Perry Belcher describes Twitter very well in his videos.
He says it's like a party, and you need to act like you're at a party.
Interact, reply, provide valuable and enjoyable content.
Be the life of the party - don't be the insurance salesman left with the beer in the kitchen.
Going to party's doesn't seem like work, but there are days when it definitely becomes that.
The consistent ones, those that are regularly chatting with folks, are the ones who amass followers.
There are exceptions, but not any to the rule that it takes work.
Look at Jack Canfield, for example.
On day 3 he'd made one tweet and had over 7,000 followers.
That's not luck - that's consistent work year after year.
He's been putting out books, doing talk shows, teleseminars and speaking engagements for years.
His Twitter followers area result of that.
If Twitter is your hub, if it's where you plan to push your business, sell your affiliate stuff or push your website - then it helps to have sites out there pushing people to your twitter profile.
Whether that's a blog, a Flickr account with friends, a Stumbleupon account with an audience, a Squidoo page, a radio show - whatever it is, it's work.
Look at the big internet marketing guys out there, they're not new.
They once had a list of 5 people just like you.
But they kept going, kept pressing on, kept posting articles on Digg, kept making friends on Facebook.
They learned how to do a squeeze page, they learned how to run a teleseminar.
They already made the mistakes.