I want to talk today about why your follower count on Twitter isn’t really as important as people think it is.

So I’m creeping towards 14,000 followers. That’s a fairly good number but… let’s take a look at the impressions I’ve received over the last month:

My impressions over the last 28 days.

Let’s also take a look at the stats for those 28 days as well…

Although my follower count isn’t super high, my impressions are pretty healthy for an account of this size. 613,000 are likely to have read my tweets. 1,726 people have clicked on my profile (and that’s down 22%!)

When I speak to people, most seem to think that having tens of thousands of people following you is the key. The above shows it isn’t. What is REALLY important is having content that people like and will hopefully retweet.

You could have a follower count of 1 but if the right people are retweeting your content you can achieve figures like these or much higher.

Okay Simon… how?

Using the right hashtags, correct use of Twitter lists, good Twitter following tactics, tweeting good quality content, getting involved in Twitter chats, the list is endless. It is possible to get a million or more impressions from a single tweet if the right people see it. Using the links in this paragraph will help you find them.

I see people often using 2 or 3 very popular hashtags but unless your tweet is seen at exactly the right moment, it will drop down that list in milliseconds. It is sometimes better to have 1 popular (or trending tag) and a couple of lesser used related tags so you can still be high up the result on those lesser known tags.