Twitter is an amazing platform for anyone who is interested in expanding their network, keeping up with trends, and sharing content in real time. It’s the go-to social media channel for many professional athletes, celebrities, and business professionals, and can lead to amazing connections and build valuable relationships.

As with other social media channels like Facebook and LinkedIn, numbers are a prominent part of the Twitter landscape, on display 24/7 for everyone to see. Wrapped up in this package is the list of people you are following, as well as your list of followers. When you are just starting out on a site like Twitter, it can be very tempting to want to pad your numbers in order to look more important.

But just like the tween girls who pad their bras to impress older boys (and of course you know someone who did this!), the truth will eventually come out. And you’ll be slowly walking home with tears streaking down your cheeks after the party where that boy you’ve had a crush on all year found out your secret and told everyone in the room.

Authenticity Rules the Roost

Just like it’s a good idea to present your genuine self to others in the real world, it’s in your best interest to be genuine and authentic on Twitter, too. Not only will you get more people interested in you, they will be interested in you for the right reasons.

Pay attention to how your numbers grow, but do it in a natural way. Unless you are already an established name like Lady GaGa, you probably won’t have 1 million authentic followers ready to connect with you the moment you open your Twitter account.

Rather, us mere mortals need to build our following the old-fashioned way: one genuine connection at a time.

The good news is, once you start to build your list of followers, you will receive suggestions of other people to follow based on that mysterious algorithm Twitter uses to keep itself relevant and build its own reputation and brand as the go-to social media site for people who like to be on top of things even before they happen.

Here’s how that works.

Twitter’s System for Growing Your List

Whenever someone new follows me on Twitter, I get an email notification.

9 times out of 10, this new follower turns out to be someone interesting enough for me to follow back.

I make a habit of tweeting my appreciation for this new connection, and I often get a personal response from the individual. This is a simple common courtesy any two people just meeting for the first time should extend one another, online or offline.

What constitutes interesting for me includes:

• legitimate-looking personal tweets on their wall (aka they are actually posting their thoughts and interacting with others, not just regurgitating contetnt)
• no SPAMMY looking content
• no signs of stuffing — aka natural balance between number tweets, number of followers and number of following
• a decent photo of them, as opposed to a logo or icon

If these criteria aren’t met, I will not return the follow. When it comes to being authentic in social media, math is your friend. When the numbers don’t add up, that’s usually a sign that something ain’t right.

When the Numbers Don’t Make Sense

Take a recent follower I received notification about.

The name was normal enough, and the photo looked nice.

But when I clicked to the full profile, I saw that this person had only 445 tweets yet 45K followers. This is a classic case of when the math just doesn’t add up.

Meaning — this person is guilty of either padding their numbers or isn’t a real person to begin with, but instead one of the zillions of fake accounts floating in the Twitter-o-sphere. (I know, I know, this is one of the annoying things about Twitter, but that’s for a different discussion.)

A closer inspection would probably reveal a large proportion of profiles on the follower list that look like this:

Notice there is just a name, with no description.

Notice also that the second example has a number in it, which many fake Twitter accounts seem to have.

If you were to click on either of these accounts, you would find very small numbers and not much activity on their feed.

Conclusion?

Fake.

So What’s a Person to Do?

Outside of hiring someone or installing a premium automated service like Tweepi to filter out the illegitimate followers, it’s nearly impossible to keep out all the fakies.

If you decide that you want to use Twitter as part of your business strategy, then it is important to regularly keep an eye on your lists. Not only will you build a Twitter following you can be proud of, but it will be one that will reward you well for doing it right.

After all, your reputation and brand are at stake. Not to mention it’s really difficult to explain away all that tissue paper.