There’s a problem with the Big Follow strategy, though. Why the “Big Follow” Strategy doesn’t work?

If you want people to see your Tweets on Twitter, you gotta have followers. Obviously, that can drive a person to commit himself or herself to building up the biggest follower base possible as quickly as possible.

One of the most popular techniques to get those followers in place is to start following others. There’s a tendency out there in Twitterland for those who’ve been followed to follow in return. That generous reciprocity can make it easy to build a follower list that will really turn heads.

That’s why following as many people as you can without setting off the “you’re probably a spammer or a bot” alarm is such a popular technique for new Twitter marketers.

Yes, you get the followers. The problem is that you get a bunch of followers who aren’t really interested in anything you’re saying. They followed out of kindness, ignorance or because they’re not really a human being an they’re programmed to follow when followed.

When it comes time to market to that motley crew, you can guess just how effective it is. It’s like cold-calling the first set of numbers in the phone book or emailing random addresses. It’s not targeted and It doesn’t convert.

You best bet is to focus on building a truly interested and targeted social network. The results will be a lot better than what you get with the “big follow” technique. Read more in our Twitter book: Twitter Marketing Secrets

Every once in awhile, even the best Twitter users around find themselves losing followers. People just drop away, without explanation. Sometimes, it’s easy to track the reason why. If you lose several followers every time you make a highly-charged political Tweet (not usually a good idea, by the way), it doesn’t require a genius to figure out what’s happening.

Sometimes, though, you’ll lose a follower (or several) for no apparent reason. Just to make you feel a little better when that happens, here a few potential explanations.

Sometimes, Twitter cleans house and they cancel “bad accounts”. You may have several followers who weren’t really interested in being part of the Twittersphere. We’re talking about spam accounts and robot accounts. You can see a follower reduction because of that house-cleaning.

There are other cases when you’ll lose followers simply because the person who had been keeping tabs on you comes to the realization that you’re not supplying him or her with what they need. That may very well be because they chose to follow you without first understanding what you were all about. Don’t take it personally. You can’t be everything to everyone.

Those are two potential reasons why you might see a drop in followers even if you’re handling your account the right way. Shedding a few followers can be a completely normal happening, unrelated to anything you may have Tweeted.