Thousand of followers on Twitter doesn’t help you much. The more members you follow, the less some members will trust you. Some might even think that you are spamming, and that spamming is the only reason why you’re using Twitter. It’s all because of the number of members you’re following.

One of the first very interesting experiences I had using Twitter made me realize that Twitter is about the quality of the conversations, not the quantity.

I never spam, and I do my best to use Twitter the way I believe that it should be used. I never tweet direct sales messages. Therefore, I got surprised when I received the message from an English guy about three weeks ago. He accused me of spamming. The reason he accused me, was all due to the fact that I am following more than 11,000 members, and he said that I can’t possibly join conversations with all of them.

Well, that’s true. But, I asked him, is that what Twitter is all about, having conversations with all the members you are following?

I’m still waiting for his answer.

I believe that there are two things that members don’t understand about using Twitter.

It’s really about:

1. The quality of the conversation
2. It’s about trust

You don’t need to have conversations with hundreds of members at the same time. You need to focus on few members and topics you care about. In order to focus on conversations, you should track the conversations on twitter and search for topics worth tweeting about.

Now, just by adding a comment makes the conversation interesting, and it doesn’t have to be a long one. Chris Ming Ryan told me that he always appreciates my RTs. I replied to him and told him that his blog posts are of such a high quality, therefore, I’ll be sending him RTs for a long time. Now, the conversation ended with him telling me about his two problems when it comes to blogging. Frequency and getting the blog in the hands of more readers. Do you see, it all started with one Retweet, and ended up with something completely different.

When you share your thoughts, join conversations, and focus on quality and not quantity, you’ll eventually gain trust. When members start asking you questions, and start adding you to Twitter lists, other members will recognize you for something a lot different than a sales person.

The big NO is direct selling. Never tweet like this (I received both in my timeline about 5 minutes ago):

“Work at Home to Make Money – Online Based Opportunities – Business …”

“You Could Get Started Today Building A Business From Home For Less Than A Penny! Its Free & Powerful!”

The big YES is to start conversations by asking questions or publish statements. Something like (I received this in my timeline just a few minutes ago):

The four most important words in any marriage: “I’ll do the dishes.”

My bet is, this will get both retweets and some interesting feedback.

Another big YES is to add value to conversations. You could add value to the statement above, by saying that there are three words that are a lot more important (but not as funny) and that’s “I love you”.

If you continue with this, members will recognize you, and they will eventually trust you. They’ll look you up, and visit your website, and they’ll want to know more about you. You’ll get traffic from Twitter because you’re adding value.

About one hour ago I received the following direct message, from a guy I have never talked to, from a guy I don’t know anything about. This was clearly an auto-message, and a first impression I wouldn’t recommend:

“Welcome to my Billionaire world! I HIGHLY recommend this (affiliate link)”

He didn’t send me this message in order to start a conversation, to add value to a conversation or to gain trust. My guess is that very few members, if any, will click on his affiliate link. It’s really hard to say that this is an example of Twitter spam or not, but if it’s not spam, then what is it?