I’ve been trying to come to terms with twitter recently. I can see that in general, it’s a wonderful idea but, as I explore it more, I realise that it is awash with scammers and robots that spend all day posting the same old tweets that are advertising stuff – any stuff – the owners don’t care what they are advertising, as long as they get you to click on a contextualised link and make then a micropayment. But it all adds up.

I’ve noticed one kind of follower: Their picture is usually of a fit looking person, usually a studio shot, often looking like a corporate website photo from iStockPhoto.com. When you check them out, they follow several hundred people and have several hundred followers too. This they mange to do without having made any tweets at all! How?

They follow big names in a certain field and follow their followers too. Most people are so pleased to get followers, they follow their new followers out of gratitude and courtesy.

Those who don’t reciprocate after a few days are then unfollowed, to keep the followed figures looking about right. Why?

When they reach a set amount of followers, they will bombard them with tweets, carefully crafted to draw in those followers who have self-selected themselves as being fairly good targets.

Just because you have a thousand followers, it doesn’t mean anyone is reading your tweets. Having a thousand followers creates another problem. You will have so many tweets to read in a day, most of which will be total rubbish, that you will never find the good tweet amongst them all.

As a marketing tool, I beginning to think it’s a bit rubbish. You may have a well-targeted group following you, but there is such a small chance of them ever seeing your tweet, it’s hardly worth the effort.

The secret is to carefully weed out followers and those you follow, so you know that you have a really good list. But this takes time and great judgement. Unfollowing or blocking some people may cause offence!