The quality versus quantity debate is an age-old issue for many communications professionals.  First, it was about AVE, with advertising equivalency associated to print coverage, then click throughs for email marketing and eventually readership figures for blogs. In 2009, Twitter followers have become the status symbol of choice, but how valuable are they really?

As today’s 140 character conference will no doubt prove, there’s no harm in wanting to grow your network. But where some people have gotten a little lost is boasting a huge number of followers without considering who makes up that list. There is nothing to be gained by accumulating spam followers; they aren’t listening to you.  The core members of your network, who engage and respond, are the ones that add value.

As we’ve outlined, a common mistake many people make about Twitter (or any other social media tool) is that it’s all about quantity. Because of this, there is now a huge number of third party applications that promise you thousands of additional followers in an instant – much like an online popularity contest.

Thousands of additional followers who aren’t listening to what you have to say aren’t worth much at all. Your value isn’t based on your follower count, it’s based on what you bring to the table, your reputation, relationships and, a lot of the time, how you behave. Then there’s the risk associated with handing over your password to a spam-tastic third party,  therefore giving an untrusted source access to your private information.

Another way that people build their network is to auto-follow, which can result in veritable chaos on your Twitter stream if you’ve chosen to grow by sheer probability alone. The odds are, if you follow 40,000 people, a large number of those people will return the favour. However, this reduces the value of your Twitter stream as a listening tool and information source, as well as making it obvious that you’ve employed this tactic.

This is actually discouraging to many that are looking to make meaningful connections. Many people use the  follow-to-follower ratio as a way of assessing someone’s ‘worth’ on Twitter, as opposed to sheer number of followers.

Though Twitter is a communications tools that can be interpreted in a variety of ways, including marketing, the idea that you can instantly produce thousands of new customers just isn’t viable. Change the setting; it’s not realistic to set up a stand in a supermarket, pay a member of staff to direct customers to gather around you – and expect people to automatically purchase something.

What is really needed is to cut through the hype that still surrounds Twitter, as well as the ‘get rich quick’ scams. Twitter is only truly effective when we don’t try to trick the system, but spend time finding its real value – which sometimes means connecting with a few key users, instead of a multitude of bots and spammers.