Get Twitter Followers: Building a Foundation

A big question I see and hear out there is how do you have so many Twitter Followers?  How do I get Twitter followers?  It’s a good question.  If you’re interested in follower growth bring your patience, this isn’t going to happen overnight.  Well it could happen overnight, butI beg you not to buy followers.  There’s nothing to gain by it except a number.  There’s zero inside that number.

Twitter recently crossed the 200 million monthly active users plateau.  That was a mouthful.  Look at your local news programs and most reality TV shows and you’ll find Twitter handles galore.  In case you missed it, even the Pope Benedict XVI started tweeting this month.  He has a healthy follower count of 1.29 Million.

For our purposes, I’ll assume you’re not the Pope or Justin Bieber.

Twitter Housekeeping

Please put up a profile picture immediately. Nobody wants to tweet to an egg.  Why is this so hard for some?  Likewise, complete your profile with keywords and a little bit about

yourself.  You want other users to know about you.  This also makes you searchable.

Be Active and Consistent

If you’re serious about building a following you need to tweet every day.  Yes, I said every day.  At the very least you should generate 8-10 tweets over the course of the day.  Just about every post and article on the planet has a tweet button that allows you to easily share something of interest.  Being active doesn’t mean tweeting every two minutes.  A good rule of thumb is to tweet once every 20-60 minutes during your local time working hours. Find a spread that you’re comfortable with and that works for you.  Now if you’re in a conversation with someone, don’t wait 20 minutes.  That would be slightly awkward.  That’s an acceptable time to tweet at a quicker rate.

Follow People that Follow People

As long as you keep following people you will get followed back, assuming you’ve stayed the course with the steps above.  I know this isn’t sexy, but if you’re just starting out and have less than 2000 followers, this is part of the process.  You want to follow people that follow people because they are more likely to follow you.  Seth Godin is not going to follow you, me, or the Pope.

Follow People that share your Interests

People are more likely follow you if there are common interests, and you have something to talk about with them (I mean tweet).  If you are highly interested in Sports don’t follow people that are interested in anthropology.  As your following grows you can be more flexible, but early on stick to similar interests.

RT and Mention People you Follow

Social Media is about communication, sharing, and helping others.  If your mindset is to give others something of value, you’ll be in good shape.  Be proactive about mentions and RT’s.  Most people really do appreciate the gesture.  Make sure you’re doing this every day.  It’s extremely important, and lends to building rapport with others.

Added to a List – Take Action

Whenever you’re added to a list take action.  It takes a little more effort and thought to be put on a list, and it’s very complimentary.  It’s likely the other members on the list are active and share similarities. Go to the list and hit “Members” up top.  This will show you all the members on the list that where you were just added.  Go through this list and look to follow as many as you can.

Put Users on a List

Please start implementing Lists into your plan immediately regardless if you’re a veteran or rookie.  Creating and managing focused lists will make your Twitter experience efficient.  As your Twitter account grows it can get away from you very quickly.  I know all too well.  Building lists pinpoints people that are important to you and people that could become important to you.  Without lists these people can slip through your fingers, and fall deep into the Twitter pool.

Set expectations and have patience

Don’t get caught up in the minutiae of people not following you back.  You can’t take it personally, that’s what happens with numbers.  In the beginning, in order to keep your counts balanced, you’ll need to unfollow users that aren’t following you.  Following a 100 users a day is a good starting point.  We’ll talk about detailed execution and some Twitter tools that are a must in the next post.