There comes a point when you gain financial freedom which is marked by the ability to purchase without concern for price. That point is where increasing wealth makes no impact on your quality of life. Most people will never reach this point however, and the number of people who will is debatable but the most quoted figure is 1% of the population.
When you reach this level of wealth however, despite the fact it is the level at which increasing wealth leaves little to no impact, it is also the level at which increasing wealth is at its easiest. The old saying "wealth begets wealth" or to put it more crudely "money breeds money" comes into play. At this level, investment and banking offers the greatest return on the money you invest or deposit. When you surpass the million mark the amount of interest you can be paid on that money is more than a sizable portion of the population earns in a single year. Going further still and investing in commodities and other assets whose values appreciate over time you can ensure your wealth never declines.
The Bank of England recently announced its latest round of bond-buying scheme which is intended to stimulate the economy by bolstering liquidity of businesses through direct capital investment in exchange for bonds held against those businesses with an agreed yield - essentially interest. While the idea of this may sound promising to many business owners or entrepreneurs the reality is far from the supposed incentive. The companies which receive this capital are almost always very large organisations deemed to be somewhat stable and guaranteed to provide a return, in other words companies that are already making money and are in good health.
One of the most prominent companies to feature in the Bank of England's latest round of bond-buying is Apple, which is a company that arguably is in no need of capital. Therein lies the problem with calling this a "stimulus package" and the supposed desired effect. To stimulate an economy you need to capitalise the smaller and medium businesses that are faltering. Imagine a 6-lane motorway, where 2 lanes in either direction have stalled entirely and represent small and medium businesses. The third lane in each direction represents the largest businesses which are flowing freely and passing all the others by on the road. The stronger the economy the more traffic the motorway can handle, the weaker the economy the closer to a traffic jam you become or an all out crash that prevents traffic entirely. To increase the traffic the motorway carries you should not pout money into the fast lane that achieves nothing. You need to address the other 4 lanes and determine why those lanes have stalled; determine if they have broken down, or need extra fuel, or have a puncture they need repairing.
If you are going to try and provide a stimulus to keep the country moving then you need to invest that money in removing the barriers that are slowing down the country. Large companies find it easiest to attract investment and to gain access to credit, they are not the companies in need of investment from any public body. This isn't surprising however as the Bank of England, like the Federal Reserve in the USA, isn't actually controlled by the government, and technically isn't even a public body. They are both technically privately owned and while expected to be politically neutral and altruistic, they don't have any obligation to actually do so. Knowing this it's actually counter intuitive to think that any government really has control over fiscal policy or economic policy. The Bank of England will only intervene insofar as to ensure that its private interests are protected. With that in mind one could argue the only reason Apple is on the list is because of its consistently high share price and perceived market value and the recent tax levy placed upon it by the EU, in other words the Bank of England is essentially footing part of the bill for Apple's tax fine - the question is, how much?
I know what your problem is
Most people go through bouts of introspection where they take a step back from their lives, usually when things aren't going to plan, and ask themselves if they are doing something wrong. In these moments we look at our lives and analyse what we say and do and think about our present and our past and how we feel our words and actions have shaped our lives. In these moments we often look back at friendships and relationships that went wrong and wonder why they went wrong, what it was that they or we did exactly.
While we all experience this, our introspection is ultimately incapable of being truly objective, we always have a bias towards our own actions and a desire to believe that we did the right thing. Even when looking back and knowing it was wrong, we like to give the excuse that we thought it was right at the time, so we dismiss the guilt we should feel for the mistakes we made. The problem with doing this is that without accepting the responsibility for our actions we are forever destined to repeat them. If we always say that we did what we thought was right at the time we completely write off the learning process and dismiss what we should have learned from the experience and perpetuate the belief that if we continue to do what we think is right then we will live a life without regret and without guilt.
We might not feel regret or guilt because we convince ourselves we shouldn't, but if we know what we did was wrong and we never learn from it, we will repeat our actions resulting in the same negative outcomes and still show no guilt nor regret.
While our introspection is biased, the same analytical mindset is a lot more objective when we apply it to others. While we may ask ourselves what we are doing wrong and convince ourselves we aren't doing anything wrong and that we are just doing the best we can, when we look at others we can much more clearly define the actions that are causing much of the worry, anxiety, or negative consequences that those people have to endure.
