Many people think that the point of Twitter is to get more followers. This is not true. It is not bad to have followers, but you will gain more from having people who interact with you a lot. I divide the metric of how many followers you have into several categories: active followers (who engage you,) relevant followers who are in a similar industry to you, and total followers. The number of active followers or interactions is what really benefits your SEO if you use Twitter a lot. But, that is still not the bottom line.
The bottom line
If you use twitter a lot and accumulate a huge following, that’s great. But, the numbers don’t do you any good unless they click on your links. Imagine that one guy has 1000 followers and they each click once per day. That is 1000 clicks to his blog. The other guy has a million followers, but only gets 500 clicks per day. The guy with fewer followers and more clicks is the one benefiting more!
Customers
Some people use Twitter as a way to gain customers. You can contact viable prospects one by one on Twitter. You can get to know them a bit before your first phone call to them. Customers who pay you money are one form of bottom line on Twitter.
SEO benefits.
You also get a lot of SEO benefit when people respond to your interactions. So, even if you don’t get a single customer from Twitter, Google will reward you if you impress them with your Twittering skills. If you interact with others, and they answer you back in large numbers, Google will give you a lot more organic clicks.