follow me @yudhituela
I regularly attend tweetupmellers. At first I assumed that all tweetups and get togethers have the same sense of community, but I soon learnt that there was something different. I quickly learnt that this was due to the organizers efforts to ensure people felt like they were part of a larger community.
10 Ways To Create A Community Around Your Tweetup

1. Have a twitterwall
One of the great features of the last few tweetups has been the twitter wall. It is simply a search on Twitterfall which is then projected onto a screen in the back corner of The Social. It is a huge talking point and really added to the fun of the evening.
There were some people who tweeted simply to bump someone else’s name from the top. There were also times when the whole room went silent as there was a mass update of tweets.
2. Have a game on the website

If you go to the attendance page and click attendance again, the page turns into an cute game, similar to pong, were you try and eliminate the attendance. Most people are unaware of this but it occasionally goes viral within our community.
3. Get a group photo

The group photo has quickly become a tradition. Usually, a member of the media team will bring a DSLR and get a group photo before people start to leave. This photo usually gets a lot of retweets the next day and really helps people to remember how much fun they had.
4. Create Name Tags

The name tags were a simple idea. At the last tweetup, we got name tags printed out with our name, avatar and the tweetup sponsor on it. We were able to then clip these to our outfits. They got a lot of comments.
5. The Unofficial media team
There are four of us that have unofficially become part of the media team. At first, I was confused as to how a tweetup could have a media team. I soon found out it was the term for those who brought their cameras and shared content from the night. I always bring my camera so was quickly inducted and found that people loved sharing the photos.
6. Have a flickr pool
The flickr pool is simply a group where members share their photos. There are usually just three or four people sharing their images, but between us we get a lot of photos. This gives the other attendees a central place to find the photos without hunting through individual twitpic and flickr accounts.
7. Hold a ustream sesion

For the last few tweetups, we have streamed the tweetup live. Now, this has had some technical problems, especially in terms of lighting. It is something we want to improve of. But it has been a huge success.
Those who weren’t able to come drop into the ustream session to say hi. Sometimes they talk to the others in the chatroom. They’ll tweet in comments about what they see and request that certain people sing or dance in front of the camera.
I think this is a really innovative and fun idea.
8. Ask attendees to write on the official blog

The tweetupmellers blog is updated after each Tweet Up, and usually by a different person. This allows people to show their skills and share their content. A really successful post was by Neil Creek, whose Meetheads idea was really embraced.
9. Have an interactive attendance page

The team has a created an attendance page where people can register whether they are coming or not. The app gets the data from twitter and allows people to change their status. This page is pretty popular on the day prior to the tweetup and gives people the chance to connect with those they don’t know prior to meeting in person.
10. Create groups on social networks
So far, Tweetupmellers has an group on Linked In and a facebook fan page. This is a way that the users can connect in whatever manner they choose afterward.
Your turn.

I’ve only gone a small number of local tweetups and Tweetupmellers has been my favourite. Do you have any tips for creating a community around your twitter event?

