This week’s topic focuses on Twitter and how to build a following.

What tactics, tools or websites do you use to build your own following? Has this been successful? What works really well?

To get the ball started, here are a few of my power tips:

• Fill out your profile: You want to make sure you complete your profile: photo, bio & location, as much as possible. When people find your profile you want to look like you’re invested in the platform.
• Teach others about the power of Twitter: Blog, present and write about Twitter, including your profile link. By establishing yourself as an expert people will follow you.
• Engage: There’s nothing duller than a person who just tweets out blog posts they just finished or quotes from dead people. TALK to other people on Twitter, mention them and retweet worthwhile content.
  
• Find Locals: I use Twitter’s advanced search to find local people. Although we can do business with anyone, anywhere, we get a lot of our business here in Maine. Once I find them I follow & engage them. That engagement leads to quality follows. Here’s a how-to video I created on that: http://youtu.be/6oLDGXUXjds

The most effective way I have found for engaging like-minded people is to participate in webinars which cover topics of my interest (which overlaps those of my clients) and tweet updates from the webinar using the hashtag designated for that specific webinar.  I have met lots of great people this way, especially through the Social Media Examiner Success Summits.

Another means of finding your target market within Twitter is to setup a search tab on Hootsuite for keywords and hashtags that you think will be included in twitter updates.  I have found many new prospects for my clients in this way.  The great value that Twitter offers a marketer is the ability to listen to public conversations. The other great thing is that people categorize their conversations using hashtags, basically doing part of the work for you

Hope this helps

-Sherry

I’ve recently started using Tweetadder as a tool for researching and following people with like interests (both those who post about certain keywords, and those who have them in their profile). You can set parameters (must have over X-many followers, or be following X-many people, must have a profile pic, etc.). It’s a big timesaver for me.

It also lets you set up auto-responder tweets and “evergreen” tweets that go out on an automatic schedule, but I haven’t really worked that as well as I should.

Many (if not most) will follow you back–and you can also set unfollow protocols, too, for those that don’t within a certain time frame.

The biggest key, however, to building a good following is to post helpful information (not sales pitches), share photos, and make time to reach out to people on a regular basis to start up conversation.  And Rich is right–fill out your profile. I’ve found that branding your skins and profiles to be similar across platforms helps establish continuity. I use the same colors, similar images, etc., for Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn, and make sure they’re inter-linked–so people can find me on Twitter from any other location.

Trying various methods to gain followers, it seems as though posting mentions and retweets works well. It is, after all, social media and if many things about Twitter become automated it just doesn’t seem social.

For some, gaining followers is a volume thing: How many can I get? For us, as a source for local food, it becomes a real opportunity to create image and find like-minded farmers, consumers and writers or journals. I monitor our account and I probably block more followers than I accept, there seem to be lots of bots and spammers out there and some of them retweet from accounts they follow in a seemingly random fashion. I don’t think that adds to our reputation: I search for quality followers and I try to follow quality as well.

I have found searches to be fruitful and I have also enjoyed increases in followers from the retweets and mentions I receive. It seems as though sociability creates followers for our farm.

And, of course, promoting our account @thehoads gains us followers so I try to do that regularly. We’re a bit ecclectic, not just farm news or manure talk, so we get some followers who are interested in our randomness and even our politics — yes, we mix the personal with business because we are, after all, a family farm.

I have been on Twitter for about six months, and by reading posts like these I’m learning more and more about it and how to use it to my advantage. So thank you!

I have several hashtag searches set up in Twitter, and I plan to check out tweet adder. I retweet only relevant and interesting tweets as well, and I always thank those who RT my tweets. By tweeting about my new blog posts, I have been included in several online newspapers on Paper.li. That’s provided great exposure and I thank those who include a post of mine in their newspapers.

I block (bots and spammers) or not follow back about half of the people who follow me. I’m not into the numbers game (same for LinkedIn), it’s all about quality to me.

I participated in one Tweetchat and found it difficult to follow and get any value from it. I will try another one to see if I have a better experience.

I include my FB, Twitter & LinkedIn profile links in my email signature and include those and other profile links on all of my social media profiles.

@ginaschnathorst Hootsuite is very simple to use.  You just go to their website and create an account.  Then you add your Twitter accounts to it.  To update all you have to do is log into Hootsuite and type away.   With Twitter I struggle to find time.  I find some people post so excessively that I’m about to stop following them.  When trying to generate followers, is there such a thing as posting too much on Twitter?  

Hi Guys, I’ve been using twitter for professional purposes in the last 4 years@ManOnfire_ 26k followers in 4 years Follow 16k @ComensalEnDF 23k Followers in 2 years 15k following @JorgeAguayoC 10k in 2 years 6.4 followingI used to work with tweetadder buy found a better tool: refollow.comIt cost $50 a month for 5 users, and let me explain my method:a) I search a user whose followers are the same target as the account to increase:b) Follow 800 people c) in 3 days if they do not follow back, I unfollow themI do this every day and my followback ratio is around 14%I grow around 2500 followers a month.notes When searching the followers of a user, make sure:a) They are not following you b) your are not following them c) You have never followed them d) the user has Picture e) the user has tweted in the last 15 days f) follow people with les than 500 followers, those are mor willing to follow back g) I also avoid people with few followers, it’s more possible those people are newbies and do not followback either.I also maintain the people I follow and if they have not twetted in 30 days, I unfollow them.Twitter limitations: If you have less than 2k followers you are not allowed to follow more than 2k, once you have more than 2k you are allowed to have more following than followers, but watch out, is not appropiate to have less followers than the people yopu follow.If you follow more than 800 followers every day, you’ll be banned to follow more for a certain period, that’s why I follow only 800 a day.I also use severeal of the tactics you mentioned above, for example:-Great content to have retweets -I try to have as clean as possible my TL, I use very few replies and a lot of DM -Good pic and bio -Use the URL to have a more detailed bio.Finally, for local users, I use echofon in order to retreive the tweets nearby the location I want.Cheers!!Jorge

@Hombre en Llamas  Thanks for explaining your method, but how effective has it been for you? I find that the number of followers is completely irrelevant. What Mike describes has been much more effective for me. Actively searching for your target market and engaging with them (one at a time) seems to be much more effective in finding prospects and making sales.

If you’re on an Apple iOS device then there are some really great tools to manage your twitter followers. (Am sure there are for Android too).

This will help you keep your followers high and the people you follow done, therefore increasing things such as your Klout score.

Apps such as ‘Unfollow‘ show you which followers aren’t following you back and also tell you which of the people you follow haven’t tweeted in some time (1 month, 3 months, 6 months) who you can unfollow too.

These apps will not increase your followers, offering decent content and being part of your community will, but they are great ways of managing things.

I’m trying to build my Twitter following by tweeting high-quality content on health, fitness, food, fat loss, and other topics. I see that as part of my “job”—curating solid, research-based health info in an environment that’s often teeming with sensationalized crap. 

My following is growing, but it’s very small, and growth is slow. It probably will always be small and slow-growing because I’m really picky about whom I follow. I’d rather be interacting with fewer people who tweet really solid stuff, I guess.