I've now got about 2300 followers on Twitter. What I've noticed is that quite a bit of attrition happens after a certain level. Getting and keeping followers becomes more of a struggle the longer you've been at it. (This may not be the case when you get into really high numbers, of course. Having, say, tens of thousands would give you a great deal of momentum. But it's certainly the case when you're in the low thousands.)

Part of this slowing down process is simply to do with your level of enthusiasm. When you start off you've got heaps of it. You tweet constantly, and because the more you tweet the more followers you get, you remain motivated to keep going at the same blistering pace.

Also, when you're starting off you can follow others in the hope they'll do the same in return. Such people are easy to find so you follow as many as you can. Consequently your follower numbers go up pretty quickly. But then you hit that 2000 limit and you can't do this anymore. So the rate at which people follow you drops substantially. And because a lot of those people were only following you so you'd reciprocate, many of them unfollow you eventually themselves. That certainly slows down the rate at which your network continues to grow.

You can then fall into another trap: tweeting just for the sake of it so as to keep your daily tweet quota up. If you do this the quality of your tweets will go down. Some of those who began following you primarily for the quality of your tweets may be disappointed and stop following you.

Because both these processes are at work it's really important to follow others primarily because they look genuine and interesting, and also to tweet as much good quality content as possible. Then your following will build slowly but inexorably. Those people will be more likely to stick with you, too.

Just as with Disqus, I keep seeing more and more blogs with Facebook comments installed, often in combination with CommentLuv.

There are advantages for bloggers who install this system. Firstly, because Facebook is so hugely popular, prospective commenters are often already logged into the site. So they don't have to fill in the comment form. It's just a little thing but it makes commenting a bit more likely.

Then there's the fact that it reduces spam, and perhaps abusive comments as well. Because most people on FB use their real identities and these are what they'll be using when commenting, they are more aware of how they present themselves.

They're worth keeping an eye out for if you are a blogger wishing to comment as well. If you are logged in as your Facebook Page not only will your comment appear in the thread of that particular blog post but it will also appear as an update on your Page as well, along with a link to that blog post and an image from it (if there is one for Faceook to grab). So you're effectively getting "two for the price of one". 

A lot of people are tentative about getting into social media because they believe it will take too much time and effort. This is especially so for a lot of business people. who are usually time poor. They think they'll have to spend countless hours producing a lot of their own content in the form of tips and how-to guides, etc.

But the truth is that you can still build a good following on social media simply by sharing content written by other people that's of a good quality. So you hardly have to write anything yourself. You just have to be an effective guide. And you can do this quite quickly and easily.

That said, it's obviously a good idea to include your observations and advice in the form of tweets and status updates, as well as links to your own blog posts and articles if you can. Doing so will add greatly to your credibility, of course. But it's not absolutely vital.

In the same way that a critic isn't creative himself, but guides people to the best creations by others and thereby commands respect for his opinion and knowledge, you can gain credibility on social media by consistently pointing people towards quality content.

If you do this it will take a bit of work, of course. You do have to find that good stuff, and consistently. But it's not nearly as time consuming as producing it all yourself. And it's amazing how much quality content you can find online in a short space of time. As well as Googling, there's social media itself. If I find a really good article on Google Plus, for example, then I'll share it on Facebook and Twitter.

Doing this consistently keeps you in the minds of your followers and fans. Before long you'll have a reputation as someone who has a great deal of knowledge about his niche, which is obviously a great thing for anyone in business.

One of the best ways to promote your Facebook Page is to like others as your Page and contribute to them. They have to be set up to allow you to post stuff, of course. So look for the empty box with "write something" at the top when you view them. If you then like the Page, you'll be able to post your thoughts.

Of course you can just say something nice, like "great content" or whatever. But it's better to add a tip, a thought, or even a link to one of your own blog posts if it's appropriate. Some admins might consider this a bit spammy and take it down, but that's very unlikely if it's related to the Page content. But generally speaking, admins tend to appreciate quality, relevant links and will often like them, say thanks, or even like your Page themselves.

By doing this you might be getting a bit of traffic to your blog. You'll also get on the radar of other FB users who may well like your own Page.

Of course you can share articles and blog posts by others as well. That's still to your benefit, particularly if you do it consistently, since you'll get known as someone who shares good stuff. The upside is that it's a lot easier than writing something new every time.

But whether you share your own or others' content, try and keep it as relevant as possible to the Page's subject matter. If it's about Twitter, for example, then just share Twitter related stuff. Don't start including blog posts about, say, how to get more traffic to your blog. Doing something like that will look spammy.

You're basically doing this to get your own Page on the radar of people who you already know are interested in its subject matter. So having a really good descriptive name for it is really important. It will stand out amongst all the other contributions and you're sure to get some likes as a result.

When people join Twitter many of them aim to get a large number of followers as quickly as possible. I think this is the wrong way to go about it. It's much better to try to get quality followers -- that is, people with whom you engage and who are genuinely interested in the same things you are.

If you do this and, say, tweet a blog post, you're going to get a high proportion of your followers clicking on it. You might only need a couple of hundred of them to get several extra clicks every time you tweet a post. Now, if you have thousands of followers who are just following you because you follow back, then very few will click on your link.

Also, if you intend to use Twitter to draw some links to your blog then a quality following is important. It's always much more likely that people will link to you if they respect your opinion, and feel they know you.

Take one tweep who has ten thousand followers. He doesn't really care what they're into as long as they follow him. He never interacts with any of them. Sure, if he keeps tweeting his blog posts he'll eventually get the odd click every now and then. But getting a link from one of them is even less likely.

Consider another tweep who's made a point of following knowledgeable people who share his specific interests, many of whom are bloggers. He tweets consistently interesting content about those subjects. He's only got 80 followers but they're pretty much all bloggers in his niche and he interacts with them a lot. Not only will he get a much higher proportion of views on blog posts he shares, but the odds of some of those viewers (bloggers themselves) linking to them go way up.

The best thing about building a quality following rather than one based on quantity is that it actually takes less time and effort. You can start interacting from day one, and get some traffic pretty soon after that. However, if you want the numbers more than anything you'll be spending hours and hours following others in the hope that they'll follow you back, rather than tweeting and engaging thoughtfully.

The other benefit of focusing on quality is that you will slowly build up a sizable number of followers anyway. But they will be knowledgeable and engaged, drawn to you because you tweet interesting stuff and interact with others.