Twitter – who’s following who and how do I get more of them to follow me?

So people always ask me how do I get more followers and why do you have more than me? Then I direct them to some of the larger Twitter users like @mashable who at my last count had 1,802,915 followers!! So how do you get that many?

Well it’s not like you just sign up with some service and get free followers fast that’s for sure! LOL! Those services are likely to give you some sort of Twitter spam in your DM or send out silly tweets on your behalf all day long on your profile and you may not even realize it. So my suggestion is to do it the logical way, simply tweet more. And don’t just tweet about anything, tweet about what you have to offer and why people should be following you. There is an art, almost a science to this in a way…but read on, because it’s not that difficult.

For instance, I am in marketing.  It’s my passion.  So, for me, I truly enjoy helping others learn how to better market their products. It’s almost hard for me not to tell others how to do this.  I could literally write hundreds of blog posts a day (I won’t because I know that I would probably bore a lot of you). So, what I do is simple. I tweet about what I know about. If I see someone tweeting that they have a project that they are struggling with, I respond back with how I think I might have a solution. I don’t try to sell anything. That will just turn people off. That will not get you a follower. Free advice and general concern however, will get you more followers, and will in turn, will get people to interact with you and create a viral effect. Their followers will want to know what all this buzz is on their page between you and them. These followers of followers will then, follow you. See, this is getting interesting isn’t it?

Also, if someone does follow you, make sure you thank them for following you if you don’t already have an account with a service that does that for you like socialoomph.  I have an account with them, but sometimes I still will send a “Thanks for following me @newfollower” because it shows more personalization.  Or I will send out a “Welcome to my new followers and list off the last 5 or so followers.  It lets them know that I appreciate the time they took to follow me, and shows them, that I will mention their name. You know how we all are on Twitter. We love hitting the @ sign and seeing something there for us! So lets give them something to look at! You would be surprised how they respond to this, sometimes it creates even more of a flurry of people who want to retweet your tweets! Now, if you have creative content, you should not have to worry about the retweet right? Well, we all know if it was that simple then we’d all be getting retweeted! No, my Twitter friends, I am afraid that we all need help getting our tweets retweeted.  Sometimes you know your tweet is genius and your wondering, “Why the heck didn’t anyone retweet it?” Okay, I digressed a bit.

Lastly, don’t always tweet about yourself. If you’re only tweeting about what you sell or what your website offers..Well, what good is your twitter page to anyone? People want to interact. If they feel like there is a robot behind the Twitter account, they will stop following you. So if you are losing followers, try tweeting about what your having for dinner. Tweet about normal life. That is what Twitter was intended for. You’ve got to learn how social networking “works.” It does WORK! People will contact you for business! I have had a lot of people ask me to do work for them after a short time of being on Twitter. But the trick is not being this stiff person who won’t let your hair down. This is not an office. On Twitter, people expect a certain amount of openness. No, this does not mean you have to become a swearing sailor, just let people in a bit. Trust me, once you do this, people will start communicating back with you. Then you can start a conversation asking them “Hey, so what do you do for a living?”

The point here is simple, interact with people on Twitter! Add to their conversation and they will communicate with you and follow you, not forcefully or because you paid some service but because they find you interesting! I told you – you don’t need the free service, you just need to interact on Twitter as the HUMAN that you already are.