Over the past couple of months we’ve been blogging about How To Get More Twitter Followers.  We’ve been looking at ways you can use Twitter and other Twitter-related tools to find more people to follow.

Our first article in February was all about Your Twitter Strategy.  In this article we looked at the pros and cons of having a large amount of followers and we briefly looked at whether it’s best to have multiple Twitter accounts.

The next article was How To Get More Twitter Followers – Part 1. The article looked at the advantages of building a list of followers in Twitter who you can direct to your website.  We also looked at ways you can help people to find you in Twitter.

After that, we looked at How To Get More Twitter Followers – Part 2 – How To Follow.  In this article we talked about ways you can search for people to follow on Twitter.  You can use Twitter search to help with this and I also talked about using Tweetadder to help find people based on the content of their Tweets or bio, or even the city they live in.

The next article in How To Get More Twitter Followers was called Be Follow-Worthy. I looked at ways you can deliver valuable Tweets that enable people to find and follow you, rather than you finding them.  We talked about using RSS feeds to deliver content, as well as Re-Tweeting interesting Tweets.

In Part 4, we looked at the importance of Being Regular with your Tweets.  I talked about automating and scheduling Tweets and the pros and cons of doing so.

In the post from last week , I talked about the strategies I use to Get More Twitter Followers.  In this post I talked about how I search for people to follow, when I un-follow people and how I schedule some regular Tweets using RSS feeds.

This is the summary of my posts so far on How To Get More Twitter Followers. I’m currently writing a series of posts that review some of the Twitter software that’s currently available.  As I post those articles I’ll link to them here so this page becomes a central Twitter resource for this site.

Please have a read through the articles and let me know what you think.  How do you use Twitter.  Do you have other ideas on how to get more followers on Twitter?  Leave a comment below.

And don’t forget to follow me on Twitter!

Over the past month I’ve been writing about ways to Get More Twitter Followers.

In today’s article, I want to provide a summary of the strategy I use to get more followers.  Because this looks at the strategy, I won’t go into detail about the actual sites of programs I use to do it.  There’s two reasons for this:

1. Probably within a year, some of the sites I use will be closed or substantially different to what they are today.
2. It’s more important to understand what I do, instead of how I do it.

If you understand the strategy I use to get more Twitter followers, then you can go away and find the best tools that suit you and do it in the way that you feel most comfortable with.

My process is actually quite simple.  To find new people to follow on Twitter, here’s what I do:

1. I search for people who Tweet about interesting topics, have certain terms in their bios, or who follow people who operate in my niche.
2. I follow these people.
3. If they don’t follow back within a period of time, I unfollow many of them.  There are some people who I whitelist (don’t unfollow).  These are some of the big Twitter users.  I don’t expect they’ll follow me back (yet!), but I want to continue to follow them.
4. I keep a close eye on the ratio of people I’m following against those who are following me back.  I make sure I never follow more than 110% of the people following me.  For example, if I have 3,000 followers, I’ll make sure I don’t follow more than 3,300 people.
5. Because I’m regularly following new people and un-following others, I can usually keep the ratios in check and make sure that every day I’m adding some new followers.
6. I don’t try and follow too many people, too quickly.

Here’s a diagram for those of you who prefer visuals.

In addition to finding people, I want to deliver value to my followers, and help other people find me.  Here’s how I do that:

1. I have some RSS feeds from blogs I like converted into Tweets.
2. I have some regular Tweets I schedule in advance.  Between (1) and (2) this ensures there is a regular number of daily Tweets to my account.
3. I communicate with people who follow me.  I’ll re-Tweet Tweets that I like, I’ll thank people for re-Tweeting mine.  I’ll have conversations with people, ask questions, answer questions and make some random posts about what I’m doing.  This is an important part of my strategy.  I don’t mind automating some of my Twitter posting, but I’ll always make sure I’m interacting with people a few times a day on Twitter – that’s what it’s about.

These last three steps are very important.  There’s no point trying to gain 100 followers each day if you lose 100 of your existing followers because they don’t see any value in your Tweets.

