Oct 29 2009
Social Media Marketing: The Top 10 New Zealand Twitter accounts
As Paul covered earlier this month in his post on social media campaigns, use of the broadcasting platform Twitter in New Zealand has seen huge growth in 2009 as its public profile has benefitted from media exposure and celebrity endorsement and interest in using it to express & connect has compounded.
Given Twitter is a potential source of traffic and links to your website, it makes sense that those looking to leverage Twitter would be interested in how many people are following them. And that got First Rate interested: Just who is the most followed New Zealander on Twitter…?
The rules for determining the “Top 10″ were:
- Ranked by number of followers
- Must be New Zealand-based
Top 10 New Zealand Twitter accounts
|
Twitter account
|
Name
|
Number of followers
|
|
|
1
|
Michael Koziarski
|
81,567
|
|
|
2
|
Daniel James
|
50,507
|
|
|
3
|
Peter Mallon
|
38,871
|
|
|
4
|
Jonathan Gunson
|
37,098
|
|
|
5
|
Rev. Bosco Peters
|
34,290
|
|
|
6
|
John Lai
|
31,550
|
|
|
7
|
Amanda van der Gulik
|
29,330
|
|
|
8
|
Team Ellen
|
25,910
|
|
|
9
|
Greg Soffe
|
21,556
|
|
|
10
|
We Like Bike 42
|
21,417
|
* as of October 29th, 2009
** Honourable mention: @rww
Top 10 New Zealand Company/Brand Twitter accounts
|
Twitter account
|
Name
|
Number of followers
|
|
| 1 | WeLikeBike42 | We Like Bike 42 | 21,713 |
| 2 | diyfather | diyfather | 17,374 |
|
3
|
grabseat
|
12,205
|
|
| 4 | BusinessTalk | Business Talk | 9,446 |
| 5 | flyairnz | Air New Zealand | 9,200 |
| 6 | johnkeypm | Prime Minister of New Zealand | 7,098 |
| 7 | purenewzealand | Tourism New Zealand | 7,227 |
|
8
|
NZ Music Commission
|
5,732
|
|
|
9
|
Vodafone New Zealand
|
5,233
|
|
|
10
|
Eventfinder.co.nz
|
4,913
|
|
|
11
|
Denise Corlett
|
4,902
|
|
|
12
|
Brand Dynamics
|
4,815
|
|
|
13
|
Telecom New Zealand
|
4.052
|
|
|
14
|
nzherald
|
3,980
|
|
|
15
|
Epic Beer
|
3,707
|
|
|
16
|
reelclever.com
|
3,457
|
* as of November 18th, 2009
Of the Top 10 New Zealanders list we had only heard of Team Ellen because of the exposure they got on TV. But have you heard of any of the others who make up the top ten? Probably not. And are they worth following? Well, maybe. If you’re programming in Ruby on Rails you might follow @nzkoz, and if you’re into Apple computers, iPods & iPhones you could follow @dankando. But overall it isn’t the most exciting top ten.
The number of followers is less useful as a measurement of quality than you might think.
Some reasons people on Twitter might have a lot of followers are because they are an international authority in their niche. Another reason is in the early days auto follow was default so a lot of people who got in early and followed a lot of people ended up with a lot of followers automatically.
So what did you think about our Top 10 lists? Wefollow.com ranks Twitter accounts in two ways: influence & followers. Are followers even a useful measure when it comes to deciding whether you should follow someone? How should influence be measured? Tell us by commenting on this post.
Finally, follow us! To keep up with the latest New Zealand news on SEO & Performance Marketing, follow First Rate on @firstratenz.
UPDATE (Friday, October 30th 2009)
We have updated the Top 10 New Zealand Company/Brand Twitter accounts list. Some great feedback in the comments means we have correctly added @WeLikeBike42 as a Company/Brand, making it the only Twitter account present on both our lists! We’ve also added @diyfather, @BusinessTalk and @purenewzealand who we missed the first time round.
UPDATE (Monday, November 9th 2009)
The Top 10 New Zealand Company/Brand Twitter accounts list has been updated! A sharp observer spotted we had @grabaseat but not @flyairnz, so @flyairnz vaults into 5th place! Well done Air New Zealand.
UPDATE (Friday, November 13th 2009)
The New Zealand Herald has published an article on First Rate’s top 10 Twitter lists. View our blog entry on this here: Twitter Marketing tool of the future.
SECOND ON THE LIST!!
Good post – definitely interesting to see the top follower numbers in NZ.
But I’m very against using this as a way to judge quality (I do note that you’re certainly not saying this is the case though!).
A quick look at some of the followers of those users shows a plethora of Twitter accounts that look like they’re absolutely redundant. There’s a hell of a lot of spam accounts in there that are obviously not going to add value to your Twitter use.
It obviously depends on what you want to get out of Twitter. If you are using it to generate qualified leads to your website and hopefully future business, it’s far better to have 100 followers where 80% of them are in a position to do business with you, rather than 50,000 followers and 0.1% are interested in doing business.
Again, it obviously depends on what you want from Twitter and your own preferences.
Personally, I regularly go through my followers list and block accounts that are clearly spam or robots. I don’t want them to interfere with my measurement results – if I post something interesting that gets retweeted and I get 50 extra followers, where’s the value if a lot of those followers are spam?
Hmmmm not sure of how your sourced the stats? What about @purenewzealand which has 6913 followers….
We Like Bike 42 is surely a company not an individual, and it’s a US promotion so does it count?
Interesting that a NZ company should do a bike advocacy promotion (in the US). Can’t see any NZ company doing such a thing in NZ, country of cars. At worst it would turn off the general public, at best it would leave them non-plussed.
