The uneducated chase for massive followers on Twitter, usually facilitated by a scam method like Brute Force Twitter, is becoming increasingly futile. Spam loaded Twitter accounts are generated every second, usually powered by some ridiculous automated system that only enables the dumb spammer to furnish his account with thousands of other spammers. Zombie accounts following other zombie accounts.

Sure, the numbers might look impressive but there is, literally, nobody home.

Despite the continued pollution of the Twittersphere it is still possible to grow a substantial and credible community around your Twitter account. And you can do it in only ten minutes a day.

Some of you might squirm a little at that last statement. Under ten minutes a day. I must admit, it does sound like one of those promises dished out liberally by the Brute Force bunch. But it’s true. Admittedly, what I am about to show you is a ten minute addition to your current Twitter routine, since obviously you have to maintain your account in the normal way, but it still achieves the same result.

The theory behind this method is very simple to understand. Your Twitter account’s credibility and power is only governed by two things. The content your provide and the quality of your followers.

Quality, not quantity.

The quantity of your followers should only be seen as a leverage device. For instance, ten quality followers is better than one thousand zombie followers but, clearly, one hundred quality followers is better still.

At this point I’d like to add a quick note about my stance on automatically following anyone who follows you. Opinions across the Twiterspehere are divided over this point but, personally, I feel the pros outweigh the cons. I follow everyone who follows me automatically using socialtoo. I do this for a number of reasons. Firstly I do not want to risk offending anyone by not reciprocating. Secondly I feel that even though many of those followers may be of questionable quality, and many may indeed be automatically generated, they still increase my presence on other Twitter accounts. And, as long as I use tools like Tweet Deck to enable me to have an elite list of followers that I genuinely follow and pay attention to, I can keep the zombies off my radar whilst still maintaing an increasingly large presence on their automated Twitter guns.

The key, therefore, is to find people in your niche who you consider to have interesting or particularly high quality Twitter accounts. People who you would like to be followed by. People whose audience you would like to tap into. If you follow them and your account is a good fit it is likely that two things will happen. Firstly they will follow you back and secondly their audience will see you and, if they also like what they see, follow you as well.

If either of those things happen you will benefit.

Please note that this is not the same as randomly following anything that moves in order to generate vacuous zombie reciprocal followers. Yes, it is still initiating contact by following a quality target, but my method advocates following your target with a view to genuinely interacting with them, and their audience. Conversely, the scam methods like Brute Force Twitter, advocate bulk following tactics followed by bait and switch removal of those targets so that your following allowance remains intact whilst your reciprocal follows mount up.

Whilst I am advocating reciprocal following I am absolutely not suggesing that anyone use bulk following and bait and switch tactics to generate hit and run follows.

My method builds a core of credible and long lasting contacts. Brute Force Twitter builds an army of zombie followers.

And which one of those accounts do you think will be of more use to you?

To get you started I’m going to suggest a handful of Twitter accounts that I think you should follow. I’ve chosen these accounts for different reasons that I will outline as a list the usernames one by one.

Roger Byrne @styletime. Roger has been an online friend of mine for a few years now. And he is partly responsible for my decision to finally open a Twitter account. A down to earth guy who doesn’t have a lot of time for the flowery compliments that are often thrown his way, it’s hard to describe Roger without making him blush. Since I genuinely respect his social media talents I will also respect his wishes and not embarrass him by calling him a Twitter Jedi like many others have done. Follow Roger @styletime and read his blog at socialmediafish.com.

Joshua Goodwin @hairyegg. Joshua is still at the very start of his online career but has already racked up an appearance on a number of high profile CSS showcases whilst maintaing a very strong, and incredibly entertaining, writing style. His Twitter account is small but perfectly formed and, from what I have seen of his writing, definitely one to watch and follow. It is my opinion, and I have mentioned this to Josh on a couple of occasions, that his writing will, eventually once he has been picked up on the mainstream media radar, land him some sort of high end comedy writing gig. I can picture myself sitting in a cinema a few years from now watching the credits roll by as everyone else leaves and seeing the name Joshua Goodwin appear as a screen writing credit of some sort. And then I will sit back and be happy that I knew him, albeit only online, and did my bit to promote him while he was still unknown. Follow Josh @hairyegg and read his blog at joshuagoodwin.com.

Zoe Keating @zoecello. Zeo’s Twitter biography says everything you need to know about her. Cello, computers and pancakes. The daily twitterings of a professional avant cellist and amateur nerd. But this professional avant cellist and amateur nerd has leveraged the power of her blog and her social media presence to rocket her Twitter following to over three hundred and sixty thousand followers. If you are a musican you should follow her. If you like computers you should follow her. And, if you are a nerd or just like pancakes you should follow her. Either way, follow Zoe @zoecello and read her blog at zoekeating.com.

Ten minutes a day. That’s all it takes. Find a handful of accounts that are attractive to you and follow them. Engage with them, reply to them, make it obvious that you are someone who is worthy of their attention and they will, almost certainly, give you their attention. And, perhaps more importantly for your blog traffic, the attention of their audience as well.