At this precise moment, basketball star Shaquille O’Neal has 3,263,672 followers to his Twitter feed (@THE_REAL_SHAQ). That’s right, over three and a quarter million people.
Why so many? Is it because of the quality of his comments? Not if this tweet from a couple of weeks ago is any indication: “@Shant818 I’m sorry the cheese got caught n my teeth lol.”
And yet millions of people — myself included — follow him.
Personally, I think it’s for the voyeuristic joy that it brings. It’s interesting to see where a larger than life celebrity is and what he’s doing — even if most of what he’s doing most of the time is as mundane as what the rest of us are doing.
But here’s the point: Don’t underestimate the interest people have in reading the bits and pieces of other people’s lives — maybe even yours. When you include real stories, names and details along with your useful business insights, you touch people in a way that’s bigger than just the facts and information themselves.