There is no more 21st century markting without having a twitter account. So it seems. Or that is probably what the marketing guys from your agency are going to tell you. And: You will, to look good, need to get followers. Otherwise noone might read your messages. So much I would agree on. But: Buying followers or even using automatic tools is really worthless. So I have setup a list of the top ten indicators your twitter followers are worthless

The top ten indicators your twitter followers are worthless:

1. You bought them. Honestly, this does not get you anywhere. No matter how “specific” the “target group” has been chosen, you will receive a lot of trash.
2. You are no longer reading the tweets. Sounds ridiculous, but if you are following too many people, your “inbox” is going to be jammed. Receiving 20 tweets every 20 seconds is ridiculous, as you cannot read that much.
3. You are receiving tweets about twitter marketing. Ten of them every hour. Including tiny url links. Honestly, if these people were as successful as they claim to be, they would not setup cheap websites. They would work in company consulting.
4. Your are using autofollow. Autofollow provided by some websites seems logical: If someone if following you, you will automatically follow them. So much about theory. But: this has really been exploited by some submisson services, so again you will receive 95 per cent trash followers.
5. You are receiving tweets in languages you do not understand. Anything to add? Nope.
6. You do not receive any clicks from the links in your tweets. Well, of course there may be different reasons like bad texting. But if these people were following you because they are any interested in your subject they would click it. Honestly.
7. One out of 30 tweets contains the word “success” or “click here”. Welcome to twitter spam hell. None of your real friends would make suggestions like that on their public tweets.

Do not get me wrong: I like twitter alot and I see its potential. But making the number of followers an equivalent to web credibility is as stupid as looking at the number of visitors on your website. Please add more if you know any.