Sounds like a bit of a humble-brag to me, no? 😉 “I get SO many tweets that I can’t keep up! Woe is me!”

Underscoring her popularity as she complains. Ugh.

The funny thing? Shortly after I left that comment the self same novelist tweeted her apologies if she doesn’t reply to tweets, claiming she gets so many tweets that HootSuite and TweetDeck can’t keep up, so she’s not always aware when someone tags her in a tweet.

That’s an example that would get my dad to say, “You’re gonna get round-shoulders patting yourself on the back like that.”

Oh Paula, I agree with you. Anyone who tells you to reach for some arbitrary number without explaining why it matters doesn’t win my confidence, either. You’re so right — it’s about your goals, which don’t fit into a one-size-fits-all Twitter follower binge.

Maybe six months after I got into Twitter in earnest, I probably had a couple hundred followers. Not sure what discussion led up to it, but a novelist who follows me (and I followed in return) asked how long I’d been on Twitter, and when I said six months, she said, “Oh, I had 10,000 followers by then. You’re not doing it right.”

Um, why would I want or need 10,000 followers when I’m not hawking self-published novels? We all have very different priorities. I don’t know whether she used alternate means to lure followers or if she simply has a lot of fans. (Just checked and she now has 115K followers, so I’m guessing she has a lot of fans.)