How To Get More Twitter Followers

This has been a very high level view of the strategy I use to get more Twitter followers.  I hope it makes sense and helps you to become more successful on Twitter.

I’m interested in your feedback.  How to you get more Twitter followers?  Do you schedule Tweets?  Do you have another strategy you use that works for you?

And please don’t forget to follow me on Twitter!

See all my Twitter posts on this summary page – How To Get More Twitter Followers – Summary.

I’ve been posting about how to get more Twitter followers for a while and looked at a range of different strategies and tactics to help you grow your Twitter presence.  Today I want to look at one of the essential keys to success with Twitter – regular Tweeting.

Twitter is different to email.  With an email you can send it to your subscribers and it’ll sit in their inbox until they take some kind of  action with it – delete it, read it etc.

With Twitter, your post is put into the Twitter stream, and unless your followers are watching the stream at that point in time, they’ll probably miss your Tweet.

So whilst it may be easier to build up a list of Twitter follower quicker than an email list, this method of communication is not as effective.

So why are you Tweeting?

Don’t Tweet for the sake of Tweeting.  When you post make sure you’re saying something that other people will find interesting.  I have a couple of goals with each post:

• That it’s interesting for my current followers to read.
• That some of my current followers will re-Tweet it to their followers.
• That new people will find me and follow me because of the post.

Don’t talk about automation!

Automating your Tweets is a bit of a controversial topic.  The Twitter terms of service don’t allow automation of Tweets other than for an automatic direct message (DM) to new followers.  Despite this, there are a number of programs out there that allow varying degrees of automation.

My view on automation is this:

• You can send spam and rubbish out either manually or automated.
• Automation done well can save time but still needs be interesting to my followers.
• You can’t automate everything.  You need to have real conversations with real people.

How to automate some Tweets

There’s a couple of ways to automate Tweets.  In the last article on How to Get More Twitter Followers I looked at using TwitterFeed.com to automate Tweets from RSS feeds.  There are a few blogs I regularly read, and I’m comfortable re-Tweeting their content.  I use TwitterFeed to do this automatically for me.

I don’t use this for lots of blogs, but it may lead to approximately five tweets a day recommending content from other people’s blogs.

It’s also possible to schedule future Tweets.  I live in Australia, but a lot of my followers live in other parts of the world.  They’re usually awake when I’m asleep so it would be difficult for me to converse with them in real time.  I schedule some Tweets to go out overnight while I’m asleep so my followers get to see them.

There are a few ways to schedule Tweets – I use the function within Hootsuite sometimes, but I also use TweetAdder to schedule future Tweets.  TweetAdder enables me to queue a series of messages to be sent out in a random order over a period of time. This is less time consuming to set up than HootSuite where you need to individually load each message.

Is scheduling Tweets the same as automating Tweets?

Technically, ‘yes’.  But is it?  And is it a problem?

I don’t have a problem with scheduling some Tweets for the future.  I do it with blog posts – I don’t see that my Twitter stream is any different.

I do have a problem with sending out a lot of Tweets in a short space of time that don’t add any real value.  Particularly if by using automated means you can send out a lot more.

The conclusion I’ve come to is that it’s ok to schedule some tweets that I’ve created to be posted at some time in the future.  It’s also ok to use some RSS feeds to highlight other bloggers who I read and would usually re-Tweet.

I balance this with a requirement to manually Tweet each day.  I’ll thank people who RT my Tweets, I’ll feature other articles I’m reading etc.  It’s very important to me to have daily interaction with my Twitter followers.

So, what do you Tweet?

Over the course of my day I’ll post some manual Tweets.  It could be in response to other people’s Tweets – answering questions etc.  I may Tweet a link to an article I’m reading or a news item.  I may Tweet about  a song I’m listening to or a book I’m reading.  Sometimes I ask questions about how to do something.  I try not to be boring, but I also try not to censor my thoughts too much.

So, how do you feel about automating Tweets or scheduling Tweets?

What do you Tweet about that’s interesting?

Leave a comment below.  And don’t forget to follow me on Twitter!

