How to get 1,000 twitter followers

A lot has been said about Twitter, and I’m seeing some very influential people using Twitter to drive traffic to their sites.

But before I tell you how I’ve gotten almost a 1000 people following me on Twitter without promoting it on my blog, I think I’ll explain what twitter is a little first.

Twitter was founded on March 1, 2006; it’s a little over 2 years old now and has seen some rapid growth in the last year. Twitter is social networking site that works on a Micro-Blogging platform, where you can only post 140 characters at a time.

These posts, also called ‘tweets’ are sent to everyone who follows you. Following someone on twitter means that you will receive any tweets they post.

There are many many uses for this, but mostly it’s being able to keep up with what people are doing. Twitter is a real-time platform, so unlike Facebook where you can go and see messages people have posted. In Twitter, the tweets flow a lot faster and there is a lot that you miss.

But it’s ok to miss tweets, because if a tweet is directed at you specifically, it will be listed differently. And there is so much happening anyway, that you cannot possibly read everything.

Twitter has many many uses, and I’ve been using it as a bit of a give and take system.

I follow 800 odd people on twitter, and have had a few very interesting conversations, and I’ve also found a great deal of useful content, from links posted on Twitter.

I’ve also managed to generate quite a bit of traffic from twitter to this blog. Each time I put up a new post, like this one, I share the link on twitter and generate traffic. So Twitter has its uses for finding and sharing content.

But to really take advantage of Twitter and to get the full benefit you need to be an active part of the community. So the first order of business is to get yourself an account, and start following some people.

Depending on who you are and what your market is, you might want to take a few different approaches to getting people to follow you, but I’m going to show you what I did, and what worked for me.

It’s not a cut and dried approach, and it won’t work for everyone, but hopefully it helps you to find a way to build a good twitter following.

The first thing I did was use twhirl for twitter. It runs on a Mac and a PC, so it should work for you. Real time updates are better than web updates.

I then looked for someone in my Niche that was already popular, and already had a lot of followers. This means I have pretty much found and audience.

I’m not going to mention the person used, but I can say he’s a prominent blogger.
The first thing I did was follow everyone who follows him. (I need to mention at this point that it will take you about 2 weeks, spending at least an hour every day).

That means I shot up to following 3000+ people. Many people thought I was just a regular spammer, which at that point I suppose I was, but I quickly begin working the list down.

During this week or two, it’s important that you tweet a lot, and make sure your tweets are quality tweets; people generally aren’t interested in what you had for  breakfast.

When you follow someone, they receive an email telling him or her that you are now following then, and the email includes a link to your profile. About a quarter of the people will actually click the link to see your profile, and that’s when they decide if they want to follow you back. If you have a bunch of rubbish tweets, or if you’re only posting links, chances are they are going to run a mile.

Interact with people in twitter, reply to people if they post a good link or say something that is worth commenting on.

While you are following this many people, it will get a bit hectic, and you’re bound to encounter a few plonkers and spammers. This is the first place to begin slimming down your list. Identify people who either tweet rubbish, tweet in a language you can’t read, or just tweet links.

What I found is that after following 3000 odd people about 500 followed me back right away. So the follow / following ratio becomes closer, and you don’t look like a complete pillik.

Key to getting people to follow you is complimenting them. Take some time and look at people’s profiles, most of them provide a link to their site or blog. Engage in dialogue with them, and show and interest in the site. I must admit, that I have found a few great blogs this way.

All that’s left now, is committing some time to unfollowing people who you don’t want to follow, and making friends with those who you do want to follow, and would like to follow you back.

There are a few problems with this theory, and I’m well aware of them. It could be perceived as a very spammy system, and it can quickly be abused. Trying to automate this with a script could work very well, but could also tarnish your Twitter record.

There is a Twitter Black List, and I assure you, you don’t want to find yourself on it.

You need to be genuinely interested in being a part of the twitter community. If your intentions are purely to spam as many people as possible in the hope you can generate some traffic you’re probably not going to get very far.

This has worked for me, and I still get people following me on a daily basis. I would like to hear your opinions, and see what worked for you, and what didn’t.

Tagged as: twitter