follow me @yudhituela
Most people on twitter want to increase the number of people that follow them.
I currently only have about 170 followers and so gaining 1,000 new followers may seem a little ambitious.
But I am up to the challenge!
Here’s my 10 point plan to get 1,000 new followers this year. (This works out to about 85 new followers per month.)
1. Tweet about new blog posts
Whenever I post something new on my blog I will also tweet about it. This may sound obvious but it’s worth mentioning. If you have great content you need to make sure that it gets tweeted.
2. Tweet More Often
In 2009 I didn’t tweet every day. There were some weeks where I didn’t tweet at all.
I need to change this and make 3 tweets every day.
If every tweet garners me 1 new follower then tweeting 3 times a day should give me 3 new followers each day or over 1,000 followers by the end of the year.
I could tweet more often than 3 times a day but I fear that it will irritate some of my followers.
Since I seldom add new stuff to my blog more than once a day I have made a list of old but valuable blog posts. It is from this list I will pull from to tweet about.
3. Develop a schedule and Tweet at the best times
I have found that some times of the day are far better for tweeting than others. It seems that 9 AM to 5 PM Pacific Time are the best times to tweet.
I don’t really have any strong empirical evidence and I haven’t run numerous controlled experiments. It’s just what I have observed with my own tweets.
So I have developed a schedule to ensure that I tweet about a couple things around 9 AM and again at noon.
Hopefully tweeting at the right times will result in more retweets and more followers for me.
4. Make it easy for visitors to tweet about my site
If you use WordPress there is a simple plug-in that puts a “ReTweet This” button on every blog post. It allows visitors to retweet your post with a click of button. It also displays how many people have tweeted about it.
It’s called Tweetcount and is a free download.
5. Invite people to follow me at the end of each post
When people finish reading a post on my blog they ask themselves, “What should I do now?”
It’s at this point that you should have a link inviting them to follow you on twitter and get more fabulous updates about the topic at hand.
6. Put a link to my twitter account in my e-mail signature
I receive e-mails every day from different people asking me how to get traffic to their website. And I respond to everyone of them
By putting a link to my twitter profile at the bottom of these e-mail responses I can get more followers. I have no idea why I didn’t do this before.
7. Have a contest with the winners being picked for my twitter followers
I’m not sure exactly how I plan to do this but I hope to have it figured out in a few weeks.
The first thing is to find a prize that people actually care about. It has to be something that they would be willing to follow me for the chance to win.
I run a blog about how to get traffic to your website (My blog is called Nick’s Traffic Tricks) and I tweet about things related to traffic generation. So I want to gain followers that are interested in this topic. As a result I want to select a prize that will attract these kind of people.
If I simply give away an iPod I will probably get lots of followers and most will not be interested in what I tweet about. The results will be that I will gain lots of followers in the short run but most of them will eventually drop off.
So the prize I select has to be something that entices the type of followers that I want.
(If you have any suggestions on how to successfully run a contest on twitter please leave a comment below!)
8. Write for TwiTip
I wrote a guest post for TwiTip a month or so ago. That was probably the single best thing I ever did to get more followers on twitter. Within a few days I had 40 new followers.
I’m going to try to write for TwiTip twice a month. This should result in 80 new followers each month.
9. Leverage my email list
I have an e-mail list of over 1,000 people that receive my traffic tips on regular basis. And I plan to leverage this list to get more followers on twitter.
I will add link to my twitter account at the bottom of each e-mail that I send to my list. I just need to think of a way to really entice them to click the link and follow me.
I will also e-mail my list every time I post something new on my blog. At the bottom of each blog post is an invitation to follow me on twitter and that will result in a few more followers.
10. Submit each new blog post to StumbleUpon and OnlyWire
Submitting your website to StumbleUpon and OnlyWire will result in more traffic to your website.
And more traffic means more people are reading your blog posts and seeing your invitation to follow you on twitter.
I’ve personally seen a viral effect with StumbleUpon that increased my twitter following. A couple months ago I posted a fantastic way to get backlinks to your website quickly with little effort. (This was something that my readers loved!)
Without my knowing, many of my readers stumbled the post sending a ton of traffic to my blog. A side effect of this was that there was a jump in the number of people following me on twitter.
If you do nothing else make sure you stumble your content. I believe this is so important that I will actually stumble your content as well.

follow me @yudhituela 
When you first get on twitter, it’s likely the thing you care most about is how many followers you have. I’ve even been to parties where people will judge my status by the number of followers I have. It’s like walking up to somebody and asking them how much money they make. A year ago when I first got on twitter, I met a girl at a party who I asked me how many followers I had. At the time I didn’t really know how to use twitter, and I had roughly 100 followers. She then proceeded to tell me about a mass follow tool of some sort, so I went home and went crazy following people. I’ve never interacted with her on twitter, and I have no idea what happened to her.
To add to that my twitter account eventually got banned and I had to start all over again. Before I get into the rest of the concepts in this post, I want to recommend that you read Malcom Gladwell’s book, The Tipping Point.
Quality trumps Quantity: The idea that 150 followers is all you need probably sounds crazy to people, especially if you are just starting out. In an interview I conducted with Scott Stratten (this year’s keynote speaker for Blogworld), he mentioned that he tweeted over 10,000 times before he shared any of his own content. 75% of those were not even retweets, but @replies. He was engaged in real conversations with real people. So I decided to experiment with the concept for a month. The byproduct was incredible. The traffic I got from twitter increased exponentially. To top it off I met a bunch of new, really interesting people. Before long I found them on my blog commenting and sharing my posts with their followers.
The Rule of 150: In The Tipping Point, Malcom Gladwell talks about a concept called Dunbar’s number, named for anthropologist Robin Dunbar. After studying numerous groups the number 150 kept coming up over and over again. The conclusion that Robin Dunbar came to was that the maximum number of social relationships a person can effectively manage is 150. Gladwell went on to say that 150 people is what you need to make an idea spread. What’s even more interesting to is that after you get past 150 something happens that makes it harder for an idea to spread. Hopefully you see where I’m going with this concept. I want to share one concrete example from my own twitter presence. On my @skooloflife account I have 2000 followers. I get an average of 10 tweets per post. On my @blogcastfm account (the one for the podcast I host), I have about 500 followers and most interviews I get close to 20 tweets. There’s no way you are realistically going to engage with effectively with thousands of followers unless you absolutely have no life. Think about the power of 150 people who love you and everything you do when compared to the thousands of people where you are just trying to stand out from the noise.
Creating Your 150
Creating your 150 is actually quite easy and if you follow the steps below you’ll have discovered your 150 in no time. I’ve written my process out below of how I do this using tweetdeck.