I've seen this in a few people, and I openly admit here that the whole point of this post is about me not them. Using these people as examples I have seen them repeatedly complain about aspects of their life that they aren't happy with, in particular their relationships both amorous and amicable. When I look at the way they treat other people, the way they talk to others, and the way they talk to me, I can see exactly why people wouldn't like them. I know the impression they give is not what they intend yet that's how it looks and how I would interpret it if I didn't know them. It's because of this that I wonder how to break down the bias we show when we analyse ourselves.
If we can look at another person, their words, their actions, their behaviours, and know exactly why people see them the way they do, why can't we do that to ourselves? Why can the behaviours that deter others be so blatantly obvious to us when we look at other people, yet when it comes to ourselves we are almost blind?
I know the people I refer to above are completely oblivious to the way they present themselves. I also know that I'm not as close to them as I would need to be in order to actually tell them - if I did now, it would likely be met with hostility. That beggars the question, if that's the reason I don't tell them what is obvious to me, are there others who see my faults and my negative behaviours with such equal clarity, who for the same reasons never say a word to me about them, out of fear of a hostile reaction?
How can you get close enough to someone who will be willing and able to tell you the truth about your behaviour if that very behaviour is the reason people don't try to get close to you in the first place?
I know what your problem is, but do you know what mine is?
While we all experience this, our introspection is ultimately incapable of being truly objective, we always have a bias towards our own actions and a desire to believe that we did the right thing. Even when looking back and knowing it was wrong, we like to give the excuse that we thought it was right at the time, so we dismiss the guilt we should feel for the mistakes we made. The problem with doing this is that without accepting the responsibility for our actions we are forever destined to repeat them. If we always say that we did what we thought was right at the time we completely write off the learning process and dismiss what we should have learned from the experience and perpetuate the belief that if we continue to do what we think is right then we will live a life without regret and without guilt.
We might not feel regret or guilt because we convince ourselves we shouldn't, but if we know what we did was wrong and we never learn from it, we will repeat our actions resulting in the same negative outcomes and still show no guilt nor regret.
While our introspection is biased, the same analytical mindset is a lot more objective when we apply it to others. While we may ask ourselves what we are doing wrong and convince ourselves we aren't doing anything wrong and that we are just doing the best we can, when we look at others we can much more clearly define the actions that are causing much of the worry, anxiety, or negative consequences that those people have to endure.
I've seen this in a few people, and I openly admit here that the whole point of this post is about me not them. Using these people as examples I have seen them repeatedly complain about aspects of their life that they aren't happy with, in particular their relationships both amorous and amicable. When I look at the way they treat other people, the way they talk to others, and the way they talk to me, I can see exactly why people wouldn't like them. I know the impression they give is not what they intend yet that's how it looks and how I would interpret it if I didn't know them. It's because of this that I wonder how to break down the bias we show when we analyse ourselves.
If we can look at another person, their words, their actions, their behaviours, and know exactly why people see them the way they do, why can't we do that to ourselves? Why can the behaviours that deter others be so blatantly obvious to us when we look at other people, yet when it comes to ourselves we are almost blind?
I know the people I refer to above are completely oblivious to the way they present themselves. I also know that I'm not as close to them as I would need to be in order to actually tell them - if I did now, it would likely be met with hostility. That beggars the question, if that's the reason I don't tell them what is obvious to me, are there others who see my faults and my negative behaviours with such equal clarity, who for the same reasons never say a word to me about them, out of fear of a hostile reaction?
How can you get close enough to someone who will be willing and able to tell you the truth about your behaviour if that very behaviour is the reason people don't try to get close to you in the first place?
I know what your problem is, but do you know what mine is?
Encouragement
I like to encourage people to pursue their dreams and their desires (within reason) and offer help where I think I can and should do so. Whenever I see someone with a talent even when it is something that I would like to be able to do I still encourage them. I don't mind when people do better than me because I understand no matter how well you do there will always be someone who does better. It's unrealistic to believe that you can be #1 and stay there. Even the Forbes rich list isn't set in stone, with Bill Gates and Carlos Slim often exchanging places at the top the conclusion you can draw is that sometimes you're ahead and sometimes you're behind and that's okay either way because that's life.
