What is the better twitter-strategy: As many as possible followers or less but valuable followers?

Depends if you are a sprinter or marathoner.

- Want to win the 100 meter: As many followers as possible. It'll make your CEO happy.
- Want to win the longer race: Go for quality. Better way to reach the right prospects (and other influencers).

Joe Chernov / Eloqua / @jchernov

When I first started using Twitter I was very picky about who I followed back - because first of all (as you allude to) there's a lot of silly gaming going on - and secondly because it's hard to truly 'follow' a large number of people.

I've adjusted my strategy, however, over time. I do check my followers and don't follow back automatically - but if it looks like they are a real person I treat it as a professional courtesy and generally try to reciprocate. I don't follow back spambots or anyone who makes it obvious that they are simply playing the 'followback' game, however.

But since that makes my 'follows' list basically unmanageable, I've come to use Lists extensively - I have some public and private ones that are who I truly 'follow'. In other words, I always look at my (tightly managed) lists, and I rarely look at my large number of Follows - although I do from time to time.

That's how I manage it - it's a system that works for me.

Hansjorg,

Great question and great topic. Curious to see what others have to say on this, but I have a certain method to my twitter madness.

I was an early adopter to twitter. In fact, I was on since almost the beginning, but when there was no one else on there, so I left..then came back. That said, I have 2 twitter accounts. One is for my personal brand in email marketing and the other is for my company. I often interact with many people (most of whom I have never met) in a conversational way. We talk about a lot of things in email and digital marketing. On that account, I could care less about how many followers I have because I am not there to sell anything to the folks that follow me. I treat it as conversation lounge. Like Chris, I have lists that I follow as I find it impossible to digest everything. I have formulated some incredible relationships with people on that account and when I do meet them, I feel like I already know them and vice versa. To me..its not about the amount of people that follow me....its about who and the conversations that happen as a result of them.

My other account that I help maintain/own is my companies account. I co-founded an email marketing consultancy and the target market for that account would be just about any business that does email marketing, so the number of followers is important to me simply because I think we have good things to say on that account. We try to aggregate some of the best content in email/digital on that account, although it is sometimes cannibalized by my and a few of our employees' other twitter accounts. That said, its a slow process and we treat it as a good sounding board for current and future customers to engage with us.

However, I stand by my conviction in that its not the number of followers is not the top priority for me. Its meaningful exchanges with friends, colleagues and customers on topics that are interesting. Some of those topics span well beyond email marketing so I own tend to follow those that are of interest to me and my company. I also have a strict policy to never, ever AUTO DM any followers that start to follow me and drive them to a site. To me, that is like asking someone to sleep with them 5 minutes after we meet and its super cheesy. I would gladly take those that are interested in engaging with me and my company over 100,000 followers any day of the week.

Peace,

Andrew Kordek
Co-Founder, Trendline Interactive
An email marketing consultancy.
Twitter: @andrewkordek & @trendlinei
Email: andrew@trendlineinteractive.com

I have to agree with most (if not all) the great answers on this page. When it's come to quality versus quantity the quality is more important by all means.
Your question is about Twitter, but the answer is a fit for every social network.
Accumulating fans/ followers is important, and it's not an easy job. However, it's only the first step in building a Twitter account. The most important part is to engage the followers/ fans/ members in the account. To involve them in the conversation, to see them active; asking questions, replying and Re-tweeting.
When you get their engagement, and they are part of the conversation, you won twice. First you won quality followers, and their activities will bring the quantity which is more followers. Their followers will see their activities and very likely to follow you as well.

It is often hard to use the terms “quality” and “quantity” in the same sentence when describing the Twitterverse. So, building a brand on Twitter is different for Charlie Sheen than us mere mortals.

Twitter is a community with no sheriff, while a community like FOCUS attempts to authenticate users, which means that sock puppets, voting rings, etc. are detected. Hence, Twitter's biggest drawback is the vast number of phantom handles that are used simply for promotion and sometimes malicious activities. This creates a discouraging signal-to-noise ratio for Twitter users.

Moreover, the number of followers on Twitter can be a head fake as anyone can have a primary handle with n-number of variations - many with pointers back to their primary handle - then compound this with sock puppets and followback rings. Some enormous number of these handles are abandoned and remain dormant (but counted) for any number of reasons.

