I’m still surprised at the number of tweets I get on Twitter about “How to get 19,000 followers in 30 days.” From a purely competitive, goal-oriented point of view it sounds tempting and I’ll be totally honest, part of me secretly thinks “How cool would it be to have 45,000 followers?” Then the logical side of my brain asks “Why?” Then the first part of my brain, the competitive part, says in a much smaller voice, “Uh, because it would be cool?” And the logic side responds, “OK I’ll give you that, but would it accomplish anything?”
Especially from a business standpoint, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to collect thousands of followers at random. A more logical approach would be to build your base and relationships with those followers.
There are several ways to build a following. You can try one of those get 19,000 followers in 30 days approaches or use something like Hummingbird and sure you will get followers but they won’t necessarily be targeted followers. You may not even have anything in common with any of them. So then what is the point of having those followers? They won’t care what you say, you won’t care about what they say and at some point their tweets will just become annoying to wade through them to find something you actually have an interest in reading.
Worst case scenario, Twitter shuts down your site, because it’s increasingly not putting up with tactics it sees as spam.
What I’m saying is take the time to build a targeted following.
Use directories like Twellow and search the categories for people with the same interests as you or that apply to your business and then follow them.
Do a Twitter search for a term or phrase, see who’s talking about it and follow them. But don’t just follow them, start conversing. Contribute something of value.
The process takes a bit more work and a lot more time, I know but it will be worth it. The numbers will come but the relationships will be substantial.
One response to “How to build a Twitter following”
I think you’re right about a more targeted following being more effective.
On the other side of the spectrum, though, is authority. If you have a massive Twitter following, you’re seen in the marketplace as having a pretty high authority.
I’m kind of lazy on Twitter. I just use it for authority and to syndicate my blog and autoresponder emails.
If I were to use it seriously, I’d probably do it your way plus build big for authority.