It seems like everyone is now on Twitter. Are you interested in increasing your Twitter followers. You want more people reading your messages. It’s not difficult to build a prominent profile but I think it’s important to start with the right understanding. This is the first thing you need to know: It’s not really about how you tweet, what you say or who you talk to but who you are.
Take a look at this list of Twitter users with the most followers and you’ll see that almost everyone on it is famous or well known for reasons other than Twitter. For example, you’ll notice that the top 10 users are mainly all people who own popular websites/businesses and brands or have established a reputation through their involvement in different activities.
Run your eyes down the list further and you’ll notice the same thing: these Twitter users built their large audience through their already established popularity. They didn’t start from the ground up: it’s likely that they started with a decent amount of followers and will continue accumulate them passively through the strength of their reputation or personal brand.
Darren has written some useful articles about Twitter on his site but he built his following mainly because he has a very popular blog and not because he was inherently entertaining or helpful as a Twitter user. In other words, he grew his large subscriber base because he cleverly integrated his brand/blog with his Twitter profile.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t develop a strong Twitter following if you are not famous for something online or offline. It can be done but in my opinion, building a Twitter following has little to do with how you use Twitter. I don’t believe that in order to get a sizeable audience, you need obsesses about specific tweeting etiquette.
I’ve never written any articles on how to use Twitter because I don’t think there’s an ‘optimal’ or best way to use Twitter, nor am I interested in regulating another person’s lifestream. Even if you’re purely using Twitter as a broadcast tool to increase your online influence, how or what you tweet is not really the thing you should be focusing on.
So let’s talk about what I think will help you to get more Twitter followers.
Maximize Visibility: Treat Your Twitter Profile Like Any Other Website
The first step is to understand that your Twitter profile is like any other website. You should treat it no differently from your own blog or a free opt-in newsletter. This means that if you want to increase your Twitter subscriber base, you just need to do one thing again and again: Drive web traffic to your profile. The more targeted the traffic, the better.
This sounds obvious but many people overlook this fundamental principle and focus instead on less relevant details like Twitter usage times/frequency. I’m sure that causing controversy or learning to tweet a certain way might get some extra exposure to your profile but in my opinion, the benefits are minimal. How, when and what you tweet is not crucial.
When you want to catch as many fish as possible, use a large net and spread it as far as you can. The guideline to remember when building your profile is just one: keep working on sending visitors to your profile. People can only follow you when they know you exist.
With this in mind, you can play around with a myriad number of marketing strategies, just like how you would promote a website. Think in terms of incentives. Why would someone want to follow me on Twitter? How will he or she benefit from it? Assuming that someone doesn’t know who I am, what would motivate him or her to subscribe to my Twitter profile?
Here are just some examples of traffic-driving strategies (there are many more):
- Create a tool/application and promote your profile alongside it.
- Buy a banner ad to target tech-savvy audiences, link it to your profile.
- Use Twitter as a tool for tech/customer support.
- Organize a contest through your Twitter profile
- Include links to your profile in email/forum signatures.
- Evangelize Twitter on your blog/other blogs and include a link to your profile.
- Connect your blog and other social media profiles to your Twitter page.
- Learn to pitch Twitter influencers with articles relevant to their interest
- Explicitly ask another user to recommend your profile or exchange recommendations.
Apart from these strategies, there’s also another sure-fire way to increase your Twitter followers and this simply involves the act of following other users. Lets look at this in detail.
Mass Following Twitter Users: The Favorite Methodology of ‘Spammers’
Twitter is similar to many other social networks in numerous aspects, particularly when it comes to friending behaviors. Like Myspace, its possible to befriend a massive amount of users, some of whom will add you back as a friend. Continually adding Twitter users as friends allows you to increase the amount of followers you have.
This is a strategy that has worked remarkably well for early adopters when the Twitter was still a relatively new phenomenon. For example, I know a marketer who followed over ten thousand users and got thousands of followers in return. He then cut down the amount of people he followed and changed his username to make the account look legitimate.
Nowadays, the Twitter community has grown more aware of these ’spammers’ and many tools like the Twitter Blacklist and Twerpscan have been developed to help Twitter users weed out people who try to follow many users in order to build an large audience. Still, a portion of Twitter users (perhaps the new ones) tend to add anyone who befriends them.
