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"The Digital Influencers Series is supported by Waggener Edstrom Worldwide (WE). To learn how to measure influence, visit http://waggeneredstrom.com/driveinfluence.\nGuy Kawasaki and Robert Scoble have vastly different philosophies when it comes to gathering Twitter followers. Kawasaki puts his bluntly: \u201CMy strategy is that Twitter is a marketing broadcast platform, and so the way it gets to be the best platform you could have is to have as many different followers as possible, which to put it mildly, is radically different from most people \u2014 who believe they should have a Kumbaya soulful experience with every follower.\u201D\nScoble, on the other hand, is more of a quality over quantity kind of guy: \u201CCaring about number of followers is going to take you down a path that\u2019s not very satisfying\u2026Even if you get the numbers, if you\u2019re surrounded by a million [jerks], is that as much fun as being surrounded by a thousand brilliant, fun, great people?\u201D\nBoth Kawasaki \u2014 the co-founder of media aggregation site Alltop, author of nine books, and former Apple Fellow who uses Twitter to broadcast the interesting articles collected at Alltop \u2014 and Scoble, a blogger who has carved out a niche in world-changing technologies, have met their own definitions of success. Kawasaki has more than 300,000 followers on Twitter.  Scoble has about 146,500 and a Klout score higher than Lady Gaga\u2019s (though she does admittedly have roughly a 6.5 million person lead in number of followers).\nWe spoke with Kawasaki and Scoble to get their keys to Twitter success. Here\u2019s what their advice had in common.\n1. Aim for a Reasonable Goal\n\n\n\n\nThere are two ways people end up with millions of Twitter followers. One of them is to be Lady Gaga or Justin Bieber kind of famous. The other is to have been lucky enough to be included on one of Twitter's early \"suggested\" lists. Assuming that you aren't a celebrity, neither of these is an option (Twitter has done away with the suggestion feature that laid the foundation for many a blockbuster Twitter account). Don't try to get 1 million followers. Instead, aim for a more reasonable goal.\nKawasaki puts the critical mass of Twitter users at about 5,000. \"For me, with a 300,000 follower base, when I ask a question...I will get 20 answers,\" Kawasaki says. \"I think if I had 5,000 followers, I would get one or two answers, which is all I really need. I think 5,000 is a good number. Any less and you\u2019re not really at critical mass, you don\u2019t have a breadth and diversity of followers. Any more and it starts becoming a full-time job to keep them happy.\"\nInstead of setting out to compete with Lady Gaga for the highest number of followers, both Kawasaki and Scoble suggest looking elsewhere for signs of success. \"Are you dominating the conversation about a niche? Or are you even involved? If you want to be the place for discussing cookies, and whenever I do a search for cookies I don\u2019t see your name, that means you don\u2019t have influence,\" Scoble says. \"If I do see your name, you\u2019re part of the conversation, people are reacting to you, and you have  lots of followers who are cookie makers \u2014 if Ghirardelli Square is following you and you have a conversation with Ghiradelli Square about chocolate and cookies \u2014 then I would say you are getting to the point when you have influence.\"\nConsider how many people retweet you, what Twitter Lists you're on, and how many people check out the sources that you recommend when deciding how much influence you have. Sites like Klout and PeerIndex attempt to assign this quality a number, but Scoble suggests not relying on these metrics, either.\n\"If you can get to 1,000 people who are crazy about what you're crazy about, that's pretty cool,\" he says.\n2. Put in Some Quality Time\n\nYou wouldn't expect to master basketball by shooting a Nerf ball through your cubicle hoop a couple of times a day, so don't expect to get good at Twitter without some effort. \n\"For me, it's not a sort of casual, drop-by whatever,\" Kawasaki says. \"It is a core of my function to tweet and get followers. It's not a hobby for me, nor is it is a diversion.\"\nKawasaki writes about 100 tweets a day, most of which drive traffic to Alltop. He may be an extreme example, but the point holds true for any of the non-celebrity among us. In order to attract and maintain followers, you need to work at giving them consistent, interesting information.\n3. Pick a Niche\n\nIf you want to be known as the source for a certain topic on Twitter, make it a very specific topic. Scoble suggests starting out by thinking about what you're passionate about. \"If that\u2019s politics,\" he says, \"you have a lot of competition. There\u2019s\u2026tons of sites and media companies that talk about politics. So being recognized as somebody who is credible in politics is really tough...But it\u2019s not so hard to be credible on something really, really small and very, very niche.\"\nIn other words, don't pick \"politicians;\" pick \"republicans who wear blue ties.\" Don't pick \"wine;\" pick \"merlots.\" Scoble points to All Facebook as an example of this strategy in action. When this site launched, larger sites were already established as the go-to sources for the tech space as a whole. All Facebook built a reputation by becoming the go-to source for specifically Facebook news.\n\"Once you get recognized that you\u2019re good at covering a small niche,\" Scoble says. \"Then you can build out your brand and talk about other things.\"\n4. Keep Your Tweets Relevant to Your Niche\n\n\"The reason why people follow me is not because I\u2019m some kind of hot babe,\" Kawasaki says. \"It\u2019s because I provide interesting links.\"\nIf you're not a celebrity, you need to be interesting in order to get people to follow you. And the only way to be consistently interesting is to find interesting things. More specifically, you need to find interesting things that fit your niche.\n\"It\u2019s not clear that you want Lance Armstrong to be finding interesting things about thermonuclear dynamics,\" Kawasaki says. \"But if Lance Armstrong found an interesting link about fighting cancer or riding bikes, a lot of people would find that interesting and retweet him.\"\n5. Respond in Order to Engage\n\nKawasaki always tries to respond to his Twitter followers. \"I think that one has a moral obligation,\" he says. \"If someone asks you a question, then it\u2019s rude not to answer. That\u2019s at one level. The next level is that [responding] helps you get even more followers because people see that you are interacting with someone that they follow, and also it gives the person that you responded to added motivation to tell other people to follow you.\"\nThough Scoble isn't able to respond to 100% of what is tweeted at him, he does make an effort to respond to about 80%. \"If you are [able to respond to a majority of tweets], that\u2019s great,\" he says. \"That will get more people to engage with you, because they know that you are listening. And when they engage with you, they send more followers, because they\u2019re talking about you with your Twitter handle.\"\nSeries Supported by Waggener Edstrom Worldwide\n\n\n\n\nThe Digital Influencers Series is supported by Waggener Edstrom Worldwide (WE). How do you measure your brand\u2019s influence in fast-moving online mediums? Winning and maintaining social influence demands ongoing measurement of conversations, trends and responses. Waggener Edstrom Worldwide finds the most influential voices that have the biggest impact on campaigns. To learn how to measure influence, visit http://waggeneredstrom.com/driveinfluence.\nMore Social Media Resources from Mashable:\n- HOW TO: Become a Foursquare Power User- 5 Most Engaged Brands in Social Media- 5 Ways to Get a Job Through YouTube- 17 Web Resources to Help You Decide on Election Day- How Job Seekers May Use Social Media in the Future\nImages courtesy of iStockphoto, Bibigon,lammeyer, redmal, DeanProductions"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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