What's in a number?

Much has been made on the number of followers one has on Twitter.

While that's always been one of those pinball like numbers (who has THE HIGH SCORE??), I don't know that it really became the measuring stick it has until the whole Ashton Kutcher vs. CNN "who's gonna get a million followers first??!?!!" nonsense earlier this year.

The fact of the matter is that while getting commas in your follower count (you know, 4,815 followers; 6,324 followers; 162,342 follows) looks pretty, it ultimately doesn't matter if your followers are not your target audience.

Would you rather hit 10,000 people who don't care at all what you're saying, or 1,000 that care enough to not only listen, but to even pass the word on to their friends?

Sure, if you have a large enough number of followers, you're bound to get a few people in that bunch who do care. That's basically the infinite monkey theorem at work. And they might even pass it on to some of their friends.

But generally speaking, those pretty numbers don't amount to a hill of beans if they're not really paying attention. Who cares about a follower that doesn't really follow?

Having a large number of followers where only a few are the audience you're trying to reach also seems to defeat the purpose of Social Media Marketing. Whereas before we'd beam an ad across the television waves and bludgeon the masses, hoping that a few will blindly follow, now we have the ability to target those we want to reach, and thus, draw them in with material, information, and interaction they actually care about.

So be forewarned. If you're seeing those folks who promise to "GET YOU 10,000 FOLLOWERS WITHIN THREE DAYS!!!!", think carefully if you want a bunch of followers who don't really care about what you have to say. Think carefully about paying money to someone who is going to give you something you don't need.

If you don't know how to drive, and you can't afford your own driver, you're not likely to buy a car, so why would you do something similar here?

Then again, if you 10,000 followers, and they're your target, and they're paying attention, well, you've struck Social Media gold, but I honestly believe the only way you're going to build a following like that is if you mine it yourself, or with the help of someone who knows who to build something, not how to send out a million invites to follow you.