Perhaps using gmail labels that are set to autoforward might do the trick.

I do stand by my point that you may eventually get MORE RTs, clicks etc if you gained loyal/interested followers who KEEP coming back – not ones who are clicking on a link once and never returning.

I guess for companies demanding fast return, this is as effective as any mailshot campaign.

The value of the followers you’d be buying might be low in terms of engagement/conversion (although you never know – it’d probably be the case if your offer is very targeted, but if it’s entirely generic…?) but then what about some of the ancillary benefits you might get?

Once you’ve got a solid baseline of (albeit ‘worthless’) followers, more valuable people coming across your account might be more likely to follow you. There might be a social proof thing with people thinking ‘well, all those people can’t be wrong’.

If your business model relates to advertising and page views then clicks on any of the links you tweet will be valuable – more followers = greater possibility of more clicks (sorry, slightly woolly point but hopefully you get what I mean). Also, any RTs, +1s, etc that result will contribute in some small way to SEO.

There could be additional PR value – those lists of ‘most followed accounts in x sector’ are as popular as they are (largely) meaningless.

And if you sell yourself on social media savvy then a quick way to impress a less informed client is to show that your own social media accounts are popular.

Great post, by the way.