Meanwhile though, you asked about useful measures of TwitPop, what about http://tweetgrade.com/ this aims to provide “a quantitative assessment of your reach and influence in the Twitter community. Based on your interactions with others, the frequency and content of your updates, and your overall contributions to Twitter”. We Like Bike 42 gets an A grade. FirstRateNZ gets an A grade.
What about
http://twitter.com/BusinessTalk 8,990 followers
http://twitter.com/bwagy 6,788
http://twitter.com/audaciousgloop 5,432
These are all individuals who are their own company brands
and of course
http://twitter.com/rww 840,000 (I see the honorable mention)
#2 – @nzmusic is the NZ Music Commission, not NZ Film Commission
Hi there,
As of 27th October Stuff.co.nz had 6,496 which should put Stuff.co.nz in 2nd place… the confusion could be because we have many news feeds for the different news types though.
Check them out here – http://stuff.co.nz/s/i27y
Cheers
Kirsty
Advertising and Marketing Manager – Stuff.c.o.nz
Hi Peter,
re: @newzealandmusic
Yes, you’re right, thanks for pointing that out. We’ve updated the list.
Cheers.
Um – what happened to Richard McManus and his 840750 followers?
Not sure where you got your stats from but I think there are lots of other individuals / companies with more followers. E.g. one of our companies diyfather.com (100% pure NZ) is currently on 16800 followers.
-Stef
Hi Dave
Looks like a thought provoking list you have here.
I tend to agree with the comments that sheer numbers don’t have much relevance … but they do give great bragging rights!
It’s really the level of interest from users and the interaction that counts.
I communicate a LOT behind the scenes with business people I’ve met on Twitter. Being marooned here in New Zealand, I would never have met them any other way. In fact with my team, we’ve just completed 20+ online Skype interviews with people I’ve met exclusively on Twitter from around the world, from the Chicago to Glasgow, from Stockholm to Paris.
This business connection at a personal level has been for me the most powerfully useful aspect of Twitter by far.
Congratulations to @nzkoz – I’ll wager he really does have a genuinely interested if not fanatical following.
Jonathan Gunson
Happy to make the list – but if you look deeply into a lot of these accounts – Many are following more people then are actually following them.
Using an automated follow / unfollow strategy via a piece of software hardly gives you credibility regardless of how many people you then converse with.
It is hardly a targeted list of followers you are building. Twitter is full of one way conversations.
For people claiming to be social media experts – look at successes they have had with their clients as proof. Do not judge Twitter follower numbers as credibility.
I could pay for software and have a list of 10K plus followers in a month easily.
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by JasonBraud: Social Media Marketing: The Top 10 New Zealand Twitter accounts http://bit.ly/VaOtR...
Thank you everyone for your comments.
Daniel – Well done on making it to #2!
Mark – We agree with your thoughts that number of followers is certainly not the only measure of whether a Twitter account is worth following. What does determine quality is a topic worthy of several more blog posts! Watch this space.
K – Thanks for pointing that out. We’ve added @purenewzealand to the Top 10 New Zealand Company/Brand Twitter accounts list.
Tom – Thanks for pointing out we missed @BusinessTalk, we’ve added them to the Top 10 New Zealand Company/Brand Twitter accounts list. @bwagy & @audaciousgloop looked like accounts run by individuals to us. Re: @rww, we couldn’t determine whether this was New Zealand-based or not hence the honourable mention.
Kirsty – You raise a good point which is how to best measure a company/brand’s overall presence on Twitter. In this post we’ve elected to rank single Twitter accounts. To help make the post clearer we’ve updated the titles of the lists to say these are the Top 10 ‘accounts’.
Stefan – You are quite right, @diyfather should be on our Top 10 New Zealand Company/Brand Twitter accounts list. We’ve updated the list to reflect that. Re: @rww, we did consider whether that account should be on the list but ultimately couldn’t determine whether this account was New Zealand-based or not, hence the honourable mention.
Jonathan – We agree with your thoughts re: followers as a measurement. Your comment about Twitter as a business enabler at a personal 1-to-1 level is very valid – much more difficult to rank Twitter accounts independently by that measure though!
David – “Do not judge Twitter follower numbers as credibility” yes, a good point. What would you use to judge credibility? Or is following someone for a period of time the only way to truly determine their credibility?
Re: NZ Music
Interesting list and comments! I too would like to second Peter Mac’s correction that New Zealand Music is run from the New Zealand Music Commission rather than the NZ Film Commission. I started and run this account and I feel a bit protective over it! Cheers.
#6 – @nzmusic is the NZ Music Commission, not NZ Film Commission
Still not fixed tho.
Hi Peter & Alan,
Fixed now!
Cheers.
Somewhat interesting although of limited use in application; Twitter follower numbers mean very little. Especially in New Zealand where your opportunities to connect in real world business make the ‘who’ much more important than the ‘how many’.
How many are spam or businesses?
How many are active users?
Are they in your industry/competitors/country?
Are they influential in your sector?
If I knew there was a competition I would have grown @PureInnovation haha.
Good list I needed a few good names to put in to ReFollow to find some NZ followers.
Great Newsletter by the way. Keep it up!
So can a politician be a brand? I’d think so. Check out twitter.com/johnkeypm – coming up on 7K today.
The influence question is interesting.
Stephen – Thanks for the feedback about The Online Leader, we’re glad you’re getting value out of it.
Francis – I have to conceed that a politican is a brand. I’ve updated the Top 10 New Zealand Company/Brand Twitter accounts list to reflect this.