• Track Mentions: The major thing you should be tracking is mentions of your twitter name. Anytime somebody mentions your name, it’s an opportunity to start a conversation and acquire a new high quality follower.
• Track Retweets: You should also pay close attention to the people who are retweeting the posts you have written. It’s obvious that they like your content, otherwise they wouldn’t be sharing it.
• Create a List: I have a list called my inner circle. Anytime somebody mentions me or retweets me, I make a point to to add them to that list. If they are a spammer, they get blocked.
• Engage with the People on that List: Simply creating the list is not going to be enough. Once you have created your inner circle list, you need to start engaging with them.
  • Daily Conversations: I talk to the people on my inner circle list almost daily. I don’t talk to all 150 of them every single day. But I talk to at least a few of them and that’s all that you really need to do to start getting true value out of twitter.
  • Retweet their Stuff: I make a point to promote the stuff of the people in my inner circle, especially if they are newer than I am to the blogosphere. It’s much easier to form relationships with people who are at your same level or slightly below. People have a tendency to only try to form relationships with people who are more established. Don’t discredit the value of your peer group because they won’t be small forever.

Where to Start When You Are at Zero: If you are starting at zero, some of the above might seem more challenging, but it’s not. Just start with bloggers who you have been reading. This is why it’s important to read more than just the a-list blogs. Find people you think are interesting and just reach out to them. They’ll be happy to hear from you. That will be the start of creating your 150.

follow me @yudhituela
A couple of weeks ago, I tweeted the message “Now accepting applications for actual human followers. No bots please.” I was half-joking, but had several people reply with “I know what you mean!” Apparently I wasn’t the only one with a an army of robots following me.
I’ve had a Twitter account for a while now, but didn’t actively start using it until this summer. I was coming out with a new website for photographers and thought Twitter would be a good way to spread the word, get feedback and generally interact with the photography community.

WHO I WANTED

Before I started, I had a very clear idea of who my ideal follower was. Generally it was one of two people:
Photography types – fans of photography, professional or amateur photographers, people who make photography gear or software – that crowd
Anyone interesting – the type person you would be happy to sit next to during a 2 hour flight. Maybe someone really funny or an expert in an interesting field.
At that point, I went through the same paces most new folks do – trying to build up a nice group of followers.

MY PLAN

After reading tons of blog posts and articles on the subject, I set out to try the “I’ll follow you, you follow me” strategy. Sure enough, after a few days I had gone from 20 followers to 100. The problem was, I really only knew about 4 of the followers. I could ask a question and nobody would ever reply. I started noticing that most of my new followers were just sending out ads or links to their websites or services. I don’t mind that in small doses, but I’m not interested in sitting down and reading the online classifieds.
PLAN B
My plan was clearly not working, so it was back to the blogs for more research. Somewhere along the way, I discovered this phenomenon of fiverr.com where you can basically pay someone $5 to do anything from design a logo to calling your girlfriend and breaking up for you. One of the very popular services was the people who would tweet your message to their 100k followers for a month for $5. Curious to try something new, I figured I’d throw five bucks at the problem and see what happened. It might also send some traffic to my new website.
After a few days, I was seeing the tweets, but didn’t notice any increase in my followers or website traffic – strange. These tweets were going out from dozens of accounts – each with 5-10K followers- so why wasn’t I getting flooded with traffic? Out of curiosity, I decided to change the outgoing tweet to “Is anyone actually reading this? If so, DM me and let me know” – kind of a digital message in a bottle. After a week, not a single response. Clearly, these followers were not actual humans looking to interact-just other broadcasters looking for one-way conversations.
SO WHAT NOW?
Although the last idea was clearly a failure, it was a pretty good learning experience for 5 bucks! What became clear is that numbers are not everything. I was under the impression that having 10,000 followers was better than having 100 followers. What I eventually discovered was that 100 engaged, active followers was actually better than 100,000 inactive followers. Unfortunately, the only tried and true way of finding those people is by letting it happen naturally – make friends, then make friends with their friends, and so on. Save your five bucks for when you need someone to break up with your girlfriend. By the way, if you happen to be a photographer, interesting or just willing to interact – we are still accepting new follower applications: @yudhituela

