When people talk about Twitter, they first think about numbers. How many people are following person X and why are not so many people following me, is the first question most people have in mind. However, Twitter is not just about getting followed, it’s much more than that these days, as an established profile is worth more than money can buy.

Let me explain this in easy to understand terms. Twitter has become more than just a service where people follow their friends, favourite companies or organizations. When Twitter first started, this was the case, but things have changed. Today, Twitter stands for a place where you can find out what people care about, and in many cases when it comes to company accounts on Twitter, it also stands for reputation.

Imagine if you want to sign up for a new web host, but you are not sure if you should make the “switch” or not – Twitter can help you with your decision, because you can easily look-up your new host’s Twitter account to find out what other people think about their service, support and also how the companies “support guys” deal with public requests (or in simple terms: Tweets).

Such insights can help you save valuable time and money, since you will know many things about a company in terms of service and support before you even touch your credit card.

You might think that this has two sides, like it can be positive for the company to have an account and showcase how great their support is, but it can also destroy a company’s reputation, if they ignore questions on services like Twitter or if they are simply rude with their replies. However, in most cases there are professionals (like PR people) behind company accounts who know how to deal with “rude” questions, so that’s no issue.

Now let’s cover your personal account. You might not be a company owner, so you don’t really care about all that “company stuff” above. However, you should care about your Twitter account as much as companies do, as your Twitter account can be the key to your future.

Imagine you are looking for a new job and your possible new employer asks you for your personal social network account(s) – and many companies do this these days to find out more about people who apply for a job. Your chances to get the job you want are much higher if you have an established Twitter account than if you have nothing “solid” to show off.

Here is where services like Twiends come in handy, as they help you build a solid base of followers, while ensuring everything runs along with Twitter’s Terms of Service. Twiends is a great service to build a follower base, but there is more to do than just clicking “Follow” and waiting for others to follow you.

Interact

Today, it’s most important to interact with people you follow and also with people that follow you, because the number of followers is not what matters. What matters is the content you post on Twitter, how much you interact with others, how many people react to your tweets.

This is what people call “Social Influence”, and social influence is very important these days, because your future “Boss” will be more interested in you, if he can see that you are able to influence people, that your tweets are “important” to others and that your tweets might even help some people out there, because they contain informative, useful and educating content. Think about it as your portfolio on the web, where you can show off who you are, how you deal with things, how you are able to influence people and if you know something about a specific niche, how you are able to help people who are not as skilled as yourself.

If you were a company owner and you would see a helpful person who is able to influence others while having skills, then you already know who you would hire – yourself!

Going back to cover company owners a little bit more, Twitter is again a very valuable “Tool” if it comes to promoting your company, finding new employees and showcasing what you do and how well you do it. However, there is more than just showing off who you and your company are. Twitter has also become a very important source for search engines, as more and more search engines take social networking and its signals into account when ranking websites.

Google for example recently started to push their +1 service and take it into account when ranking websites. Sure, this has just started, but soon, social interaction will become more important than submitting your site to search engines. Why? Because search engines are able to “check you out”, see how established your account is (account age vs. content), who you interact with and also how important you are or your company is.

Simply put, if your website ranks well and your social media accounts are established, then your chance to rank above your competition is largely improved. Sure, there are many other factors than just Twitter, but social media is becoming more and more important to search engines, company owners and other people like journalists, who are willing to cover your company in their articles.

All that said, if you think about Twitter next time, make sure you don’t think about numbers only. The most important thing is establishing trust, communicating with people who you are interested in, while not forgetting to “talk back” to people who are interested in you. Twiends can help you by establishing a base amount of followers, so you don’t have to start from scratch.

However, you should never forget that YOU are the one who needs to post interesting, unique and informative content on Twitter, or people will simply lose interest in you or your company. And that is something you don’t want, do you?