There is an ongoing debate in twitter world about whether follower growth is a worthwhile pursuit or not. Purists argue that twitter is a tool for updating friends, family, and co-workers. Others argue that twitter has relevance as an alternative communications channel, and that large followings can drive traffic, influence purchasing decisions, strengthen customer intimacy, and assist with self-promotion.
Of course, it can also be used to spam and annoy others. Then, so can email, snail mail, phone calls, and just about any other medium. I think the answer lies somewhere in-between. Utopia exists where those that just want to chat with friends can do so without being bombarded with junk, and others are able to use the medium to influence, while simultaneously creating value for their followers too.
Below is a list of reasons why having a large following on twitter may be worthwhile. If you're undecided about whether to grow your following or not, then hopefully this will give you something to think about. Of course, there are also valid reasons not to grow your following, but that is a job for another article.
1) Search Engine Rankings
Pagerank is the term most-often cited for influencing your position in Google search results. Google ranks sites using this, and it is heavily influenced by the number and quality of links to a site. A full discussion of this is beyond this article, but you can find many good descriptions of it on the web. Much discussion has taken place around whether tweeted links will affect your search results ranking. The straight-forward answer is no. The reason is that twitter uses "nofollow" attributes in their links. This tells Google not to use the links, and hence it does not count towards any ranking.
The real answer is a little more complicated however. Tweets aren't only presented on twitter. They also get pulled via the API into widgets, blogs, and other websites. The API doesn't insert "nofollow" attributes, and so it's quite possible that some of these other sites present the links unmodified. There will therefore be some indirect influence on your rank via these other sources. Some other search engines like Ask.com ignore the "nofollow" tag, so tweeted links can affect their rankings directly.
Links that pass via a large number of followers also tend to be clicked. Click-through-rates (CTR's) will vary depending on the quality of your following, but they will drive traffic, albeit in low ratios sometimes. This increased usage will affect your rankings. Finally, it's understood that the search spiders do cache and index these links too. This obviously carries some value as well.
2) Social Proof
The truth is that human behavior is very much influenced by social proof. People will always be more willing to listen to what someone has to say if they see others listening or endorsing that person. This fact influences every part of our society, and twitter is no different. You are more likely to be followed (and be listened to) if you have a large following already. It's the same reason testimonials are so important.
3) Driving Traffic
The larger your following, the more traffic you can drive somewhere. The same holds true for the quality of interaction between you and your following. Put the two together and you can exert considerable influence on the web. When you tweet a link people will click on it. As your following grows, the CTR will diminish usually, but it will still create clicks. It's possible to build an account with adequate CTR's on a very a large following. This means you can drive a few hundred people to a web page within a few minutes. If you have your own website or blog, then this can become a quick and affordable way to create pageviews for your content.
4) Viral Effect
This goes hand-in hand with the previous point. As you grow your followers, so will the number of retweets you get from people (assuming you can keep the tweets interesting of course). As the number of retweets grows, so do the click-through's from those retweets. The percentages may seem small at times, but done at scale, and the number of visitors you can drive to a page can reach a couple of thousand within a day or two. It's the viral effect, and the greater your following the better your results will be from it.
5) Branding
Although this should always be part of a larger marketing strategy, the very fact that your profile is flashing across peoples screens will create some awareness for you. It's obviously really important that you don't abuse that privilege. Spam your followers with low-quality updates and they're likely to build a negative attitude towards you. Being helpful, interesting, and adding value can only help your brand.
6) Expert Power
If your game is to be the guru, then building a following on twitter is very relevant. Due to the broadcast nature of the system, when you help people out you create visibility for your expertise. You don't even have to be very active to be effective here. Just by being mildly active in your area of expertise you're likely to build relevance as an expert. You will get referrals too, and these referrals will also be seen by the followers of the people sending them. This all goes hand-in with social proof. Initially, an expert with a large following will be perceived as genuine. Of course, it's your job to maintain that credibility thereafter. If you are a blogger, then you need to pay attention to this point.
7) Conformity
It's human nature to try to conform. This permeates every part of society - we're programmed this way. Sure, we may try to rebel at times, we may feel the urge to be individuals, but deep down we always tend to conform. Experiments have proven this over and over again. Having a large twitter following can help to exploit this trait. If you have thousands of people following you, you can be sure that many more will follow you first out of curiosity, but will then continue to out of conformity. After all, if thousands of others have found you interesting, then maybe so should they.
8) Belief Consistency
Following on from the previous point, people will also naturally attempt to make their beliefs and behaviors consistent with each other. Tell a child they are lazy, even if they are not, and you can be sure that they will become lazy in the future. What we believe, we tend to become, and vice versa. If someone follows you because you have thousands of followers already, they're likely pay attention to what you're saying (especially if you are not following them back). The reason for this is their need to make their beliefs consistent with their behavior. Subconsciously they will feel that they must be following you for some valid reason, otherwise why would they be following you? Their belief system will need to change to include you as an interesting person. If they actually do read tweets, then they're very likely to read yours due to this.
9) Fewer Options
If you present someone with too many options, they're likely to get frustrated and go elsewhere. Presenting potential customers with just enough options to cover their needs, while making it quick and easy for them to select amongst the options, is the way to win them over. The same dynamic exists when people choose whom to pay attention to. They want to find the interesting people to follow, without having to evaluate every option. Unfortunately, one of the only things they have to go on initially is follower size. If you have a large number of followers, then in their minds you may be one of the few top options at first glance.
Final Thought
All of this assumes we are talking about followers that actually read their tweets. Some followers obviously do not, and many only follow you in the hope that you will follow them back. Regardless of this, a large percentage do participate, and it's this segment that is most affected by the points above. Hopefully this has given you a few things to think about when it comes to choosing your follower size.
