Twitter is often seen as key to engaging with readers, but use of the social media platform by regional daily editors varies sharply, with the most active attracting more than 29,000 followers while the least active has just 21.

And editors’ personal popularities on the leading social media channel appear to bear little relation to their newspapers’ Twitter performance or print sales, according to data collected this month.

The editors’ Twitter league rankings show Magnus Llewellin, of The Herald, Glasgow, coming top with an impressive 29,200 followers – nearly 20,000 more than his nearest competitor.

Peter Barron, of The Northern Echo, is next with 9,327 followers, nearly 5,000 more than third-placed Nigel Pickover, editor of both the Eastern Daily Press and Norwich Evening News, who has 4,549.

It’s then neck-and-neck for 4th, 5th and 6th place – with 3,796 followers for Jeremy Clifford, editor of both the Yorkshire Post and Yorkshire Evening Post, 3,771 for Alun Thorne, of the Coventry Telegraph, and 3,689 for Mike Sassi, of the Nottingham Post.

The numbers then drop more than another 500 for the closely ranked 7th, 8th and 9th place – with 3,139 followers for Mike Norton, of the Bristol Post, 3,138 for Kevan Blackadder, of the Gloucestershire Echo, and 3,109 for Neil White, of the Derby Telegraph, while veteran editor Ian Mean, of the Western Daily Press, sneaks in an 10th with 2,490, just ahead of Kevin Ward, of the South Wales Argus.

But only three of the top 10 are editors of titles which feature in the top 10 league of newspapers’ Twitter rankings – these being both the Yorkshire dailies and the Nottingham Post – while the other seven editors’ papers range from 15th to 61st.

This disparity between editor and paper rankings continues throughout the league of the 70 daily editors researched with, for example, the editors of the top two Twitter titles (Liverpool Echo, with 160,000 followers, and the Manchester Evening News, with 147,000) only ranking 38th and 39th (Alastair Machray, with 688 followers, and Rob Irvine, with 665).

Many other top Twitter titles also have editors with low numbers of followers, such as: Daily Record, 4th with 54,200, edited by Murray Foote who was 41st with 623; Birmingham Mail, 6th with 51,300, edited by David Brookes, 45th with 475; and The Scotsman, 7th with 50,300, edited by Ian Stewart, 27th with 1,043.

And the editors of the UK’s top-selling regional dailies – the Wolverhampton Express and Star, Aberdeen Press and Journal and the Liverpool Echo – are Keith Harrison, 18th on Twitter, Damian Bates, unranked, and Alastair Machray, 38th.

But the survey of Twitter data – which took place last week – found that 61 out of 70 daily editors did at least have identifiable Twitter accounts, while the remaining nine either didn’t have one or, if they did, they weren’t linked to personal names or newspaper titles, and so could not be found.

The data suggests that the most important aspect of a newspaper’s social media performance is probably the digital team driving the brand name, as opposed to the editors personally driving title popularity with their own Twitter handle.

Another example of this was the Huddersfield Examiner which is 28th in the paper Twitter league with 22,000 followers, a decent figure for a small title, although its editor Roy Wright is 60th (last) in the editors’ rankings with just 21 followers.

Many editors, of course, may well be spending Twitter time on their title’s accounts rather than their own, although one leading editorial expert has said that editors with less than 1,000 followers on Twitter “weren’t trying” (Peter Sands, quoted by media blogger Jon Slattery in InPublishing earlier this year).

With this measure in mind, only 29 of the 70 editors had more than 1,000 followers.

It’s possible that other editors may be more successful because their personal handles are linked to their title in some way, like @Herald_Editor for Magnus Llewellin and @Bristol_Editor for Mike Norton.

There’s another, accidental, finding from the data that’s worth noting: just 10pc of daily editors – seven out of 70 – are women, a subject that might be worth exploring another day.

And although none of these were unranked, only two – Jenny Eastwood, of the Gloucester Citizen, and Joy Yates, who edits both the Shields Gazette and the Hartlepool Mail – had more than 1,000 followers.

Full findings for 70 editors and their 76 titles are found in the two league tables below*.  Happy data crunching …

Editors’ Twitter rankings (NB: ‘Fllwrs’ stands for ‘Followers’)

Regional dailies’ Twitter rankings

For those who want to consider publishers’ performances, here’s a key to the owners’ initials that can be found after each title:

AR = Archant. CFP = Clyde & Forth Press. CG = The Claverley Group. CNG = CN Group. DCT = DC Thomson & Co. FF = Fitzpatrick Family. HKR = Hirst Kidd and Rennie. INM = Independent News & Media. JP = Johnston Press. LW = Local World. MNA = Midland News Associates. NQ = Newsquest. NWN = North Wales Newspapers Media Ltd. TM = Trinity Mirror.

* All data was collected in good faith from research on Twitter between 10 and 12 September 2014 by Dyson Media Ltd. Hat-tip to Joanna Geary, head of news partnerships at Twitter, whose original top 10 of regional papers prompted the idea for this research.