by Lou Belcher

Created on: July 06, 2009

There are many answers to the question of how to determine the type and quantity of followers to meet your needs on Twitter. It boils down to whether you should go for quantity or quality when gathering followers. Here is a list of possibilities that will help you determine what type of followers will best meet your needs.

1. If you are using Twitter to socialize with like-minded people and to carry on a pithy conversation or two, to learn of corresponding websites of interest or to bring some attention to your blog, you may not need many followers. To gain a few interesting ones may be enough for you. You may find them merely by searching for tweets with keywords of interest and perusing them until you find a few people with whom to communicate.

2. Specific business. If you are using Twitter to find customers or clients for a specific product or service for your business or for one you are thinking of offering, there is no need to gather a huge general group of followers. Many of them may have no interest in your business. Instead, it's much better to concentrate on following and being followed by those who may become customers, clients and business associates. If those in your list of followers have an interest in your business, it'll be much easier to know you are reaching your target audience with your tweets. Using Twitter for niche sales specifically works best when your followers and those you follow are on Twitter with the intent of communicating with one another.

3. Gaining attention. If you are on Twitter just for the good time of it all and to gain and to give some attention, you may not be interest in gathering specific followers in just one category. Rather you may want to follow a couple of news agencies, a couple of book stores in case they have specials and others specializing in topics of interest to you. It's a great way to find information and websites of interest to you.

4. The more followers the merrier. If your business is of interest to people from all walks of life, the quality of your followers will not matter. You'll want as many followers as possible because any of them could become customers. For example, if you run a restaurant, a movie house, or a newspaper, you will want all the customers you can get.

5. The extreme opposite of this is the private Twitter page. Some people of Twitter have chosen to protect their Tweets, meaning they only allow a specific list of people to see their Tweets. Private groups socialize or conduct business in this private way and have no interest in adding followers.

As you can see, there is no simple answer to whether quantity or quality of followers on Twitter is better. Determine which category you fall into and add followers accordingly.

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