It’s very easy to get obsessed with numbers on Twitter.

How many tweets should I be making per day? How much time do I need to spend on the network? How many people should I follow? How many followers should I have?

The last question is the easiest to answer. First, don’t think of them as followers, think of them as fans. And you don’t even need that many.

One feature that’s almost unique to Twitter is how easily it is for a message to move throughout the entire network. Twitter’s humble retweet – in both its organic and internal flavours – allows everybody to instantly share content with their followers, exposing the submission to a whole new audience, who can also easily pass on the message to their community.

Theoretically, a single message from one person can reach hundreds of millions of people.

So, how do you do it? Can anyone do this?

Yes, they can. And the entry point isn’t unreachable. In fact, it’s not even that high.

All you need are 100 true fans.

What’s a true fan? Somebody who goes out of their way to read your tweets, even checking your profile in case they’ve missed something.

Somebody who consistently retweets your most worthy submissions, and recommends you to their friends.

If you’re a brand on Twitter, a true fan is somebody who raves about your products, and appreciates your excellent customer service.

Most profiles on Twitter don’t have 100 true fans, even those with tens of thousands of followers, especially if they’re also following tens of thousands of people as well. In fact, very few of those accounts have many true fans at all. That’s easy enough to determine by checking out their click-through and retweet stats.

If you can keep 100 people happy, excited, buzzing, giddy and enthusiastic about YOU, then these people will become your evangelists. They will become your marketers, and your PR team. Your army. And they’re far more valuable than the professionals you’re paying to do this for you now.

Because 100 true fans have 100 true networks. And when they retweet your messages, praise your products and glorify your customer service, thousands and thousands of people will see those messages. New people. And many of these people will become new fans, and they will tell their communities.

Suddenly, you have 1000 true fans.

Soon, 10,000.

And then a million.

The rest is up to you.