What matters most is where you are going (or where you want to go) and what you are doing to get there. We all have our strengths and our weaknesses and we often try to pursue these as careers or at the very least we try to capitalise on them. Confidence itself however has become something of a commodity in society today with those who possess it in apparent exultance being the ones who make it the furthest.
The question is as with all commodities, does the person who has it, need it? The inevitability with all commodities is to reach a point where price rises higher than those who actually need it can afford. This is called an economy of scale and an example of such would be insurance. Those who need it most are those who could not afford to replace their belongings, yet they are also the least likely to have it as it's still quite expensive. On the other hand those who need it least are those who could easily pay to replace all of their belongings, yet despite the lack of need, their affluence leads then to be the group most likely to have insurance.
If confidence is a commodity then the question becomes "Who needs it?" - which has an obvious answer, those with the least confidence need it the most, yet they are often the last people who others direct their encouragement towards. Instead they choose to direct it at celebrities, and popular personalities, in an attempt to encourage them further, but this harkens back to insurance, just as those who are richest have it most, here too those who have the most confidence are the ones who receive the most encouragement.
Spin
In the UK we have a profession nicknamed 'The Spin Doctor' which quite simply put is a job within public relations to take any news story or event that happens which may be perceived one way, and spin it in the opposite direction to your advantage. This can be done with events that reflect negatively on you, which you then spin to a positive, or can be done with events which reflect positively on your opponent and spin it to a negative. As the saying goes, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" there is perhaps a revision to be made in the text, one to say "the road to hell is paved with intentions" - whether they are good or bad is irrelevant at the end of the day what matters, at least in the public eye, is the way those intentions are perceived.
In the past 6 months of so since the UK voted to leave the EU I have been watching media outlets intently and it is at this time more than any that their efforts to spin news stories have become the most apparent. The main reason for this is because the majority of neutral events that occur are being spun one way or the other when in reality it has little bearing on either side, yet each side tries to claim each headline as it emerges and spin it into a positive for their side or a negative for the other. As for events that are unquestionably positive for one side and undeniably negative for the other, here you see desperation at it's most apparent. Claims with no basis whatsoever are made, sometimes completely dismissing prior precedent which when questioned is usually met with "but this is different" or "that won't happen this time" - but to this that old cliche arises in retort that Einstein [among others] once said "The Definition of Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."
What I have found through this experience however is clarity in seeing which media outlets are actually neutral or indifferent. One example being Bloomberg, which centres around financial markets and the impact of events. One thing I like about their coverage through all of this is the fact that they haven't dwelt on what might happen, but rather they have focused on the visible impacts of what has already happened. Their approach feels a lot more objective because they take an empirical approach to the news they report. Spend a few minutes watching Bloomberg and you will quickly see chart after chart showing choice variables and data visualisations which help you get a better picture of long term and short term trends. Rather than focusing on changes that happened in a day which can be up and down from the one before, they look at comparisons to previous performance.
Taking the FTSE as an example [Financial Times Stock Exchange] which is based in London, throughout the coverage of the UK's tumultuous currency movements in the last few months, bar the flash crash and the initial drop on June 24th, media outlets like the BBC have largely ignored financial markets. A few reports have been made on key events but for the most part what the BBC reports is completely at odds with the analysis you see on Bloomberg. "Since Brexit" is mentioned frequently on BBC yet rarely have you heard a single reporter acknowledge "we haven't actually left yet" - on the flip-side Bloomberg uses language which is markedly different even if it is subtle "Since the UK voted to leave the EU" - and concurrently reporters frequently state "the UK hasn't left yet." You might be thinking this is nitpicking but it is important to make this distinction clear. I wrote a post about the relationship between Y2K and Brexit which stresses the danger of ignorance of what is to come. The misnomer of "Since Brexit" is a very dangerous precedent to make as it will lull many into a false sense of security thinking "the worst is over" when reality the gun hasn't even been fired yet.
