I just checked my Twitter feed, then my profile. I am following 25 people. In that small number I seem to be unusual. Among the 330 people following me many are also following hundreds if not thousands of other people. Does this make me feel a little less special? Yeah, but that’s not my point here.

I use Twitter for work, and my work is all about the social sector. So I assume my followers form a cross section of the sector. A typical follower of mine is following 500 people. The all-time Twitter-holic on my list is following me plus 37,695 others. The most followed individual in my orbit who is not a politician or an institution has 340,757 followers. This made me stop and think – how do you follow 37,000 people on Twitter? For that matter, how do you follow even a mere 500?

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I recently worked with Rusty Coats of Coats2Coats consulting.  He suggests a “Rule of Ten” for Twitter. He thinks that every ten tweets should follow a 3-3-3-1 rule, meaning a Twitter user posts 3 tweets about their own or their organization’s work and ideas, 3 are retweets of posts by others, 3 are URL or links of interest (e.g. an news article), and 1 is a humorous post.

Angela Maiers recommends a Twitter Engagement Formula of 70-20-10 which breaks down as:

• 70 percent of your tweets share resources — blog postings, articles, opinions and tools
• 20 percent of your tweets engage in conversations and connections
• 10 percent of your tweets “chirp,” or chat about yourself, your life and your thoughts

Does any of this math add up for your nonprofit organization?

Some bloggers question whether setting “rules” for social media misses the point.

Tell us what you think.