How Do I Get More Followers On Twitter

I’ll get right to it – I am always getting asked how to get more followers on Twitter, which to be honest I think is funny because I really don’t think I have a “TON” of followers myself. However; I am sitting close to 1100 followers and feel I have a pretty good idea of how to make Twitter work for business and marketing purposes.  I want to help those who are asking me this specific question understand how I got, and continue to get more followers on Twitter.

Experiment Time:

Before I get to answering the question, I was wondering what other people who follow me on Twitter get asked the most.  It appears my number one question is not the number one question of most of the people following me.  Most of the people following me seem to get the “WTF is Twitter” in some form or another!  Check this out:

Questions Asked About Twitter

(Thanks to everyone on Twitter who answered me too BTW @cyandle @alainsaffel @localseoguide @DavidWallace @BasketWorks @factive)

It is pretty interesting to me that most people out there still don’t get Twitter, even with all the main stream media giving it so much attention.  I have been on Twitter for over two years now and am amazed that its just now getting some main stream attention.  I hope that some of this attention does not ruin it though.  That is my only fear with Twitter!  The main thing we can all learn from this Twitter feedback is that there is still MUCH opportunity for using Twitter to grow your business!  Now, onto answering the question of how to get more followers on Twitter.

Do you know how to be a good neighbor?

I ask this question because I really feel it is one of the most important steps in social marketing.  If you have ever moved into a new house then you know what its like to meet the new neighbors, and make new friends.  If you see everyone always going over to the neighbors house for parties, the only way you are going to get invited is by getting to know them and interacting with them.   Look at it this way – if your new neighbor comes to your house and offers you a basket of goodies to say welcome to the neighborhood, are you going to slam the door in his face?  No, you are going to take the gift, invite them in, have a conversation and get to know them better.

If you are able to make friends offline in the “real world”, recommend things, (like that new Chinese place you just ate at) and do a little interacting then making and growing friends on Twitter should be second nature to you!

Step One:  My step one here is not what I feel are the REAL steps to gaining more followers, but I have to include them in a post like this … so Be Real – get a real avatar and bio so you are not using the default Twitter avatar that will cry spam!  Don’t set up any kind of auto-follows or auto messages for followers.  That is crap and it shows people you really don’t care.  Remember – auto DMs are crap and spammy!  We hate them, most people hate them!

Step Two: Find people with common interests and follow them.  If you do a Twitter search for keywords related to your industry or interests its going to be pretty easy to find a huge group of people who are into the same things as you.  Look at what a quick Twitter search for “SEO” (which I am into) pulls up:

SEO Search on Twitter

This is just a few of thousands of results that kept coming up when I did a search for “SEO”.  I would now go through the tweets and find the people that are truly related to what I am interested in, follow them and start joining the conversation.  If someone is asking for a RT (re tweet) then do it.  If someone is asking for some feedback, then give it!  If someone makes a statement you agree with, or even don’t agree with – reply to them!   Just like you would not slam the door in your neighbors new face, you would engage these new friends on Twitter and join in on the conversations that are taking place.  You will get people following you just by being you, and doing what you already know how to do – which is being social!

Step Three: Bring somethign to the table.  If you have a blog, then make sure and set it up to post on Twitter.  I use Twitterfeed to automatically post my new articles, but thats the only automation I use on Twitter.  Other then that, when I share something its all me – not a robot!  If you read other blogs that you think are amazing and feel its worth sharing, then share it on Twitter.  Just by doing this and being real – you will get people following you.

Also, being yourself and tweeting about things that happen locally to you, or in your everyday life – you will get followers.  When you ask questions on Twitter – and I mean good questions, you will get people that find you becasue of the questions and get more followers that way.  This is where some people DON’T get Twitter, but the more real you are, and even if some people think “who cares” about the tweet you do that says “I am at a ice cream joint eating my favorite ice cream” the more Twitter will do for you.  It helps people get to know YOU, the real you and that makes more people want to follow you.

Step Four: Use the community often.   Lets say you only get out of your house to interact with the neighbors once or twice a year, then you probably don’t have a very good relationship with them.  If you are able to interact with them several times a week, then you do have a good relationship and are probably doing stuff with them.  With Twitter its the same, if you are only going in and talking, or replying to people once a month, they are probably not giving you a second thought.  If you are engaging with them everyday,  then that is a different story!  The more you interact with people on Twitter, the more it really will do for you!

Final Thoughts:

To me, Twitter is simple.  It is just real life, and if you know how to interact with people in your community, and make friends, then you will eventually understand Twitter and will be able to figure out how to use it for business.  I am able to tell people on Twitter about the produts I sell, just as well as I am to my neighbor, the only differene -  I have a world wide audience of potential customers and people that can buy from me!  All I have to do is learn to interact with my new worldwide neighbors!

Shameless Plug – ok, if I did not ask you to follow me on Twitter, then that would make everything I just talked about irrelevant!  So please!!!! Follow me on Twtter!