So, the answer should be a focus on two things: 1.) Influence, and 2.) Quality - forget numbers. You should frequently measure your influence and quality of stream with tools like Klout and TwitterGrader.

As we have read already there are many many different methods to gain new followers.

But basically if you genuinely engage and have interesting or useful content people will follow you. If you're a brand as well, people will follow you for a number of other reasons like, potential deals, customer service, company or product news etc

From the brand perspective their are several reasons to follow-back.
1. Customers, Suppliers or Partners
2. Staff
3. to enable people to DM you support questions
4. industry experts and thought leaders

Numbers are important. You're CEO will expect you to grow your audience but real lead generation through Twitter is hard to track. Most of the time people have heard about you from elsewhere and tweeted about their first experience; it's your job to make sure it gets better from there.

People seem to forget that Social Media is about Networking. You should be asking yourself, "Who does that person follow", "What do they do".

"If you're trying to influence someone, become friends with their friends"

"If you'd really like a particular company to be your customer, create a list of all their staff on Twitter, build rapport and reputation"

I like to track "Love Tweets" as a measure of success and focus on engagement, making sure everyone who @mentions us gets a reply, feels welcome and gets looked after.

Very interesting questions

Cheers

@justinflitter

I agree with what's being said here. I will say in the earlier days of Twitter, there was an almost exclusive emphasis on number of followers. I also believe that all things being equal it's human nature to judge a book by a cover (will any of us admit to that) so we're always enamored by those that have more followers than others. Two analysts that are equally good but one has 2x the followers? The celebrity contests on Twitter to see who has the most followers?

That said, I definitely think the tide is changing. As @DanPepper pointed out, tools like Klout are helping. The reality is you can have 1000 followers vs. somebody else that has 100000 follows and have a higher Klout score based on the nature of your interaction with your followers and the reputation of those followers. That's the way is should be.

The answers above are all good. Assuming your goal is to drive engagement within your areas of interest, quality beats quantity every time. I honestly don't spend too much time on the "who to follow back?" question. If they seem like someone I would like to meet in person, I follow. If not, I don't.

Like most people I started on Twitter by following some of the big names and media sites. I slowly started sharing the content I saw as valuable. Later I added in a bit of commentary. When I started my blog, I used Twitter to share my views using a platform longer than 140 characters.

Now, I do all the above but really focus a lot more of my effort interacting with people. I call this "social equity." If you follow me or RT me or share my blog post, I try to find a way to return the favor with either a follow, a RT, a blog comment or a simple "thanks" or "how are you?"

I do not spend time trying to build my follower count but in building relationships within my areas of interest. I hope this helps! Best Regards,

Michael Brenner
@brennermichael

In the follower world, I opt for both quality and quantity.

We do all the best practices to get quantity followers, and that's so that we can capitalize on the tweeps that just find us...the hidden gem followers. We also have one of my marketing intern's scour twitter accounts that are relevant and in our space and do the follow thing in hopes that they will auto follow in reciprocation. If they are truly valuable to our space (say it's Craig Rosenberg @funnelholic), then we would find a relevant tweet of theirs and retweet it in hopes that they will pick us up and pay attention to our tweets.

So volume/quantity to capture and farm. Quality for value.

Mike Damphousse
Green Leads

What does success look like for you on Twitter? How do you measure that success? Is it based on driving the widest awareness possible, or driving specific activity and action among a targeted group?

Who do you want to speak to - a narrow audience specifically focused on some core ideas or content, or a broader audience that might not be interested in every single tweet but things you (and/or your company) are smart and worth reading from time to time?

You also don't need to treat every follower equally. There are some tweeters I follow religiously - have them segmented out in a separate column in Hootsuite, for example - and I try to engage/respond to them often. These are the people I have prioritized that can help grow my business.

But even those followers who aren't day-to-day priorities can help you - today, tomorrow, next month. You never know.

Twitter followers are like atoms bouncing around in a test tube. The more followers you have, the more likely they will collide to create a chemical reaction -- a business benefit.

But to create that reaction, you need a catalyst. That's meaningful content. That's how connections get made.

The reaction is sustained through authentic helpfulness.

So yes, I do believe numbers matter, if they are targeted and relevant. I think what most peole miss is that at least early on, you need to spend some time actively curating an intersting list of folowers. I think critical mass is 200 people for one simple reason. If it is below 200, Twitter is likely to be boring and you will quit. After 200, interesting people will also be finding you.

