The Miami Herald reported on a new study about Twitter psychology:
"The communication and information professors, Mor Naaman and Jeffrey Boase, found that there tend to be two types of Twitter folks. The majority, or 80 percent, were what they called ‘meformers’ — Twitter users who sent out messages that revolved around themselves, updating others about their activities or sharing thoughts and feelings.
The other 20 percent are ‘informers’ — people who were actually sharing information. Not surprisingly, the informers tended to have larger social networks and be more interactive."
So which is better?
I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer here. Social networks such as Twitter and Facebook are very much still in their infancy and as a brand or individual what it all comes down to is: are you’re someone people want to be friends with?
Be a friend not a broadcasting channel
What you should really be focusing on is being a real friend. Conventional marketing wisdom will tell you to always be selling but in this day in age we have it so easy to make more personal connections with consumers that consumers themselves are ‘demanding’ more interaction from brands.
Whether you are and ‘informer’ or ‘meformer’ and consumers are looking to interact with you, ask yourself: what actions can I take to create lasting relationships with my followers?
A good friend is a mix of a useful ‘informer’ with a fun and relevant ‘meformer’.
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