Getting more Twitter followers seems to be a big trend and, at the same time, a heated topic of debate in social media.

When I launched the new NateRiggs.com last week, I sent a direct message to Chris to let him know a new design was up and running and to get his feedback on anything I might have missed.

Hat tip to Chris, as he was kind enough to share the content via a tweet to his tweeps, which, might I add, is more than ten times my current sphere of influence on Twitter.  What you’re looking at in the screenshot of my Google analytics was, in large part, the result of one mention from Chris.  Pretty crazy spike in web traffic, huh?

Two Sides of Using Twitter
There are two sides to the Twitter followers argument.  Let’s break it down.

• People who believe that you should only spend time on Twitter connecting with the people you actually know or will some day meet
• People who believe that on Twitter you can gain information flow and a potential advantage from connecting with just about anyone

My personal opinion on the issue goes back to one question: How do you want to use the tool?

Localization & Niche
In their book, Tactical Transparency, Shel Holtz and John C. Havens make a comparison of Twitter to “a sort of Web 2.0 telegraph system.”  That definition would bucket the medium as a two-way communication tool, focused on the sending and receiving of messages between humans.  I’ve always liked that definition.

If you think about it, we as Twitter users tend to have online conversations with the same groups of people on a regular basis.  For the most part, your active core followers will be made up of the people you interact with on a regular basis.  This can be determined by your geographic location and even your niche interests, depending on how frequently you engage, but you will have some type of deeper relationship offline with the people you tweet with most frequently.

If you live in Columbus, Ohio, you probably tweet frequently with other Columbus natives.  If you are a marketer, you might tweet with other marketers who live outside of your home base.  Much like the profile-centric social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn or Ning communities, for example), Twitter has started to make a move to it’s own niche communities.  The localization of Twitter lists and, more recently, location-based trending topics, would seem to suggest that microblogging is becoming a smaller and more manageable world.

For some users, keeping a smaller follower and following base makes sense in regards to using it as a fast and effective communication tool.  This approach is not much different than how users would view text messaging.

Broadcast Approach
One the other hand, Twitter has been compared by many to a sort of broadcast tool, with similar qualities to how radio waves are sent out to the masses.  There’s merit in this argument in that the rules of the medium and the ease of following new people make it very useful for sharing information with the masses.  In the case of helping me to promote my new blog design, Chris was able to double my blog traffic by tapping into his social graph with one well-positioned tweet of less than 140 characters.

So, what does all that mean?

Numbers Game
In the more promotional sense, Twitter is a numbers game.

What I mean is that you can expect a very small percentage of your followers to actually convert on any action you would like them to take.  Those actions could be to retweet your content, follow a link or even engage with you in conversation via replys or direct messages.  At any rate, your percentage of action will be small.

Always keep in mind that there are literally thousands of tweets streaming through the system every minute.  In the context of an expansive microblog, it’s easy for content to get buried and disappear.  By adding more followers to your account, your small percentage of conversion will grow in parallel.

To illustrate this idea, let’s say that your tweets convert at a 1% rate.  Here’s the basic math:

• 1,000 followers X .01 = 10 people who’ve clicked on your link
• 10,000 followers X .01 = 100 people who’ve clicked on your link
• 100,000 followers X .o1 = 1,000 people who’ve clicked on your link

Pretty simple.

Why then would getting more Twitter followers be to your advantage?

The truth is, if you want to use Twitter for more promotional actions like building blog readership, creating awareness of your Facebook page or website, or any conversion-focused activity, actively building your base of followers is going to be time well spent.  If you’re more focused on using Twitter in the communication sense, you may not need to spend the time expanding your following.

How are you using Twitter today?  Do you see any advantage to changing your strategy?

nateriggs

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