If people are obvious spammers, I block them. I don't want to play their game.

If somebody is not a spammer, but there is no obvious connection, I don't follow them back, but I leave that door open. : )

If somebody seems relevant to my field of interest, I always follow back -- let the reactions begin.

I describe this more fully in my new book, The Tao of Twitter, available on Amazon: http://amzn.to/schaefertao This book also provides 15 ideas to find those important targeted followers. Really Twitter is a waste of time if you don't take that first step!

For those just starting on Twitter, hundreds of people have found this to be a valuable, real-world guide to creating business benefits through this amazing networking channel!

Thanks for the great question.

Please follow me on Twitter and join my test tube : )

@markwschaefer

First I would like to thank you all for your really valuable answers.
It is interesting: Everybody agrees on the quality of followers at first. Then there comes the differentiation:

Two Twitter accounts:
One for the company  quantity matters
One for you as a person  more emphasis on quality

Listed and unlisted followers to make it easier to follow the right ones.

Re-following as a kind of “saying thank you” even if it does not include a common interest

Of course, I am emphasizing a little bit ;-)

But in the end everyone is more or less admitting, that numbers matter too.

No wonder, your numbers are impressive.

@justinflitter 34.613 followers 14.515 following
@markwschaefer 20.827 15.389 following
@alizasherman 10.023 followers 2.158 following
@jchernov 6.348 followers 3.343 following
@Zendesk. 4.072 followers 793 following
@andrewkordek 2.015 followers 2.039 following
@trendlinei 647 followers 997 following
@cselland 2.780 followers 1.946 following
@dan_pepper 869 followers 1.086 following
@mschmier 813 followers 1.035 following
@brennermichael 2.887 followers 2.436 following
@damphoux 4.901 followers 4.532 following
@HeinzMarketing 4.918 followers 5.415 following

I find it hard to follow even only 60 people on twitter and I am really wondering, how on earth it is possible not only to follow more than 1.000 but to interact or share personal contacts with them?

So in the end, it seems, that the truth is (as nearly always) lying somewhere in between.

The way to find the maximum number of real quality followers goes over the quality of what you offer, but also over the quantity of your network. As Matt is saying: “But even those followers who aren't day-to-day priorities can help you - today, tomorrow, next month. You never know. “

Once again, many thanks for your helpful answers

Kind regards to you all

Hansjörg

@hleichsenring

You always recommend purge their follower list and the reason is quite logical:

When someone looks at your account and sees that you follow more people than follow you, they will assume that you are trying to inflate your follower numbers by just following people. When they see an account that has more followers they will assume that you have something important to say and it will provide “social proof” for your business.

Here are two examples:
* Gary Vaynerchuk, the author of "The Thank You Economy", has the following Twitter statistics:
@garyvee: Following: 13,344, Followers: 863,806

* Jay Baer, the co-author of "the NOW Revolution", has the following Twitter statistics:
@jaybaer: Following 25,626 Followers 34,806

As you see, in Gray's case the gap is so wide but in both cases they are followed by more people than the ones they follow. That's a good "authority building" strategy. Needless to say, most of the few "elites" that are followed are targeted.

I wrote a short post to answer this http://goo.gl/eEX9O

It looks like success if you get 100 new followers every day. But if these followers are auto-follow spambots then there’s not much value in them. But even the perfectly human followers can be misleading if they are paying attention to you only to win a prize or take advantage in an one time offer.

So, how to measure the quality of the your fandom? I believe that the best metrics are engagement metrics. Count the instances when real action is taken:

retweets
@-conversations
likes
comments

If you have set up tools to measure these metrics then you can better understand the quality of your fans and followers. Set up composite metrics that give you insights about the value of your followership. Examples of composite metrics are:

retweets per follower
comments per Facebook fan

Or you can go even closer to the actual business value by measuring:

site conversions by fans
revenue from social channels

Big numbers are cool, but money in the bank is even better and this comes from real engaged people.

Quality definitely outweighs quantity. The goal in using Twitter should be to meet other people with similar interests and hopefully turn these people into either customers or business contacts. 1000 people could be following you, but how many of those people are actually interested in what you have to say? Twitter is more than just a numbers game - to be successful at using this social networking site, you have to look past the number of followers you have and look at how many of those people could be potential customers.