Take for instance, Osen Komura. A fake profile set up by another Twitter user in February 2008 as a social experiment. The Osen account followed 41,798 Twitter users in one month and 7,847 users added him as a friend, a 17%+ follow-back rate.
And Osen is not only the only profile out there with thousands of followers all derived through mass user following. The question is: Should you consider using the same strategy?
Apart from the risk of being labeled a Twitter spammer and increasing the noise on your Twitter stream, this method still works. However, know that following so many users inevitably reduces your ability to keep track of individual users since they are drowned out by other updates, unless you conscientiously keep track of your Twitter stream or use RSS.
Scoble has suggested that it’s beneficial to follow many Twitter users because you get more access to information and it shows that you’re listening and more open to communication or meeting people. Perhaps so, but I would recommend increasing the people you follow on Twitter gradually, while making sure that you’re maintaining conversational interactiveness.
Most Twitter users don’t like it if you’re simply following him/her to broadcast a message and if you don’t monitor them equally in return or engage them in conversation. Unless you’re a popular celebrity of some sort, one-way attention doesn’t work very well for Twitter.
In any case, only viewing Twitter as a broadcast platform to drive traffic to your websites is a limited perspective, especially when your Twitter followers offer a wealth of knowledge, connections and opinions you can use to improve your business and personal skills.
Personally, I prefer building up an online reputation and driving traffic to my Twitter profile. For me, the benefits of Twitter come from using it as a conversational/networking tool, so I’m more concerned with whose updates I’m receiving daily and hence, the people I follow.
All in all, it depends on your goals and how you use Twitter. Feel free to share this article with your Twitter friends. I’ll love to get more feedback on this topic.
And yes, of course…follow me on Twitter and say hi!
Twee.li is an application which allows you to use it as a normal Twitter app but also gives you the ability to instantly chat with your followers. Tweet.li is completely free but still has some cons.
Tweet.li, developed in Adobe AIR, comes as an idea to replace TinyChat and other similar web apps which you can use in your browser but easily share the chat rooms to your Twitter timeline and invite followers; including also the possibility to login using your Twitter account name.
But even though the idea sounds great there are a few cons so far: To use it with your followers, they must use Tweet.li as well, no other option available; also the application stability and performance are not actually the best, since it takes a few moments for the timeline to update.
Even though I enjoy saying “Twitter is not a chat room”, there are some exceptions and there are even more number of users who actually use it for chatting.
TweetLevel, developed by Edelman, is a simple but powerful web app which provides a way to measure the influence level of people according to their activity on Twitter.
I know, I know, you want to know how exactly does this web app calculates all this information and comes up with a result saying you are or not influential. Well in simple words: Numbers of followers, how much do you interact and chat with other people and how many re tweets do you receive.
That was the easy explanation; do you want the complex one? Ok here’s the TweetLevel formula:
There we can see there are other variables like: Number of updates; velocity; following users; name pointing; etc. But no worries, the complete explanation of this can be found here.
In the top five we can find:
1. Justin Bieber.
2. Perez Hilton.
3. SouljaBoy.
4. OGOchoCinco.
5. KimKardashian.
Ashton Kutcher is number 11; Puff Daddy, 14; Barack Obama, 19; among other interesting Twitter users.
And you? What’s your Tweet Level?
Do you actually remember who your first follower was? And your first tweet? Well you don’t need to test your memory; MyFirstTweet and FirstFollower will do the job for you.
Any of these two simple web apps does not require connecting with your Twitter account to retrieve this information, just use your Twitter name and the result will be available in just a few seconds.
MyFirstTweet web app currently is showing a disclaimer about the use of it: “This is working intermittently at the moment. I think the site hasn’t quite cleared Twitter’s whitelist yet. If you put in your twitter username I’ll save it and run it when things are running again. Sorry about that.”
In my case I didn’t have any problem running it.
Oh and in case you are interested, there’s also a section with the “earliest tweets”.
The Twitter homepage, while useful, is left in the dust when compared to the other alternative desktop applications out there and even some of the mobile apps. While it has the core functions it lacks in terms of productivity and extra features which could be so easily added.
A great ad-on for Chrome and Firefox called FlyMonkey pretty much fixes all of that. Below, you can see a screenshot of my Twitter with three columns, each serving it own purpose. This is done by adding features to your Twitter page (via a red ‘+’ sign above your screen). You can add extra columns for DMs, replies, mentions and an arsenal of different options.
