Two rules:
1. Give a crap.

To do this job well, you have to give a crap. You have to give a crap about community. You have to give a crap about connecting with people. You have to give a crap about providing relevant information, blogging, helping people, knowing everything about the industry and answering some of the weirdest questions ever. Above all, you have to give a crap about our end users. They’re the ones that matter. If you’re not serving them, you’re doing it wrong.

2. Stand up for yourself.

You know what you’re doing. Be vocal. Stand up for our end users when you’re asked to contribute. If you don’t, no one else will.

I think it applies to just about everything, no?

Let’s say you run a company’s Twitter account and you’re looking to gain more followers. You sign up for one of these instant follower services because you see someone else on Twitter that’s posted about it. And yes, within an hour, you’ve got tons of new followers and you’re autofollowing them all back. Now, all you have to do is sit back and tweet, confident that your message is reaching the right people.

Only, it’s not. Sure, you may have thousands of followers, but when you rely on a sketchy follower service, you’re not necessarily reaching the people that care about your message. If your followers don’t care about your message, they’re not going to be engaged. Because Twitter is all about conversation, engagement is everything.

Ultimately, there’s no substitute for seeking out likeminded people and replying to them, retweeting them, and following them. It’s going to take a lot longer to get a huge follower number, but if you’re playing well with others, people will notice.

If you use a scammy get-followers-quick scheme, people will notice that, too. If I’m one of those people, chances are, I’m not sticking around.