See all my Twitter posts on this summary page – How To Get More Twitter Followers – Summary.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been looking at How To Get More Twitter Followers.

In Part 1 I gave an overview of how I think you can use Twitter to drive traffic to your website. In my last article I looked at another way to get more Twitter followers by finding other people to follow.  Today I’ll continue the series and look at strategies you can use to get people to follow you.

Remember, these articles are written from the point of view that Twitter is an excellent way to not only connect with interesting people, but also to drive traffic to your web site.  Once they get to your web site, ideally you want them to take some kind of action – subscribe to your email list, buy something etc.

Are You Follow-Worthy?

Be honest.  Would you follow yourself on Twitter?

I started on Twitter in the middle of 2009 and I had no idea what I was doing.  I actually felt sorry for people who followed me because I hardly ever Tweeted, and I’d only visit Twitter every couple of weeks.  I now feel like I have a much better system to make my Tweets interesting to people – I think I’m now ‘follow-worthy’!

As I explained in my last post, there are two options to gain more Twitter followers:

Strategy 1: Follow people you’re interested in and hope they follow you back (i.e. find people yourself).

Strategy 2: Make your Twitter identity (bio, Tweets etc) so interesting and relevant that people start to follow you (i.e. people find you).

Strategy two makes a lot more sense to me.  I think I’ll always use a combination of the two, but I hope to reach the point where the number of people who find me and choose to follow me far outweighs the number who follow me back because I first followed them.

Becoming Follow-Worthy

The simple way to become follow-worthy is to create great, compelling, interesting, (insert adjective here) content that your chosen niche loves. OK, so how do you do that….read on.

A large factor in your Twitter success involves being visable on Twitter.  This means you can’t post once a week – you need a strategy to create regular Tweets so that people can find you, either through the general Twitter stream or by targeted searching.

Here are some strategies I’ve been using to help people find me on Twitter.

Have a great Twitter page

I mentioned this in my last article where I suggested using sites like mytweetspace or twitbacks.com to help create a custom Twitter background.  Twitter doesn’t give you much space to write, so use the left hand side of the page on your custom background to write more about what you do and the benefits you provide. If you have a mailing list or give away a free report be sure to mention this.

On the right hand side make sure your bio is interesting, and contains the right keywords (remember, people can search bios by keywords to find people to follow – you did this last week).  Make sure you include a good photo of yourself, and the URL of your website or landing page.

Your objective with your Twitter page is to appear interesting enough to people so they’re motivated to click through to your web site.

The Hashtag is your friend

Use Twitter hashtags as much as you can. Look at a site like WeFollow.com and search for the popular hashtags.  Make a note of the ones that are relevant to you and use them as much as possible.  For example if I were a restaurant in Sydney, Australia, I’d be using the #Sydney tag as much as possible.

Hashtags give you two advantages – people search by them, so it makes you more easily findable.  Also, there are a number of Twitter uses who try to aggregate feeds for their local area or their niche.  Use the right hashtag and you may find yourself being Re-Tweeted to thousands of other people.  Hopefully some of them will find you interesting enough to follow.

Re-Tweet other people’s stuff

One of the things I love about Twitter is the ability to Re-Tweet interesting content. I love finding a good article or seeing a good tweet and then sharing it with my followers.  And I love it even more when someone Re-Tweets something I’ve written.  This gets my Tweets out to a larger audience.

So make an effort to Re-Tweet other people’s Tweets.  Get in the habit when you’re looking at blogs on the internet to Tweet about interesting articles you’ve found.  It helps people learn more about what you like reading, and it helps others find articles they would never have found themselves.  And if they like the things you Tweet about, they may Re-Tweet it as well.

Use RSS Feeds

Many people don’t realise that they can automate RSS feeds to post to their Twitter account.

Now, the obvious example of this is to feed your blog to your Twitter account so every time you post something, it also gets posted on Twitter.

That’s great if you’re posting daily, but what about if you’re only posting weekly?  It doesn’t help to build up your Twitter posts.

