Have you ever truly paid attention to the numbers attached to all of the Twitter accounts you’re following? Here at L&P, we’re always learning from the numbers and what they tell us about social media relationships, trends, and overall success.  One day, after noticing some crazy fluctuation in the number of followers to one of our favorite Twitter accounts, we were baffled. In less than a week, this account’s Twitter followers increased, decreased and increased again - all by the hundreds! It was then that our rock-star intern from Lamar High School let us in on a little secret. Thus, a blog below, written by Erica Brooks.

Social media is now commonly used among many demographics, but it seems that young adults, specifically teenagers, turn to social media for a multitude of different reasons. While plenty of people use social media to communicate, gain information, and keep in touch with their favorite celebs, teens are using social media for pure entertainment, too.  And in doing so, Twitter to teenagers has actually become a game with some pretty intense ‘unwritten rules.’ If you want to survive the battle, keep reading.

The ultimate goal is to have more followers and tweets than your friends, but it’s not as simple as it sounds.

The golden rule of do unto others as you would have them do unto you applies. Follow those who follow you. If not, you run the risk of offending and losing followers. The only exception to this rule is when following a celebrity because it’s unlikely they will follow you in return. However, major points to those who gain celebrity followers.

Rule number two: those you follow shall not exceed those who follow you. It’s not uncommon for teenagers to review all of their followers on a weekly or even a daily basis to ensure others are returning the favor. If they aren’t, they’re cut. Statistics show that 36% of Twitter users have more followers than the accounts they are following {source}.

This can make it tough for businesses and organizations to maintain a steady number of Twitter followers. Commercial accounts can gain or lose thousands of followers in just a few days due to the specific demographic that abides by these rules. When a teenager follows a business, they will un-follow if the business leave them hanging, or if the tweets they post are not interesting enough for their personal Twitter feed. As you can tell, a mutual relationship means a lot to my Twitter generation.

Rule number three: rack up the points. Like we said earlier, tweeting more than your peers is a big plus. It’s astounding that Twitter users are posting an average 55 million tweets per day {source} and 36% of those Twitter users tweet at least once a day {source}. However, if one abuses the Twitter rules and bypasses the Twitter limits by tweeting more than 1000 tweets/day {source}, their account, will be thrown into ‘Twitter jail.’ When in Twitter jail, onecan access their page but cannot post anything for a specific period of time. A sentence can be anywhere from 30 minutes to a few hours. Any time out of rotation can be just long enough to set you back in the battle. No matter how complicated the competition may get, it’s best not to get fouled-out. Staying alive in the Twitter war is no easy task.

So there you have it. At L&P, we learn something new every day. Taking insight from the intern, we’ll continue to dig a little deeper, tapping into the entertainment world of Twitter. Game on?