Tweet the Tweets That Matter: Ways To Get Followers

Ever wondered why your colleague and/or friend who tweets on the same subject matter has more followers? Aside from having an established - prior to the Twitter era – brand and/or personality, there are a few tricks that you should now to attract more followers. They are ways that could get people to avoid your Twitter Account in the first place. It’s more or less along the lines with your Facebook and LinkedIn Accounts that you’d like to keep simple, clean, informative and – professional!

All experts would tell you the same things – or close to it. It’s an unspoken Bible of “how to use and grow” your Twitter. Here they are:

Twitter’s Face – yes, it’s all starts with the photo of your profile. It’s been many times said that unless your job is a striptease dancing and you use your Twitter account to promote the Gentlemen’s Club and your ‘office hours’, please restrain from using an  unprofessional, personal, intimate photo…You can use a personal photo, but a professional one – in full cloths and with no visible body art. Use something personal, something that tells me who you are.

Twitter’s Name – pick something that tells something about you and/or about the things you tweet about. If I come across a name Agent007, I’d assume two things – you tweet all about James Bond movies and/or it’s your “nick” for something I don’t even want to guess…Or – the best case scenario – you tweet on the topics of secret services and spies. Then, the name makes sense. If it’s your name, great. If it’s your area of interest, great. Just make it something other than a bunch of random characters.

Twitter’s Bio – true, you don’t have much character space to tell your life story, but you at least can says something that would catch my interest – your insights, profession, interests...

Unlock Yourself – Don’t expect someone to follow you if your Tweets are private. Me, personally, I don’t follow people unless I can read their tweets. Unlock your Twitter account.

 
Tweet Interesting Tweets – as simple as that. Comedians, media, and practically everyone out there have said it over and over – no one wants to read about you eating a sandwich and what kind of a toilet paper you use. Keep it to the psychos. Tweet something that would make us want to follow you. Make it simple, catchy, visual (use Twitpic), entertaining, and at some times – personal as in “I’ve been using this [iPhone App] for a week, it makes my search for restaurants very easy…My girlfriend’s been happy with our date dinners” – personal, but yet informal and decent.

Info-Tweet – tweet something useful – give your followers something they can learn from. Tweet an article you just read. Tweet about an upcoming event. Tweet about a tip on something useful in life: home depot, diet, shoe repair, traffic jam…

Be Polite, ReTweet Someone Else – One of the best features of Twitter is the Retweet button. When you read a tweet that you like or read an article that someone has shared on Twitter, be sure to RT it. This is the power of Twitter in that it helps someone find articles that he/she might not have otherwise found. Everyone, who values the SEO of their Twitters, look to those who ReTweets. Moreover, the people you ReTweet appreciate you getting a word-out about their tweets and would do the same for you.

Don’t Twitter Spam – do not spam anyone unless it directly (or indirectly, but closely) effects another person. Do not tweet each single article on fashion to the editors of a fashion magazine (most likely they’d block you if you do). Tweet if it’s a very unique, rare trend that might affect the fashion industry all together. Unless it’s your very close friends with who you share EVERYTHING, learn to be picky about what you tweet @ to other people.

Twitter’s HashTags – use them correctly. Think of hashtags as keywords that can be added to your tweet when the keyword isn’t already in your tweet. If you’re already mentioning a keyword in the sentence, just put a # in front of it and it’s your keyword – no space is wasted. And be very picky in how you use hashtag. Add them to your tweets when they are appropriate. HashTags might be a trend, name of a company, industry, personality, gadgets such as: #wallstreet, #P&G, #NBC, #LadyGaGa, #ChangeUp, #Hollywood, #dentistry, #newmedia, #Murdoch, #shoesales, #blogging… Movie fans and critics would easily find you by the name of the movie “ChangeUp” and/or by “Hollywood”, those who follow updates on News of the World scandal, would find you by “Murdoch”, those you seek sales deals on shoes store come across your “shoesales”, and so on.

Follow Others Back – it’s not a must, you don’t have to follow anyone (unless they promised to pay you well :). You only follow someone who you are interested in. But be sure to follow others back who follow you. If you have 3,000 followers and only follow 50, then I consider you to be a Twitter snob. This does not apply to the Twitter accounts of mega news bureaus, companies, organizations, celebrities, etc. CNN is followed by more than 2 million people, while CNN only follows 21,000.

On the other hand, if you follow 7,000 people and only 300 follow you back that tells me that you are either using auto-follow software to rack up “bragging numbers” or you follow everyone under the sun, but no one else finds your tweets useful. If either of these are true, you need to seriously rethink your Twitter practices.

Tweet Frequently – it does not mean you need to quit your daytime job and tweet all day long. It means that , depending on what’s your account for – for professional purpose and/or personal, tweeting on behalf of your organization or you’re a club promoter – tweet often enough for others not to forget about you. You learned something new? Tweet about it? You’ve seen something on the news – tweet about it. You came across an interesting situation on your lunch – tweet about it. But again – those tweets should be still interesting and informative. Don’t tweet about a broken umbrella, unless you can offer a tip to fix it.

But NOT Too Frequently – tweets about nothing get your easily un-followed. It’s as simple as that. Again, no one cares what dressing you use for your salad...

If you have any additional suggestions, please let me and the other readers know.

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