You can follow me @yudhituela
It can be easily noticed that most of the people with lot of twitter followers were somehow famous before twitter era! or are popular in some field or the other, at present. They all had one or the other ways to get connected with their customers/readers/followers etc. When twitter was launched and started getting popular, all these customers/readers/followers started following them, as twitter gives an easy medium to follow someones tweets.

Update: We already have more than 60 tips to increase your twitter followers in this article and we will add some more, in the future.
NOTE: Recently Twitter made a change to its system. Where you can not see the conversation of two persons, if you are not following both of them. Ex:- If the tweet starts with “@username” then you will not be able to see it, unless you are following @username as well as the one who is tweeting it.
Disclaimer: I am writing this article to those people who want to know almost all the possible ways to increase their followers. Personally I am not interested in the number, but in the person that I follow, because we get, from whom we follow. Whom others follow is left to them.

Tips, tricks and strategies to get more twitter followers:-
1. Treat your twitter profile as you would treat any other website. Send as much traffic as possible to your twitter profile.
2. Maintain good tweets in the first page of your profile. This seem to be a lot of work in the beginning. But seriously this will help you a lot in gaining followers. If people visiting your profile see only handful of links being tweeted, then they may not follow you, thinking that you are some sort of a automated script or some may think you as spammer. So see to that each time you decide to stop tweeting, make sure to tweet some useful things and minimize links. Because your recent tweets will be displayed in the first page of your profile.
3. Use a “tweet this” button below all your articles or below the articles which you think can go viral in twitter world.
4. Use different other services to know who is following you, and use the suggestion tool to get the suggested twitter users to follow. By this you can connect to relevant people around the world and they are most likely to follow you back, if they find you as relevant.
5. You can conduct twitter contests on your blog. This one strategy will drive a lot of followers in small amount of time. But it highly depends on what you are giving away in the contest. The higher the value of the product/service, higher the chances of getting more followers.
6. Get your twitter profile link featured on any famous website.
Ex:- If you are listed in the top 10 re-tweeters, then you can get still more followers. As people will think that you will re-tweet even their tweets!
7. If you have a website or a blog, display the follow me button at the top or any other highly visible regions.
If you get sudden hike in the traffic, you can’t expect that all those visitors will turn into your blogs subscribers or your loyal readers. But if they like the content of the blog they are most likely to follow you on twitter, as they think that you have the capacity to deliver the value.
8. Participate in twitter contests. By this you will be in a group of people who are into the contest, by this people participating may be willing to follow all other participants. So it is important that you leave a status message of the tweet or the twitter ID that you used to enter the contest, in the comment section, so that other participants can find you on twitter.
9. You can also use your twitter profile URL, while commenting on other blogs.
10. Participate in twitter actively. Re-tweet others useful tweets and get their attention. If they also re-tweet one of your tweets sometime, you will end up getting noticed by their followers, some of them may even follow you.
11. Use twitter ID in your email signature, so that your business partners or others will get to know that you are also using twitter.
12. Print the twitter profile URL on your business card.
13. If you have any other product, then you can get your twitter link printed on it.
14. Use your twitter URL at the end of each SMS(Short Messaging Service) from your phone.
15. Basic thing, but still ignored one: Invite all your friends in your Gmail, Yahoo mail etc, and they are the most potential followers you can ever get.
16. Tweet valuable things. Don’t just try to get traffic to your blog by tweeting only about your articles. You can tweet about what you are presently doing etc, bit personal things, this is what twitter followers like to know. But try to provide some more valuable things. Like tweeting a breaking news, cricket scores, latest happenings at your place etc.
17. Participate in certain groups. Groups can be created using hashtags. And some times if the group message is a hot topic, then your tweets will be listed in “hot trending topics” in search or other famous twitter services.
Ex:- #followfriday
18. Use a custom background for your twitter profile. This will show that you are a professional and chances are there, a visitor to your profile may turn into your follower.
19. Use a good twitter ID. Many people suggest to use their real name and most of the others suggest to use the business name. In case of bloggers, people mostly use their blog name inorder to build their brand recognition. If the twitter ID is somethink special or attractive, many people will endup following you without any reason!