One particular event I found the most interesting in terms of the divergence of reporting from reality was the recent approval of Heathrow Airport Expansion plans. Throughout the reporting, BBC repeatedly stated the expansion had approved and that the new runway would be built and operational around 2025. Flip to Bloomberg and the first reaction there was the question "Is this a done deal?" and the answer was categorically "No" and reiteration of the fact this was only government approval essentially outline approval and that local councils still had to approve the plans through their planning process and stressed that local government was opposed to the expansion, moreover it was highlighted that 7 years ago Labour approved expansion of the airport, and here we are 7 years later with another government, Tory led, approving the same plans - the question "Will it happen?" hasn't been answered. Central government and Local Government in the UK do not always see eye to eye.
In the past 6 months of so since the UK voted to leave the EU I have been watching media outlets intently and it is at this time more than any that their efforts to spin news stories have become the most apparent. The main reason for this is because the majority of neutral events that occur are being spun one way or the other when in reality it has little bearing on either side, yet each side tries to claim each headline as it emerges and spin it into a positive for their side or a negative for the other. As for events that are unquestionably positive for one side and undeniably negative for the other, here you see desperation at it's most apparent. Claims with no basis whatsoever are made, sometimes completely dismissing prior precedent which when questioned is usually met with "but this is different" or "that won't happen this time" - but to this that old cliche arises in retort that Einstein [among others] once said "The Definition of Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."
What I have found through this experience however is clarity in seeing which media outlets are actually neutral or indifferent. One example being Bloomberg, which centres around financial markets and the impact of events. One thing I like about their coverage through all of this is the fact that they haven't dwelt on what might happen, but rather they have focused on the visible impacts of what has already happened. Their approach feels a lot more objective because they take an empirical approach to the news they report. Spend a few minutes watching Bloomberg and you will quickly see chart after chart showing choice variables and data visualisations which help you get a better picture of long term and short term trends. Rather than focusing on changes that happened in a day which can be up and down from the one before, they look at comparisons to previous performance.
Taking the FTSE as an example [Financial Times Stock Exchange] which is based in London, throughout the coverage of the UK's tumultuous currency movements in the last few months, bar the flash crash and the initial drop on June 24th, media outlets like the BBC have largely ignored financial markets. A few reports have been made on key events but for the most part what the BBC reports is completely at odds with the analysis you see on Bloomberg. "Since Brexit" is mentioned frequently on BBC yet rarely have you heard a single reporter acknowledge "we haven't actually left yet" - on the flip-side Bloomberg uses language which is markedly different even if it is subtle "Since the UK voted to leave the EU" - and concurrently reporters frequently state "the UK hasn't left yet." You might be thinking this is nitpicking but it is important to make this distinction clear. I wrote a post about the relationship between Y2K and Brexit which stresses the danger of ignorance of what is to come. The misnomer of "Since Brexit" is a very dangerous precedent to make as it will lull many into a false sense of security thinking "the worst is over" when reality the gun hasn't even been fired yet.
One particular event I found the most interesting in terms of the divergence of reporting from reality was the recent approval of Heathrow Airport Expansion plans. Throughout the reporting, BBC repeatedly stated the expansion had approved and that the new runway would be built and operational around 2025. Flip to Bloomberg and the first reaction there was the question "Is this a done deal?" and the answer was categorically "No" and reiteration of the fact this was only government approval essentially outline approval and that local councils still had to approve the plans through their planning process and stressed that local government was opposed to the expansion, moreover it was highlighted that 7 years ago Labour approved expansion of the airport, and here we are 7 years later with another government, Tory led, approving the same plans - the question "Will it happen?" hasn't been answered. Central government and Local Government in the UK do not always see eye to eye.
Who do you think you are?
I don't pretend to be anyone I am not, and I don't play a character, I just try to be myself. I find it frustrating however when people draw similarities between me and certain fictional characters and try to insinuate that I am trying to be those characters. If you happen to see similarities between me and other people, real or fictional, the truth is much more likely to be the fact that we are all not as unique as we like to think we are, and not the false conclusion that I am trying to be something I am not.
I've written posts on this blog before about personalities and the classification systems that I would use personally to assess people; I've also written posts about professional classification systems like the Myers-Briggs personality type system. My own system has 4 personalities, and Briggs has 16 personality types determined by 4 attributes - incidentally my Myers-Briggs type was INFP at the time of writing the previous post, it is now INFJ.