Why don’t you post from RSS feeds from other blogs or content providers that are in your niche?

This is so obvious I don’t know why I didn’t come across it earlier.

I use TwitterFeed.com to automatically post RSS feeds to my Twitter accounts.  There are some blogs that I read regularly that consistently provide great content. I plug in their feed details to TwitterFeed, link my TwitterFeed account to my Twitter ID, and every time the RSS feed is updated, it posts a Tweet to my account.

Here’s an image from the dashboard showing the options I have with the feed.

As you can see, I have the ability to schedule how often the RSS feed is checked for updates, and I can also add a prefix or suffix to each post.

I only use this for blogs that I trust to provide quality content.  In the example above, I’m using the feed from DailyBlogTips.com.

So, are you ready to become ‘Follow-Worthy’?

You’ve just read a bunch of ideas on how to beef up your Twitter stream to produce great content that allows people to find you.  It won’t produce thousands of followers overnight, but that’s not my goal.  I’m more interested in producing content that is interesting and relevant to the people I’m trying to reach. I use all these ideas, and I definitely Tweet more than once every couple of weeks now!

One thing I haven’t covered here is the concept of recurring and automated tweets – we’ll look at this next time.

What do you think of these ideas?

What other strategies do you use to make your Tweets more interesting and attract more Twitter followers?  Let me know in the comments below.

And remember, if you enjoyed this article, please Re-Tweet it.  An don’t forget to follow me on Twitter!

See all my Twitter posts on this summary page – How To Get More Twitter Followers – Summary.

I’ve been spending a bit of time on Twitter over the past few weeks trying out some ideas I’ve picked up from Profit Geyser. Over the next week I’ll look at how to get more followers on Twitter.

In this post I will talk about why Twitter could be worthwhile considering as a marketing tool for your internet business, and cover some of the broad concepts I’ve been trying out.  In the next posts, I’ll cover each concept in a bit more depth.  Over the next month I’ll blog about my experience with some of the different Twitter software tools that are available, so you can see how I’m using some of the tools to help me get more Twitter followers.

Why Bother With Twitter?

When you’re trying to run an internet based business, or promote your offline business on the internet, one of the most valuable assets you can possess is a list. Not just any list, but a list of people who are good prospects for your product.

Google Adwords is a very effective form of targeted advertising, because you can set up your ads to show for very specific search terms and in certain geographic locations.  This makes it very cost effective because you’re targeting the right people, and it’s only costing you money if they click on your link.

The best way to create a list is to set up an opt-in form on your web page that enables people to sign up to an email list.  Offer a free e-book or something similar to encourage people to sign up to your list (don’t forget to sign-up to mine – form on the RHS!).  The problem with email lists is that you can only build them if people come to your site.

If you’re not getting a lot of traffic to your site, you can’t get many opt-in’s to your email list!

And this is where Twitter becomes very effective.  If you can get more followers on Twitter, you can promote your site to them, and drive traffic to your web site.

You Have More, And Less Control Over Your Twitter List

This may sound contradictory, but hang in there and I’ll explain.

You have more control over your Twitter list because you can target potential followers, a bit like Google Adwords (more on this concept in the next section).  It’s easy to build up a targeted list of Twitter followers to a certain limit.

The downside of building a Twitter list is that you have less penetration to your list. What do I mean by this?  Think of it like this.  If you have an email list, it usually consists of people who have made the effort to opt-in to your newsletter.  If you use Aweber, they probably had to go through the double opt-in process.  So these are people who feel comfortable receiving emails from you.  And we all know emails go into an Inbox where they sit until they’re opened or deleted. They have to decide each time they receive an email from you what they will do with that email – open it and read it or ignore it. The important point is that they have to do something.

Consider a tweet that you send out.  Depending on how many people your followers are following, and the time the tweet is sent, they may not even notice it.  And because you only have 140 characters, it can be harder to get your message across so that they act on it.

So whilst it’s quicker to build up a list of followers within Twitter than it is to build an email list, I think you’ll find the response rate from tweets will be lower than from emails.

So What Is The Point Of A Twitter List?

