• Reach measures the maximum number of people a particular Twitter could get a message to (basically your followers and their followers).

• Velocity measures the average of first order followers and second order followers added on a daily basis since you started your account.

• Social Capital measures the value of your followers network, e.g. how many followers do your followers have?

• Centralization measures how dependent your reach or ability to influence is on a small number of followers who have a large following. E.g. If the bulk of your network is made up of 10 superstars each with thousands of followers, then you have a very centralized network and it is perceived by Twinfluence to be fragile because if one or more of those superstars stops following you, your reach collapses in direct proportion.

Other factors that play a role are your score on the number of followers you have, the power of this network of followers, the pace of your updates, and the completeness of your profile.

Other things to know:

Simply shotgunning Twitter and following hundreds of people might give you a short term boost in your score, but eventually it will backfire.

Why? Because it speaks directly to Social Capital. If by some chance you manage to attract followers who are highly ranked themselves but provide nothing but a stream of updates about your cat, the state of the coffee in your office and what you are going to eat for lunch, you are going to lose followers, and with them will go their followers and on both systems your ranking will diminish.

Having more followers than they do followees seems to improve your score as well but getting them to follow you and your adventures in cat training, coffee drinking and lunch eating is highly unlikely.

So how do you go about increasing your score? Well, the answers are really simple:

• Be Passionate: Think about why you want to network in the first place. What is it that you want more of? Search for like-minded individuals and follow them.

• Share: Provide useful, timely information to your network. Remember, it also appears on the public timeline (unless you protect your posts), which will attract more followers.

• Ask: And you will receive. Post questions, make them relevant of course – not “why is the sky blue?”

• Review: Check your network. Do you have spammers in there or people who aren’t contributing? Take them off your list of follows, unless of course they are your family and friends, in which case get them to read this post.

So, why would you care about improving your score? You probably shouldn’t apart from the fun factor. But by following the steps above, what you will find yourself with, in a very short space of time, is an amazing network that you can reach out to. People that you can help and that can help you. People that will provide you with a wealth of information and to whom you can pass along great information.