What these classification systems show us is that the population as a whole can be sorted into these groupings, no matter how unique you think you really are, determined by these 4 attributes you can be summed up into one of only 16 classifications. By virtue of the fact that authors create characters that are believable, and even when they deliberately try to make them as complex and unbelievable as possible, they still fit into this same classification system. The reason people have similarities with others real or fictional is because they are based on real people and real behaviours. I often see people say "You're trying to be X from Y" where X is a character from a TV show called Y. This annoys me most of all because the majority of people that do this seem to hold this fixation on the idea that those shows were the first to do that or portray that type of personality. Yet, just as with real-life personalities, our fictional counterparts also fit into the same groups, and just as with real life they are never the first person to behave in that way.
There is a website called TV Tropes which is dedicated to listing tropes - in this case referring to the recurring devices used by writers and actors who portray their characters. The great wealth of tropes listed and the abundance of examples of each shows how originality is not something which has been present for a very long time. Even going back hundreds of years examining plays and stories from folklore and legend, the same tropes can be found again and again because the limit of human imagination when it comes to creativity is a lot smaller than we like to think it is.
One example of a trope relevant to this post is the Four Temperament Ensemble which embodies four recurring personalities:
1 - Sanguine: Extroverted, emotional, and people-oriented.
2 - Choleric: Extroverted, unemotional, and task-oriented.
3 - Melancholic: Introverted, emotional, and task-oriented.
4 - Phlegmatic: Introverted, unemotional, and people-oriented.
Source: tvtropes.org
TV Tropes even goes on to provide a listing at the bottom that lets you explore examples of these tropes, the section specific to TV shows can be found here.
Here are a selection of examples:
3rd Rock from the Sun:
Doctor Who (The Eleventh Doctor and his companions):
The Golden Girls:
Sex and the City:
As you scroll through the list and see how common this trope is you begin to see how that show you like to compare everyone to was not the first to do it and won't be the last. Yes the people you see will share similarities with those characters but that does not mean they are pretending to be those characters, and in most cases they have probably never even seen the show to begin with.
I've written posts on this blog before about personalities and the classification systems that I would use personally to assess people; I've also written posts about professional classification systems like the Myers-Briggs personality type system. My own system has 4 personalities, and Briggs has 16 personality types determined by 4 attributes - incidentally my Myers-Briggs type was INFP at the time of writing the previous post, it is now INFJ.
What these classification systems show us is that the population as a whole can be sorted into these groupings, no matter how unique you think you really are, determined by these 4 attributes you can be summed up into one of only 16 classifications. By virtue of the fact that authors create characters that are believable, and even when they deliberately try to make them as complex and unbelievable as possible, they still fit into this same classification system. The reason people have similarities with others real or fictional is because they are based on real people and real behaviours. I often see people say "You're trying to be X from Y" where X is a character from a TV show called Y. This annoys me most of all because the majority of people that do this seem to hold this fixation on the idea that those shows were the first to do that or portray that type of personality. Yet, just as with real-life personalities, our fictional counterparts also fit into the same groups, and just as with real life they are never the first person to behave in that way.
There is a website called TV Tropes which is dedicated to listing tropes - in this case referring to the recurring devices used by writers and actors who portray their characters. The great wealth of tropes listed and the abundance of examples of each shows how originality is not something which has been present for a very long time. Even going back hundreds of years examining plays and stories from folklore and legend, the same tropes can be found again and again because the limit of human imagination when it comes to creativity is a lot smaller than we like to think it is.
One example of a trope relevant to this post is the Four Temperament Ensemble which embodies four recurring personalities:
1 - Sanguine: Extroverted, emotional, and people-oriented.
2 - Choleric: Extroverted, unemotional, and task-oriented.
3 - Melancholic: Introverted, emotional, and task-oriented.
4 - Phlegmatic: Introverted, unemotional, and people-oriented.
Source: tvtropes.org
TV Tropes even goes on to provide a listing at the bottom that lets you explore examples of these tropes, the section specific to TV shows can be found here.
