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.