I am probably in the minority, but I do not ever plug my blog on twitter, don’t advertise it…don’t even advertise my design business, except on my twitter home page. I use Twitter to cultivate relationships, not for my own personal gain. (And because Twitter is a lot of fun!). This is not to say I won’t ever do so, but it is not my main reason for being on Twitter.

I wouldn’t care if I had only 10 followers, if they were people that I have quality relationships with. However, having a larger following does give me more opportunities to cultivate those relationships. You never know when/where it will come from. I love learning from all of you, but at the same time, it’d make me very happy if you said “Hello, how are you?” (and meant it) once in a while instead of sitting on the sidelines. You all have something unique to add.

Yes Andrew, I agree with that. Recent Twitter clean up have made a lot of changes too. They have removed many spammers from this network. Have you noticed that from your new followers?”

I didn’t actually notice the change that twitter made because I was constantly dropping spammers as soon as I identified them. If I get a new follower and get a DM that has an affiliate link or a ‘want to learn how to get more followers’ message I unfollow immediately. Also even if that doesn’t happen but I notice an abundance of affiliate links being tweeted, especially if the user picture is of a sexy looking girl, dollar signs, or some other obscure image I’ll drop those users as well. Just today I drop 5 new followers because of these reasons.

Use twitter as a sales tool and you’ll fail. Use it to help people and they’ll want to listen to everything you have to say and recommend you to their friends.