Here are a selection of examples:
3rd Rock from the Sun:
- Dick Solomon (melancholic)
- Tommy Solomon (choleric)
- Sally Solomon (phlegmatic)
- Harry Solomon (sanguine)
Doctor Who (The Eleventh Doctor and his companions):
- The Doctor (melancholic)
- River Song (choleric)
- Rory (phlegmatic)
- Amy Pond (sanguine)
The Golden Girls:
- Dorothy (melancholic)
- Sophia (choleric)
- Rose (phlegmatic)
- Blanche (sanguine)
Sex and the City:
- Carrie Bradshaw (melancholic)
- Miranda Hobbes (choleric)
- Charlotte York (phlegmatic)
- Samantha Jones (sanguine)
As you scroll through the list and see how common this trope is you begin to see how that show you like to compare everyone to was not the first to do it and won't be the last. Yes the people you see will share similarities with those characters but that does not mean they are pretending to be those characters, and in most cases they have probably never even seen the show to begin with.
Take a look at yourself
You have never seen yourself the way others see you. For 99.9% of people I would estimate this to be true. I don't just mean in a metaphorical sense, but in a physical sense too. We are never in a position naturally where we can actually look at ourselves as other people see us. What you see in a mirror is a mirror-image of yourself, it's flipped, and depending on the construction of the mirror, clarity, cut, and thickness, the image you see is distorted. This isn't the same image someone else sees of you when they look at you.
When it comes to cameras there is a saying that the camera adds ten pounds, while many people laugh this idea off as being perpetuated by people who don't like having their photo taken, the truth is, most cameras actually do. The reason they do alter your appearance is largely down to the construction of the lens of the camera, very few cameras beyond high end models with a high price tag actually try to recreate the lens of the human eye. What a camera sees and what a person sees are very different things. If you have ever looked up at the night sky and gazed with wonder and awe at the stars that fill your field of view, only to find an infinite black nothingness blurred and patchy when you try to point your camera at it, then you'll know how things like ISO can greatly alter the image the camera can capture.
The bottom line here is that no camera can as yet perfectly match the human eye. Knowing this, while the vast amount of photos we take of ourselves and other people populate our devices and eat up our storage capacity, the reality is that reality is never truly captured. The only people you could argue even come close to being able to look at themselves as other people would, are identical twins - although the person they look at isn't actually them, and even here while twins can appear identical to other people, the twins themselves often notice differences that can let them distinguish who is who in photos etc. The idea that parents of twins are forever confused about which one is which, while comedic in effect, in practice becomes almost non-existent with age. As two people grow, no matter how similar their lives are, over time differences develop.
So really when you stop and think about it, even if you rig a complex system of mirrors to allow yourself to look at yourself with the correct orientation and flipping, even in a hall of mirrors or a fun-house the fact you can't perfectly recreate the conditions of the perceptions others have of you really does mean that you probably never have seen yourself the way others see you, physically, knowing this, at least for me, makes it somehow easier to accept you have never seen yourself metaphorically the way others see you either.
When it comes to cameras there is a saying that the camera adds ten pounds, while many people laugh this idea off as being perpetuated by people who don't like having their photo taken, the truth is, most cameras actually do. The reason they do alter your appearance is largely down to the construction of the lens of the camera, very few cameras beyond high end models with a high price tag actually try to recreate the lens of the human eye. What a camera sees and what a person sees are very different things. If you have ever looked up at the night sky and gazed with wonder and awe at the stars that fill your field of view, only to find an infinite black nothingness blurred and patchy when you try to point your camera at it, then you'll know how things like ISO can greatly alter the image the camera can capture.
The bottom line here is that no camera can as yet perfectly match the human eye. Knowing this, while the vast amount of photos we take of ourselves and other people populate our devices and eat up our storage capacity, the reality is that reality is never truly captured. The only people you could argue even come close to being able to look at themselves as other people would, are identical twins - although the person they look at isn't actually them, and even here while twins can appear identical to other people, the twins themselves often notice differences that can let them distinguish who is who in photos etc. The idea that parents of twins are forever confused about which one is which, while comedic in effect, in practice becomes almost non-existent with age. As two people grow, no matter how similar their lives are, over time differences develop.