And many such attractive twitter ID’s are auctioned at different marketplaces. It shows the importance of having a good twitter ID. And make sure that your twitter ID is not too long, which will eventually add up to the 140 character of the person who is tweeting you or re-tweeting your tweets!
20. Try to involve in conversation with people having more number of followers. When the famous person reply to your tweet, his followers see your twitter ID, if they find the conversation interesting, they may start following you and the conversation.
21. Use your twitter URL in other social networking, social bookmarking and social media sites profile page and any other online places where you have an account and space to write something. This will help you get interesting and targeted people follow you.
22. Do not use annoying profile picture. Using your real photo or your blog logo/banner is recommended. Many people use the animated images, this is ok as long as its not annoying.
23. Link to your twitter profile often. You can also add a link to your profile at the end of each article on your blog.
24. If you have an online service, then use Twitter as another tool for tech/customer support. This will make the customers to follow you inevitably!
25. Include your twitter ID in forum signature.
26. You can ask other twitterers to recommend you to their followers and you can recommend them to your followers.
27. Some bloggers publish the twitter IDs of some people as: Recommended to follow list. You can participate in such events and if your ID has been listed, you can get a lot of followers.
28. Some bloggers also collect the twitter IDs of their readers and publish on their blog, for mass following. Participate in such events and you will keep getting a lot of followers from that single page over years.
29. Some people mass follow others as they are sure that most of them followback almost all their followers. Once they reach a certain target number, they will start un-following those mass followed people. Thus they will be able to have a high number of followers with a low number of following! This is not a recommended strategy, but its still popular and most effective.
30. Utilize the about me section of twitter properly. Put your blog URL or about your business along with your small description. If you make it interesting, there is a high possibility of getting more conversions(visitors into followers). Remember, your bio is shown in the Suggested Users section, that will highly decide your number!
31. Follow others. If you do not follow anyone and keep expecting lot of people to start following you, this will not work for everyone. If you are following atleast some people, then others will feel that you are open to conversation and that you like to listen to others.
32. Remember you only have 5 to 7 seconds to convert a visitor into follower, so make your profile as good as possible. Tweak all the aspects mentioned above(related to profile page), and you can see a drastic increase in your followers number.
33. Try to pay individual attention as for as possible. Don’t just think of yourself! You can talk to one person at a time. But never isolate yourself after having all these followers. People may find you inactive and may start removing you from their following list.
34. Be helpful to other twitter users, so that they can recommend you to others, without your request.
35. Block spammers and other useless automated boots by using the blocking feature in twitter. By this you will be able to give your attention to only genuine users and will not get distracted and your twitter experience will be good. By this you can give more to twitter and get more followers.
36. If you have some 500+ followers, you can use some service to display it on your blog, as a social proof. This will defiantly attract more people to follow you. Inturn increasing your followers number and inturn attracting even more people to follow you.
37. Ask questions: By asking questions, you can easily start the conversation with any stranger. Make sure that you ask an easy question So that many people answer you and you can start the conversation with them. Ask a simple question and also be prepared with some 1 or 2 follow up questions, so as to keep them engaged. By this strategy, you will increase the number of tweets coming your way and many of the followers of your followers will notice your conversations and may follow you. This also helps to grow the number of twitter public timeline(if you have not checked the “protect my updates” option in the settings) messages hence increasing the chances of appearing your tweets in search engines.
38. Use some twitter client or twitter apps or twitter messengers! Because people don’t like to wait for your reply. If you are still using the web page(with no AJAX implemented), then its time to switch to some twitter client and start replying. This saves a lot of time and followers! If you reply to your followers question after 24hrs or even 2 or 4 hrs late, then they probably don’t enjoy your conversation. And eventually may stop following you.
39. Tweeting at the time of US business hours i.e., from morning 9:00 to 5:00 evening would help to grow the twitter followers. I have not tested it extensively though, but still it sounds logical.
40. This tip for people who need to get followers at any cost:
