How to Add Followers on Twitter – 1000 Followers in One Week

This morning I woke up and had 200+ automated messages in my inbox telling me that _____ was following me.  I was excited because the night before, I knew that I only needed 80 more followers to hit my goal of one thousand followers in one week on Twitter.  It was a bit of a social media experiment that I set exactly a week before after talks at the last Manoa Geek Meet held at the Honolulu Advertiser.

It was a great meeting, I just felt out of the loop for not being so integrated into Twitter.  People there were using their iPhones to exchange twitter names instead of business cards and here I was marketing myself as an experienced online marketer without anymore that 10 followers on Twitter.  Granted, most of my peers on the mainland in my profession aren’t even on Twitter simply because they don’t have the bandwidth to maintain their account or get involved with a new social medium.  Also, most of them work for companies / agencies who represent Advertisers or Publishers so their is no need for them to market themselves. Lastly, many people find it hard to find the value in Twitter.

I heard somewhere that 50% of the people who sign up for Twitter abandon it.  I think that explains a lot of my friends and why they have accounts with only a few followers and no avatar.  People don’t understand the value or purpose of Twitter.  I didn’t either until my conversations with @HawaiiSEO, @exbor, and @ KGMB9 at the Manoa Geek meeting.

Let me start this tutorial by explaining that Twitter is a content stream (from my perspective).  It is a way to share useful information with users who share similar interests with you.  It isn’t about telling people what you had for breakfast or what you are watching; its about providing information that people want.   If you understand this point, you’ll be giving yourself a leg up in accumulating followers.  I mean, seriously, is your life so interesting that thousands of people want to hear about what you are doing ever hour or every few minutes for that matter?

AlohaNewMedia Twitter Stats - 1000 followers in 7 days

Before I get into the real nitty gritty of how I gained one thousand followers in one week, I want to answer the question of “why?” First, everyone says that after x many followers, you can’t even keep track of the conversation.  I agree and I’ll explain how I deal with that.  Secondly, people have said that Twitter relationships are about quality and not quantity.  I agree but there is also a lot of value in having access to the eyeballs of thousands of people who fit your target demographic.  A perfect example is that I wanted to get some traffic to my wife’s photography site so I asked my followers to re-tweet a post that promoted her site.  Just from one simple post, her site received 67 clicks.  For that reason, I feel that Twitter is a great tool for promoting sites and gauging what appeals to users within your audience.  So without further ado, let’s get you some followers!

1.  Figure out what your interests are, what you are an expert in, or who you want to meet.  This will give you direction for how to target followers.  In my case, I wanted to target anyone in Hawaii.

2.  Determine who are the authorities in your target niche’.  Its easy to determine who the top Twitter users in your chosen area are with tool like Twellow and WeFollow. Just type in a keyword to see who’s the most followed for that area.  For the Keyword ‘Hawaii’, the top Twitter accounts are people like @AlohaArleen, @HawaiiReality, @Neenz, @Hawaii, @Honadv, and @KBMB9.  All of these people I have met at either the Manoa Geek Meet or at the Social Media Chapter Meeting.  Follow the authorities in your area and build a relationship with them.   These are people you should look up to so treat them with respect.  If you do, they will follow you back.

3.  Your Twitter account will soon get out of control, so you need to create a customizable view of all the Tweets that are going to go on around you.  Basically, you will never be able to follow 100′s of user’s tweets, not to mention 1000′s or in @AlohaArleen’s case, 60,000 followers.  Use Tweet Deck to manage your conversations.  The rule here is to create groups for users that you want to pay attention to.  In my case, I’ve created a “Hawaii” group and I have added all the above names (since I want to be involved in their discussions).

4.  Start Tweeting!  Start by providing your followers with useful information and content that is relevant to them.  In my case, that’s news or stories that I found interesting.  I use sites like StumbleUpon, Alltop, and Digg to find articles.  After I find these articles, I use Adjix to shrink the link to the article and post the article.  Also, you can delay your tweets with Adjix so you can space them out or Tweet while you are asleep.  What I really enjoy about Adjix is that you can track how many users click on your link.  This will help you gauge what time of day gets the most clicks and what types of links get the most responses. You can also shrink links with Tweet Deck, but I like Adjix because you can install a button on your Firefox browser to “one-click” shrink your link and tweet it.

5.  Start following.  It’s good etiquette in Twitter land to follow anyone who is following you.  You can choose not to follow this unspoken rule, but it is a good idea to just do it yourself.  As you follow people, you will see that they start following you back.  In some cases, this is immediate with a direct message response.  Look at the message closely, chances are, it’s a canned message.  You can set up this type of automation using TweetLater.  TweetLater lets you auto-follow anyone who is following you on Twitter.  Also, you can configure TweetLater to send a Direct Message to your followers.  This is a good way to send a link to your site or promote a recent blog post.

6.  Now start mass following.  Remember to continue following steps 1-5.  Keeping those in mind, use tools like InRev TwitIn to follow 15 accounts at a time.  Follow those who are following the authorities in your niche’.  I usually follow 200-500 people per day.  Keep in mind that the Twitter API only allows for 100 request per hour so you might hit that cap if you continually add users.  Continue to provide valuable content, and people will follow you back.

7.  Consolidate and reach an equilibrium.  Un-follow anyone who isn’t following you.  You don’t want to seem like you follow everyone in the world.  Also, you don’t want to follow people who aren’t actively tweeting (remember that 50% abandon rate I mentioned earlier?). I usually do this in the morning after I’ve gone on a long Twitter Follow Frenzy. I use Twitter Karma which my friend and mentor David Zuls recommended.  Recognize that it takes several hours in some cases for automation to auto-follow.  Also, not everyone is an avid Twitter user like you, so you might want to give them some extra time to follow you.  Bottom line is that communication is a two way street and if they aren’t following you, they aren’t going to be able to hear what you are saying (so stop listening to them).

8.  Repeat.  Keep doing this every day for a week and see where it gets you.  Be sincere and be yourself.  Don’t spam people and re-tweet your message 30 times in 2 minutes.  Don’t sound like a car salesman trying to make his quota on Dec. 30th.  Just be genuine, provide useful or interesting content, and try to make the community a better place.  There’s a feel good aspect of Twitter where people really go out of their ways to help one another.  Try it, it might make your day.

If all goes well, you’ll have a graph showing this type of progress over 7 days (see above).  Just today alone, I added over 350 followers.  The more you gain, the more people follow you.  So it does get easier.  I’m going to keep it up and try to gain another 1000 by next week using the above methods.  Be sure to keep track of your group you set in Tweet Deck and contribute often.

Keep Tweeting, be sure to follow me and retweet my post, and ask me or comment if you have questions or something to add.  Finally, if you are or know a business who is in need of online marketing services, please do not hesitate to contact me.  Please let me know your results in the comment section below.