So really when you stop and think about it, even if you rig a complex system of mirrors to allow yourself to look at yourself with the correct orientation and flipping, even in a hall of mirrors or a fun-house the fact you can't perfectly recreate the conditions of the perceptions others have of you really does mean that you probably never have seen yourself the way others see you, physically, knowing this, at least for me, makes it somehow easier to accept you have never seen yourself metaphorically the way others see you either.
Three Types of Twitter Accounts for Marketing
Twitter accounts mainly fall into three categories when it comes to marketing:
Engagement Only Content
What is engagement? Loosely we can define it by interactions with other tweets, this can be via likes, retweets, replies, quotes, and to a lesser extent lists. An Engagement Only Account is characterised by having a low volume of plain tweets originating from that account, and either a high volume of retweets or a high volume of likes. From a marketing perspective these accounts are valuable if and only if they have a large number of followers, or a number of followers greater than the number of accounts they themselves follow. Accounts like this require you to err on the side of caution, these figures can easily be skewed by accounts intended to deliver customer service or setup to automate tweeting or retweeting when certain criteria are met by a program. It is for this reason it is not advisable to look for these accounts in an automated fashion.
Output Only Accounts
These accounts are mainly corporate accounts although they do sometimes involve individuals who have a product they are trying to sell. These accounts are characterised by having a high, near exclusive volume of original plain tweets, a very low number of retweets, and often a very low number of liked tweets. To give a real world example the account @BloombergTV falls into this category. These accounts are very low value for marketing. In the case of @BloombergTV, they follow 446 accounts nearly all Bloomberg partners, and have 412,000 followers. They have liked 142 tweets in the 7 years the account has been active and they have 81,000 tweets nearly exclusively Bloomberg tweets with no retweets other than Bloomberg partners and Bloomberg anchors, the account also does not reply to tweets. When you consider this account it can be categorised as Output Only because it is intended to be an outlet, a point to post and distribute information. These accounts are effectively the twitter equivalent of noreply@example.com email addresses. The only people who will find these accounts useful are people who have an interest in the content, they are not valuable from a marketing perspective and following them won't grow your brand or make others engage with you more, they will only take up space in the number of accounts you follow which not only consumes part of your limit it floods your timeline with content you probably don't want to see anyway.
Mixed Accounts
These are the most valuable accounts of all on twitter. While it can be argued that the other two represent businesses and organisations, these accounts are those most likely to be everyday users of twitter who should be the primary target of any marketing campaign. These accounts are characterised by near even distributions of follower to following and a near even distribution of tweets to retweets with a margin either way of around 15%. While these accounts are the most valuable accounts on twitter they are also the most irritable. Unsolicited replies from any account perceived to be automated will usually be met with an immediate block. Retweets and Likes however are less likely to result in this, quote tweeting is a better option as it will let you retain privacy control over the tweets in the event of being blocked**
Conclusion
It should be obvious but should it need to be pointed out, remember these are not infallible categorisations; there will be accounts which break these rules and others which represent outliers which don't fall into any categorisation. It is also worth repeating these categorisations are relevant to marketing only, there are other types of accounts on twitter not limited to celebrities, fictional characters, trolls, landmarks, parody accounts, spam, and bots among others.
In Summary:
Engagement Only - High Value but be circumspect
- Low volume of original plain tweets relative to other tweets
- High volume of liked tweets or retweets
- High number of followers or more followers than following
Output Only - Lowest Value
- Near exclusive plain tweets
- Very few, if any retweets or retweets only from partners
- Very few, if any, liked tweets
- Very high follower number relative to the following number
Mixed Accounts - Highest Value
- Near even distribution of following and followers
- Near even or 15% margin of tweets to retweets
- High number of liked tweets
* Be aware the number of tweets made and liked tweets on a profile may not accurately represent the number of tweets liked by the profile due to discrepancies in Twitter's counting algorithm caused by privacy changes.
** This is an anomaly and contravenes Twitter's intended power of blocking but it prevents an unfortunate side-affect of the current blocking mechanism. At present if you retweet an account, which then blocks you, that retweet remains on your profile and visible to everyone else except you. This isn't ideal especially since it effectively means you can't remove the retweet. Using Quote tweets rather than simple retweets allows you to retain control of the tweet on your profile, should the other account block you the quote tweet will still be visible to you but the embedded tweet won't be, regardless this allows you to delete the quoted tweet removing it from your profile.
