London, UK (RPRN) 5/06/09--A UK based PR Company has undertaken some analysis of the numbers behind the average Twitter user and urges that new users proceed with caution when attempting to build up their followers in order to remain a credible user to the community – and indeed not to have their account suspended by Twitter.

Although there are a great many different ratios between the numbers for ‘following’, ‘followers’ and ‘entries’ amongst the Twitter community, with super users, such as celebrities and individuals that are well regarded amongst the tech-savvy community having far greater numbers of followers, based on their reputation and interest in their personal brand. However, for a typical, average Twitter user, Punch believes that a ratio of 1:2:3 is broadly appropriate to aim for as a new user.

In other words, for every two followers, each user needs to create three interesting entries and, to retain credibility, is advised to only follow one other user. Clearly this is subject to significant change but, overall, the 1:2:3 ratio forces users to think clearly about their content output and, if it is sufficiently interesting, then users will follow.

In the early stages of an account’s life, there is a huge temptation to simply follow everyone conceivable – which is actually arguably valid initially as a user needs to hear the ‘community voice’ in order to get the most out of the service – but ultimately the Punch team rejects continually following in order to receive mutual follows as bad practice – and one which is frowned up by many Twitter users.

Moreover, Twitter itself is clearly becoming more focused on stamping out both automated and manual attempts at rapid followers with a growing number of accounts being suspended. Punch recently launched a new service for Twitter PR and part of it’s PR 2.0 suite of services.

Pete Goold, Founder and Managing Director of Punch Communications commented:

“I’m always wary of Twitter users that are following significantly greater number of people than they are being followed by. This may be for a completely legitimate reason of course but realistically, I can’t see why someone would actually be interested in taking in 1,800 feeds and when they are being followed by (ie) 1,500, it simply indicates that they are employing a mutual follow strategy.

“Increasingly, I’m receiving ‘follow’ notifications in my email and, when clicking on the user’s Twitter feed, I find that the account has been suspended, indicating that either some automated activity has been curtailed or simply that the user was identified by Twitter as an irritant to the community.”

For more information, please visit www.punchcomms.com or call 01858 411600.
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