it is there.
Thanks again for this really interesting list! Ian
Good points @iagdotme:disqus. I’m very interested in the automating engagement piece as well. I suspect that is a tactic for some of the people…but we likely won’t get that information 🙂
Thanks Christian. Good point. The best I would suggest in this regard at the moment would be to look at distribution of numbers of conversations (as a second parameter to number of people one talks with). See my comment to Pam above for some more detail.
Interested too in the same questions you ask @iagdotme:disqus . Interesting methodology and many on the top of the list spend much time every day thanking ppl for retweets. Some have automated tweets in the hundreds a day going out then they logon a couple times a day to say thank you. Though they may be conversing on a regular basis, they are also gaming “conversation.” No methodology is perfect and I won’t complain about being on a “friendliest” list. However, my concern with this is that we shouldn’t be promoting spam or quantity of tweets over quality. I’d love to see a double click on the data for the level of conversation and how many go past a “thank you for the RT” 😉
Thanks Pam.
I’m all behind you on the quantity Vs. quality, and as I wrote to Ian just now, I believe automation is a real problem and the noise has become unbearable.
As for the level/depth of conversations, that’s a great point. If you look at our conversation pages, e.g. http://twtrland.com/profile/PamMktgNut/conversations – the people one talks with are shown here and are arranged by number of conversations they had (number can be seen at the bottom right of each avatar on this page). I would assume (the obvious) that the 37 conversations you had with Tami were far more than an automated thank you 🙂 so potentially one can weigh the quality of engagements/conversations by looking at the distribution of number of conversations. We’ll consider adding this in as a factor so its easier to pull out that insight. Makes sense?
Thanks for the feedback Ian!
So the talked with metric is indeed all-time, which takes into account data over a period of 3 years period on average. As for rich data exports, we currently provide everything you can think of through API, but such export as you indicated is indeed very interesting and may be something we will enable for simpler on-demand use eventually. Will consider adding data relating to management tools used and automation tools, definitely interesting.
Automation is indeed a real problem today, noise is becoming unbearable. When I fly, I always have my noise cancelling headphones on. Perhaps we should think of something similar here. What do you think?
Guy, thanks for clarifying that the metric is for all time. I wondered why someone I haven’t engaged with a while (for no particular reason) is still top since we had a very long conversation quite a long time ago!
I am interested in ways of exporting data from twtrland and doing the kind of analysis you’ve done here. It’s very powerful stuff and you have the data!
I don’t have noise cancelling headphones, but I sometimes work to brown noise which has a similar effect! There are similar noise reducing tools out there. I like Twitter lists for example. I also wrote my own Twitter app called Twools which allows you do some powerful filtering on Twitter feeds. It allows me to filter out tweets sent from certain apps (for example scheduling apps) and/or tweets with links. Great for filtering out noise!
Ian
Here’s the Internet Influencer Index
https://www.rise.global/klout-wittier
Ranked by Klout
I am wondering where I fall on this list. Is there a way to find out?
Hey Tim, you had conversations with 449 people! Which is pretty nice. You can check ou. Your full profile here: http://twtrland.com/profile/TimBurt
I appreciate the information but I am not a fan of subjecting my Twitter followers to back and forth public messaging and therefore DM in most conversations. Are DM conversations included in the data of how many people you’ve had conversations with. If not, then this information means little.
Oh boy, so here we go. I know two people listed that the business community absolutely detests. One has committed outright fraud with brands and having them make another list just causes companies to think they are “safe” to hire.
Pamela already made my other points about useless conversation and how that number can be deceiving.
I get it, you are looking for ways to spread great knowledge from active participants on twitter. There is an unknown we are dealing with and that is when you are going to have any kind of in-depth conversation, smart people get off twitter and go to another channel where they are not limited to character count.
Funny how searching for metrics can bring up deficiencies in what is being measured and how valuable it is really.