- Engagement Only Accounts
- Output Only Accounts
- Mixed Accounts
Engagement Only Content
What is engagement? Loosely we can define it by interactions with other tweets, this can be via likes, retweets, replies, quotes, and to a lesser extent lists. An Engagement Only Account is characterised by having a low volume of plain tweets originating from that account, and either a high volume of retweets or a high volume of likes. From a marketing perspective these accounts are valuable if and only if they have a large number of followers, or a number of followers greater than the number of accounts they themselves follow. Accounts like this require you to err on the side of caution, these figures can easily be skewed by accounts intended to deliver customer service or setup to automate tweeting or retweeting when certain criteria are met by a program. It is for this reason it is not advisable to look for these accounts in an automated fashion.
Output Only Accounts
These accounts are mainly corporate accounts although they do sometimes involve individuals who have a product they are trying to sell. These accounts are characterised by having a high, near exclusive volume of original plain tweets, a very low number of retweets, and often a very low number of liked tweets. To give a real world example the account @BloombergTV falls into this category. These accounts are very low value for marketing. In the case of @BloombergTV, they follow 446 accounts nearly all Bloomberg partners, and have 412,000 followers. They have liked 142 tweets in the 7 years the account has been active and they have 81,000 tweets nearly exclusively Bloomberg tweets with no retweets other than Bloomberg partners and Bloomberg anchors, the account also does not reply to tweets. When you consider this account it can be categorised as Output Only because it is intended to be an outlet, a point to post and distribute information. These accounts are effectively the twitter equivalent of noreply@example.com email addresses. The only people who will find these accounts useful are people who have an interest in the content, they are not valuable from a marketing perspective and following them won't grow your brand or make others engage with you more, they will only take up space in the number of accounts you follow which not only consumes part of your limit it floods your timeline with content you probably don't want to see anyway.
Mixed Accounts
These are the most valuable accounts of all on twitter. While it can be argued that the other two represent businesses and organisations, these accounts are those most likely to be everyday users of twitter who should be the primary target of any marketing campaign. These accounts are characterised by near even distributions of follower to following and a near even distribution of tweets to retweets with a margin either way of around 15%. While these accounts are the most valuable accounts on twitter they are also the most irritable. Unsolicited replies from any account perceived to be automated will usually be met with an immediate block. Retweets and Likes however are less likely to result in this, quote tweeting is a better option as it will let you retain privacy control over the tweets in the event of being blocked**
Conclusion
It should be obvious but should it need to be pointed out, remember these are not infallible categorisations; there will be accounts which break these rules and others which represent outliers which don't fall into any categorisation. It is also worth repeating these categorisations are relevant to marketing only, there are other types of accounts on twitter not limited to celebrities, fictional characters, trolls, landmarks, parody accounts, spam, and bots among others.
In Summary:
Engagement Only - High Value but be circumspect
- Low volume of original plain tweets relative to other tweets
- High volume of liked tweets or retweets
- High number of followers or more followers than following
Output Only - Lowest Value
- Near exclusive plain tweets
- Very few, if any retweets or retweets only from partners
- Very few, if any, liked tweets
- Very high follower number relative to the following number
Mixed Accounts - Highest Value
- Near even distribution of following and followers
- Near even or 15% margin of tweets to retweets
- High number of liked tweets
* Be aware the number of tweets made and liked tweets on a profile may not accurately represent the number of tweets liked by the profile due to discrepancies in Twitter's counting algorithm caused by privacy changes.
** This is an anomaly and contravenes Twitter's intended power of blocking but it prevents an unfortunate side-affect of the current blocking mechanism. At present if you retweet an account, which then blocks you, that retweet remains on your profile and visible to everyone else except you. This isn't ideal especially since it effectively means you can't remove the retweet. Using Quote tweets rather than simple retweets allows you to retain control of the tweet on your profile, should the other account block you the quote tweet will still be visible to you but the embedded tweet won't be, regardless this allows you to delete the quoted tweet removing it from your profile.
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