My friend Doug Karr’s recent post, Dear Twitter, Please Stop the Following Madness, decries the number of auto-follows that have been plaguing Twitter as of late. Auto-follows are those little scripts that people execute to gain a big number of followers quickly.

I don’t know what compels someone to cheat the numbers to get empty eyeballs. What kind of ego do you need to have to go down that road? I’m not sure but it really irritates me. My 5,000 followers used to mean something. Now I’m well over 6,000… but many of the new followers are auto-follow phonies.

We’ve even written about how building big followers is done, and about the problems with Twitter spam. But it’s not something we condone. In fact, while we do want our clients to build up a big following, it needs to be with people who are actually valuable to them, and can contribute to their success on Twitter and in social media.

There’s no reason you need 10,000 followers when you really only want 1,000 fans.

Let’s say you manufacture marbles (I always use marbles in my examples, because I’m tired of saying “widgets”). Your corporate blog is about making marbles, exciting new developments in the marble-making field, and of course, the results of the World Marbles Championship. As a result, your blog ranks high for anyone searching for information about marbles, whether its the game or the object. (By the way, there really are entire groups of marble collectors. They have their own conferences and everything.)

The same focus you put into your blog needs to put into your Twitter efforts.If you’re a marble manufacturer, you want to follow people whose hobbies are marbles. There’s @GlassMarbles, a glass marble collector, and @GAYM (Got All Your Marbles?), who makes jewelry out of marbles. These two people are worth following, because they would probably follow you back.

Then, check out who they’re following and who’s following them. Follow those people, but be selective about it. A Twitter auto-follower will run a script that will follow everyone in their network. A smart Twitter user will select only those people who a) can better contribute to my understanding of what clients want, and b) are more receptive to hearing from me.

Twitter spammers and scammers are posting all kinds of advice on how to get over 10,000 followers in a matter of days. I don’t follow these people, and will oftentimes even block them. I’ve even begun blocking people who are already following me. Sure it’s going to hurt my follower count, but I’m more concerned with quality not quantity.

Doug pleaded with Twitter to do something about the auto-follow systems, because they’re overburdening Twitter. They’ve already got enough problems with the Fail Whale rearing its happy-but-annoying head, and now the scammers are bringing the whale to the surface on a regular basis.

But it’s not only up to Twitter. As Twitter users, we need to take a stand and stop spammers from clogging up the Twitterverse. There are a few things you can do to help.

1. Block all spammers, Internet marketers who promise to make you money, and people who post the same Tweets over and over. Check out a Twitterer’s page before you follow back. If enough people block a person, Twitter will take heed and shut them down.
2. Turn off auto-return follow. Once you start getting inundated with follow notices, it’s tempting to auto-follow, to save you some time. But they’re counting on this. Turn it off, and be choosy about who you follow.
3. Report spammers. Send a note to with the name of the offending spammer. Again, if Twitter receives enough @spam notes, they’ll shut the person down.

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