A new study published by Cornel University shows that when it comes to twitter, quality is much more important than quantity - but we're talking in terms of people who actually follow you as well as your tweets.
This calculation takes into account not only how many followers you have, but how likely people respond and retweet to your posts. Check out the rankings of the metric devised by Cornell contrasted with the most followed twitter accounts on the web.
As you can see, very few of the top followed accounts have true influence - when it comes to followers, Lady Gaga and Brit Brit get that medal. However, in terms of a community that engages and responds to information, Mashable and CNN take the prize.
What good is having a large community if they don't communicate with you?
Having a large number of followers is great, but if people aren't actively - and I'll use this word again - engaging with your content, then you have a stale community, and that is much more troublesome than one that small but active.
Why is it that we want so badly to have the most followers? In order to expand our reach, and there's nothing wrong with that. If you never go back and cultivate your followers, you're left with a faux shell community who doesn't respond, interact, or authentically grow.
Work on building a community. Forget quantity, and concentrate on the quality and depth of your interactions.
DeAndre