In my opinion, the major aim of building up a Twitter list is to get people to opt-in to your newsletter and visit your site.

Yes, you can still try and sell things to them direct through Twitter, and yes, people are very successful doing this, but if this is your goal you need to watch out.  You could find your account banned by Twitter at any time if you’re reported for spam, and Twitter could also change their rules at any time.  You don’t own your Twitter account – they do.  You do own your email list.

So, How Do I Get More Followers On Twitter?

Firstly, my goal is to get many followers on Twitter, and encourage them to visit my site and sign up for my email newsletter.  Here are the strategies I’m using:

• Decide on your target market. Think about the people you want to reach, what they’d find interesting and what they would see as valuable.
• Decide on a good Twitter user-name. Think of something that’s descriptive of what you do and perhaps something that links well with your website and brand.
• Set up your Twitter page. Take some time to write out a descriptive bio, and remember to place a link to your website.  When writing your bio, think about the keywords or markets you’re trying to target and include them – you want people to find you as much as you want to find them.  More about this in the ‘search’ section.
• Image is important. Get a customized Twitter background.  You can try sites like mytweetspace or twitbacks.com. Alternatively use Photoshop or The Gimp (free) to create something yourself. Use the left hand side of the page to write more about what you do and how you can help people.  Also make sure you upload a decent picture of yourself.
• Now that your profile is set up, think about the content you’ll be tweeting. One of the best ways to do this is to follow a couple of high profile people in your niche on Twitter and see what they tweet about. Think about the tweets you find most valuable.  I share a mix of tweets that include inspirational quotes, links to products and links to my blog and articles.  I also tweet a lot of things from other bloggers or from other content providers that are targeted to my niche.
• Use hashtags #.  It’s less effort if people find you than if you need to find them!  People will search via hashtags to find content that is of interest to them and then they will follow those people.
• Get searching.  Find people who you want to follow.  You can use Twitter search to search by hashtags or topics. Another option is to look at who is following someone else in your niche and follow them also. When I started, I looked at @problogger and followed some of his followers who looked like they’d be interested in my tweets. I also search based on what is written in their bio.  I may search for the word ‘Blogger’ or ‘Internet Marketing’ within bio’s and follow those people.  There’s also an option to search by geographical location.  More on searching in future posts.
• Use lots of RT’s and @replies. If all you’re doing is sending out tweets with links, you look spammy.  Would you follow yourself?  Share some Twitter love and Re-Tweet interesting things you find. It’s a great way of building up a relationship with other Twitter users and you may find they Re-Tweet something you put out.  Now your tweets are going out to a bunch of people who are hearing about you for the first time. @replies are also important – it shows you’re real if you’re having conversations with people.
• Follow people back. Some people will find you and befriend you on Twitter before you find them.  This is good because they’ve selected you – they’ve obviously decided that you look interesting enough to follow.  Follow them back.  Also, consider a good DM (direct message) that you can use to welcome new followers.
• Be consistent.  Tweet regularly but make sure you’re interesting.  Remember that people can search by the content of your tweets so make sure you use some keywords in your tweets that people in your niche may be searching for.
• It’s ok to repeat things. There’s different views on this, but I believe it’s ok to repeat your tweets (to a degree).  I live in Australia, and most of my niche live overseas in different time zones.  If I send a Tweet out in the afternoon here, most of you are in bed and will miss it.  I’ll sometimes schedule tweets to go out at regular intervals over a 24 hour period to promote a blog article.

I’ll leave the list there for now, but there are still other ways you can do this.  At the time of writing I’ve been working on this strategy for around three weeks and have just reached the 2,000 follower mark. I probably could have done it quicker, but I’ve made a few mistakes along the way and learnt a lot.  This is your gain as over the next month I’ll blog about the things I’ve learnt and hopefully prevent you from making the same mistakes.

So, if you’re interested in learning more, subscribe to my blog and follow me on Twitter.

See all my Twitter posts on this summary page – How To Get More Twitter Followers – Summary.

Photo credits: CuriousLee, 7son75