They also integrated the Bit.ly URL shortener and Twitpic into Twitter. As you are typing a tweet, two options appear below called ‘Photo’ and ‘URL Shortener’. I found these very handy indeed.
So if you want to change your Twitter experience but don’t fancy moving to a third-party alternative, get FlyMonkey.
Twitter has become one of the best ways to stay up to date with the news and current ‘Trends’ as they’re called on the service. However, in order to stay informed on one particular subject you have to search for it manually.
TweetAlert is an app that will follow subjects and trends that you have an interest in and when one is tweeted, it will be re-tweeted by your account so you can see it there when you next log in.
It literally takes less than thirty seconds to sign up to a trend using the service by filling in a quick form which you can see above. After that you’ll see the trends and topics on your twitter homepage.
It’s available here: http://code-or-die.com/tweetalert/
I’m a writer – perhaps not a good one but it’s what I fill out on my tax returns year after year. As with all writer I read, write and read some more. Learning new words is one for the tricks of the trade but, to be completely honest, I couldn’t be bothered. ‘Word a day’ calendars were a cool novelty but have died – and carrying around an oxford dictionary with you isn’t exactly practical now is it?
However, I have found a solution to my literary conundrum – Artwiculate. To put it simply, it’s a word a day calander for Twitter. You follow the Artwiculate account and use their word (in context) within one or more of your tweets. If your tweet is good enough, it will get picked up by them and earn you points (which are purely for status within the ranks of Artwiculate).
I think this is a cool way to learn new words. For example, did you know Mellifluous means smooth and flowing like honey; normally used to describe a sound or voice?
My second Twitter post today – I must have tweet fever or something! This one is however a little more on the serious side – Stocks.
Yes, I suppose we can partially blame them for the recession and be totally jealous of their riches but they need to talk too, right? StockTwits Desktop is a new piece of software that allows people all over the world to talk to one another about stocks. Within the tweets you’ll find the latest gossip, trends and advices about trading.
The programs basically consists of columns of tweets in different categories as well as StockTwit TV which gives you the latest news about the software. For example, they recently teamed up with the trading giant NASDAQ in the Big Apple.
It’s all free and extremely useful to anyone who currently trades or is interested in becoming a stock trader. I used the programs for five minutes and discovered that AIG stocks may be a safe bet for the future and that USD-JPY would not have been a good move.
You can get a feel for the software or download it at their homepage.
For the professional, company owner, blogger or just those who are Twitter crazy there is HootSuite. This is a cool start-up web app that lets you manage multiple Twitter accounts all from the one screen.
There are numerous reasons one may find this useful. For example, Crenk has its own Twitter account run by our CEO
Steven who also has his own personal twitter account. Such is the story for websites, company bosses and bloggers all over the world. Signing in and out of twitter can get annoying so why not streamline the whole thing?
After signing into Hootsuite you’ll be greeted by all of you twitter accounts. Here, you can tweet to each specific one. View each account’s followers and make changes to that account. That saves you a load of time by not having to sign in an out just to make a few tweets!
It all looks good too. Despite that fact that you can have multiple accounts running at the same time it doesn’t look cluttered or messy in the least. Everything is all very well laid out and is incredibly easy to use.
One bad thing I will say is that for the power-user, it can get a tad slow but this shouldn’t apply to most of us who just want to Tweet to different accounts a few times and hour.
I’m starting to see a pattern here, readers. Every single day I find myself typing one post about having been tweeting from another Twitter App or a new Twitter service of some sort – if it keeps going at this rate, I’ll go insane and start making fifteen posts per day about Twitter. But I can understand why – Twitter rules. Blogs were so 2007.
This time it’s the turn of TuneIn to really jump on the Twitter bandwagon. The have just secured a massive investment of no less than half a million dollars from True Ventures to build upon their existing site which was launched just a few short weeks ago.
At this current point in time they offer the basic tweeting service but that is where the similarities end, full stop. They describe themselves as a highly visual media dashboard that will transform your Twitter experience. They organize other tweets from your network of followers and those you’re following into categories of the most active/popular amongst the users. It will also let you keep an eye on media and sites that are linked to your network.
According to TuneIn, this is but the tip of the iceberg. As a result of getting such a massive amount of money from True Ventures, there is certainly a lot more heading our way said Adam Hertz, the founder of InTune.
