To get followers on Twitter isn’t about herding unicorns — that is, there’s nothing mythical about it.
Looking at the relationship between the number of followers a user has and the percentage of their Tweets that are “@” replies: Highly followed users are less conversational than those with few followers.
Looking at the relationship between follower count and the percentage of a user’s tweets that contain links and are not replies: Using a sample of random, recently active Twitter accounts, there is a strong correlation. As the amount of links a user tweets increases, the number of followers they have also increases. And users with more than 1,000 followers tend to tweet many more links than users with fewer than 1,000 followers.
The data is starting to mount to suggest that “engaging in the conversation” is a waste of time from a marketing and reach-building perspective, especially when compared to sharing content.