Firstly, the disclaimer:
I don't claim to be a 'Twitter expert' (like many people do, and probably are); nor claim to be a 'travel expert' (like many people do, and probably are not); although I have been to more countries than most and use Twitter in a way that appeals to me.

There are quite possibly more 'marketing pros' and 'experts', according to some of the Twitter profiles I've seen, than there are things to market; unless they're all supposed to be pros at marketing themselves - which some people clearly are, while others fail miserably.

Anyway

Having spent a lot of time on Twitter lately (probably too much) looking at travel-related Twitter profiles I have to ask: If you want - or already have - thousands of followers, is it really worth it?

To get thousands of followers - and keep them - (celebrities excluded) some people tend to follow, or follow back, thousands of people; presuming it's the 'done thing to do'.

This means you'll have more tweets pouring in than you can probably handle and may even miss the sweet tweets from the tweeps you're really interested in.

Credit to the Twitter masters who seem to cope with this, but even some of them admit that they aren't really reading the tweets of all the people they 'follow' but do check the @Replies.

I guess this could be a guage of who's really following and interested enough in what they're following - by the replies received.

The reply feature, however, can also be open to abuse; and with the thousands of people you're following, replying to the thousands of people they're following, it can soon seem like you're sitting in a communications centre with all lines open and plenty of wires crossed (unless you turn the @replies off in your settings).

To Some People, Twitter Seems To Be a Numbers Game

To keep up with the numbers, there are all sorts of tools available to help find people who are more likely to follow you back; to alert you of who isn't following you back; or - heaven forbid - decides to follow you no longer.

Then there are the people who get offended by others, who don't follow back all their followers, and are not afraid to make a tweet about it.

As Evan Williams, founder of Twitter (and Blogger) said, on Mar 12th; in reply to a concerned Natali Del Conte:

"Please ignore follow-ratio nazis. They're confused about what makes Twitter work. To each their own."

And that would be my advice: forget about the numbers; be true to (and about) yourself; use Twitter how you want to; and just be thankful that, beneath all the numbers, there are some people who really are interested about what you have to share online. Aren't there?

Personally, I like to see an interesing mix of tweets from the people I follow and hope to provide the same.

Do I really appeal to thousands of followers? Probably not, if they all expect me to follow them back and get offended if I don't.

To those who do follow me on Twitter, I thank you!