Twitter can be a powerful tool for improving recognition of your business and establishing your personal brand. One of the most important elements to harnessing the power of Twitter is to improve your numbers of followers. After all, what’s the point of saying something if no one’s listening? It’s better to have 1,000 readers than 100, right? And it’s better to have 5,000 than 1,000, isn’t it?

Not necessarily. Some “Twitterers” take this to mean that the more followers the better, case closed. They go off following everyone they can, hoping purely to be followed back in return. They send out massive amounts of tweets on trending topics, knowing those topics will get more eyeballs—and thus turn into more followers. They pile up hundreds, even thousands of followers, with only one mission in mind: Get as many people to follow you as possible.

For more business owners and entrepreneurs, though, this is a waste of time. Unless your purpose is to spam your followers with low-quality product, you don’t want (or need) a massive group of unqualified followers. Keep in mind, if they followed you for no real purpose, they probably follow everyone. And they’re probably not bothering to read your tweets anyway.

What you want to do is improve your number of quality followers: people who are interested in your message and what you have to offer. Here are three top tips you can employ today to improve your quantity and quality of followers:

1. Tweet regularly. Take time at least several times a day to tweet about something that is both useful to readers and relevant to your business or service. If you don’t tweet consistently, you’re actually in danger of losing followers. When you see news stories or blog posts relevant to your line of work, tweet links to them. This will attract followers who will be interested in what you have to say.

2. Follow the people you want to follow you. Many people will follow you back just because you followed them, but you don’t want to just follow people arbitrarily. Use Twitter’s search feature to find people interested in your services or knowledge. Retweet what they post. Reply to their tweets with smart, substantive posts. This is how you build a qualified follower/following base.

3. Use hashtags, but don’t go overboard. You want your tweets to be seen by people who aren’t following you yet—that’s how you get new followers. But there might be relevant keywords that do not necessarily appear in your tweet. Add one or two of those keywords with hashtags to improve the searchability. However, one big mistake people make is hashtaggging a half-dozen terms in a single tweet. It makes the tweet hard to read, and it just looks cheesy. Use hashtags like salt and pepper: You need a little in there to bring out the flavor, but too much seasoning will ruin the meal.