You can use the PPC advertising to get the targeted twitter followers. This may seem very crazy in the beginning. But wait, this idea is better than paying twitter or any other service to feature your twitter ID.
This idea is for people who are running any business and want to get some target audience to follow them, so that they can serve those target audience.
41. If asking question is one strategy to build the followers, answering others question is another way to grab the attention. If you are following a famous person and if he is not following you, then its the right time to start replying/answering to all of his questions, as aptly as possible. By this way you can get his attention. And you can also get his followers attention, if you can make him to reply to you quite often.
42. Similar to the importance of tweeting time, the days that you spend on twitter also matters. On Saturdays and Sundays there will be less people using twitter. As people are free on these days, you may be thinking that they will spend a lot of time in these social sites, but it doesn’t work like that. People want to enjoy their life. They want to spend their valuable time with their family. So most of them or atleast those with success in their business will turn off their internet on these days.
So it will be of more beneficial, if we can follow all the strategies to get more followers, on days other than Saturday’s and Sunday’s.
43. Many of you may not think this as an ideal way to tweet, but this tip has proved to be most effective.
People follow a blog that they are interested in. The more focused a blog is upon a particular niche, more chances of it getting loyal reader base. Similarly, I have seen many people tweeting only about a particular topic, say politics, health and fitness, Google news, gadgets etc, get more number of target followers.
This also helps to get more re-tweets and drives more traffic to a blog post. For example, if you have a popular or even not so popular gadget blog, and if you tweet mostly about interesting and latest gadgets then gadget lovers will surly like, follow and recommend you to their followers.
44. If you are a blogger, then try to follow more people in your niche. Because these people are more likely to follow you back because of the niche that you are in. To help them get to know about your niche and interests, use the about me section effectively.
45. If you can use the twitter SMS feature or if you have internet in your mobile phone, then cover some live events.
Ex:- If you are attending a famous conference/sports…etc and if you can tweet about the happenings live, then more people tend to follow you and re-tweet your tweets. Use hashtags and people will notice you while they are searching for the news of that particular event that you are live tweeting.
46. Using twitter clients can make things easy and fast. But make sure that you do not tweet every second of your online time. This will surly annoy your followers and even twitter!
People will consider you as a spammer or an automated script, if you keep on tweeting, without listening and responding your followers tweets. Minimize your personal tweets. Try to involve in the conversation going on. Provide value.
47. If possible, teach your followers what re-tweeting is. By this, if your followers start re-tweeting your tweets, then your ID will again appear infront of your followers followers, and you will get more exposure and high chances of getting even more followers and even more re-tweets.
48. If you have a podcast service or if you shot a video and upload it to YouTube, then make sure to add your twitter ID in the video/podcast, at the end or in the beginning of the video/podcast. If people like the video/podcast, then they will surly like to get connected with you and start following you on twitter.
49. Follow the top twitter users and watch what they tweet and how they treat their followers. This may not be a huge tip, because those top twitter users are already popular in other fields, so they have lot of followers in twitter. While this is true in most of the cases, but there are some twitter users who have got a lot of followers just due to their tweets. Follow such people and you will learn a lot from them.
Being a celebrity doesn’t hurt.. but just being yourself brings followers that actually care about what you are saying and they are much more valuable.
50. Have your twitter ID on all the guest posts that you write.
51. An effective and worst way to increase your follower base (spammers way to get more followers) is to create an account with a celebrity name and profile pic, and try to pretend like the celebrity. In a very short time, you will get a lot of followers. After you are satisfied with the number of followers, change the profile pic, bio and the twitter ID and behave normally.
This is not a recommended thing to do. But I am writing this article to those people who want to know almost all the possible ways to increase their followers.
Personally I don’t find any useful thing (other than getting traffic) in getting more followers. And I am not interested in the number, but in the person that I follow, because we get, from whom we follow. Whom others follow is left to them.
52. Biggest tip to enjoy twitter is, to tweet just for the sake of tweet. Don’t think of the number of followers. Just try to get involved in the conversation. Have interest to know about other people around the world. Be curious, enthusiastic. And spend some time using twitter each day(if you have time), and eventually you will have a lot of followers who are also interested in you.
