Jason Haines (@PenderSuper) passed 4,000 Twitter followers last week. In the turfgrass industry, that’s a lot. But wouldn’t it be nice to have more? He asked if I had any suggestions:

I thought that was an interesting question, so I had a quick look. First I got the information for the accounts that I follow and for the accounts that follow me, thinking that will give a pretty good sample of the turfgrass industry.

Of those accounts, I selected the ten accounts with the highest number of followers, given that the account is (as far as I know) run by a turf manager of some sort. Then I looked at a few things to see if I could help Jason answer his question.

I checked the number of days since account opening. Maybe having the account open for longer will help one to get more followers. That seems to be the case, as one would expect. I called that the longevity effect. How about tweeting a lot? I called that the activity effect, and there might be something to that. I also looked at the favoriting of other people’s tweets, calling that the interaction effect, and the number of accounts that one follows, calling that the friendliness effect.

plot of twitter followers

It doesn’t look to me like there is a surefire way to get more followers as a superintendent. Working at a famous place seems to help. I’m going to fall back on my usual answer, and suggest tweeting interesting stuff.