I conducted a small research project recently: For five days, I analyzed each tweet that was sent by four well-known photographers who are generally seen as social media savvy. Data was sampled October 11-15, 2010 and each tweet was categorized into one of these buckets:
- Self Promotion: any tweet promoting the author’s own photos, writing, contests, or other activities
- Promoting Others: any tweet linking to or otherwise promoting someone else’s work
- Jokes/Amusements: random funnies
- @replies: conversational tweets directed at another user
- Quotes: self-explanatory
- Polls: self-explanatory
- Commentary: any tweet simply offering a thought, comment, or opinion about any subject
My subjects for this study (who received no notice that I was doing this) were Jack Hollingsworth (@photojack), Rosh Sillars (@RoshSillars), Scott Bourne (@ScottBourne), Jim Goldstein (@jimgoldstein), and Nicole Young (@nicolesy). Let’s take a look at each one. Note that the graphs don’t always use the same colors for the same categories – looks like a quirk of Google Spreadsheets.
Jack Hollingsworth (@photojack)
Jack tweeted 108 times over the five-day period. I knew Jack was good at linking to and promoting others’ work but I hadn’t realized that comprised three quarters of his tweets. He offered some general commentary and a bit of self-promotion along with a few polls as well. Jack’s relentless promotion of others’ work is likely what has brought him such a great following; he provides a lot of value by curating great photography resources for his followers.
Rosh Sillars (@RoshSillars)
Rosh wrote the book on social media for photographers
Scott Bourne (@ScottBourne)
Scott routinely talks (on his blog and podcasts) about how one should promote others’ work five times for every self-promotional bit, but of his 49 tweets during the study period, 61% were self promotional for his own articles or contests. Another third of his tweets were conversational with only two tweets that promoted the work of others.
Jim Goldstein (@jimgoldstein)
Jim‘s tweets featured a wide range of subjects with 38% of his 89 tweets being commentary or thoughts. About a quarter of his tweets were conversational, with about the same amount promoting the work of others. Looks like a good well-rounded Twitter user to me.
Nicole Young (@nicolesy))
Nicole is a stock photographer who tweeted 42 times during the study period. She didn’t engage in much promotion (of herself or others), rather tweeting various bits of commentary and information about her daily life. About a third of her tweets were @replies, which surprised me since she previously left a comment on Social Photo Talk where she defended her opinion that one should have many public conversations. I’m happy to see that she’s now engaging in more back-and-forth publicly.
Summary/Reaction
I really didn’t find too many surprises looking at these results. I knew that Jack shared a ton of resources and I knew that Scott pretty much talked about his own contests and articles. If anything I think I’ve found data that reinforced what I already suspected, including that Rosh and Jim have very well-rounded Twitter lives involving themselves and others both in informational and conversational situations. Nicole engaged in more conversations than I would’ve predicted (and that’s a good thing).
Are you surprised by these numbers at all?