53. Following everyone who follows you is also a best way to get more followers. People will follow you atleast because you asure them that you also follow them back.
54. When you tweet something worth Re-tweeting, then use less than 140 Characters. Because, if your twitter ID has 5 characters, then a re-tweet will add a @ symbol and “RT:” thus making a total of 140+1+3+5=149 characters. So use 125 or 130 characters. Tweets which involve breaking news or some offers/discount coupons or anything that you think might go viral in twitter.
55. Tweeting link of some good pictures and breaking news get viral most of the times. You can also tweet about a new job or event.
56. Offer some free stuffs for following you. I have seen some people doing this, and not surprisingly, they have a lot of followers. But once you get people following you, its all about providing value and retaining them as your followers.
57. Write an ebook(of good quality) about Twitter and start distributing it for FREE. You can even upload it to torrent sites etc. If you can make that ebook go viral, then you will surly get a lot of followers, as people who download and read it must be interested in Twitter and if they find the ebook of any use, they will start following you.
58. In the “about me” section of Twitter, there is a place where you can display your website URL. There, you can use a good quality article(better, if you have a good article related to Twitter) link instead of just linking your blogs homepage. By this way, people who check your website before following you, may get interest in you, if they like that article.
59. Write some interesting articles about Twitter on your blog, so that, people searching for Twitter related things find it useful and start following you, expecting more such valuable contents and tweets from you.
60. You can also list your Twitter ID on some Twitter directory services. Make sure that you opt into proper category. Such services will allow you to choose some topics of your interest and place you in those categories and it will show your ID to those who have similar interests to that of yours. So you will get targeted followers.
61. You can also use some services that asure you to increase your twitter followers, by listing your Twitter profile link on their site. Also take care that you do not give your twitter ID along with your passwords to such services. Use only genuine services. Ask people who have already used the service.
62. Try to help people as much as possible. This way, people will surely point some one with similar problem to you and high chances that they will start following you.
63. Run a poll: This actually works if you have high number of followers. But you can make it work the other way too.
Make the poll interesting. And request people to re-tweet about the poll.
64. Use Cross promotion techniques: Explicitly(while chatting in any messengers, talking in phone etc – Out side twitter ) ask a Twitterer to mention about your ID to his followers and in return you do the same for them.
65. If you are crazy enough, you can put your twitter ID on your vehicle. This will work because, people like to get connected with others who are in the same locality. And you can tweet and start conversation about some local events and start sharing your knowledge. Keep your security aspects in mind. Some people may use twitter to get lot of your personal info and may use it to harm you.
[Joke: At the worst, get your twitter ID printed on your wedding card ]
The title of the article is 60+, because we would like to hear some more tips form you people. Please share your tips, tricks and different strategies to increase twitter followers. You can even share your twitter ID in the comment section with a small description of why you would like others to follow you or whats in it to follow you.
Many of the points listed above may seem to be similar. But still they differ in some aspects. But their main goal is to bring more traffic to your twitter profile and more number of followers.
Be cautious while tweeting, because it may take years to build a huge list of loyal followers, but it takes 1 or 2 tweets to break the entire thing. Creating controversies and damaging your online (even offline sometimes) reputation.
Be responsible and create a reason to be followed
Many of you or most of you may not agree with all the strategies mentioned in this article. But remember, we are writing this article only to show different tactics that can be used to increase the follower base in Twitter. Its not that we are recommending all these strategies to be followed. Actually we are against some of the strategies listed above to increase the followers. But still they may help some of you.
You can follow me @yudhituela

Follow this surefire guide and you’ll have hundreds (or even thousands) of more followers on Twitter in no time.

1. Follow everyone

How do you get noticed on Twitter? Follow everyone else. Literally go through as many Twitter profiles as possible and click follow. Do this 1,000 times and you’ll get around 900 follows back.

2. Retweet like mad

Retweet every link that comes from your friends. First of all your friend will be thankful for the retweet and secondly your followers will be thankful for the shared link.
Be sure to retweet in the format “RT @friend:” and keep any other RT @friend references in so they get the credit they deserve.

3. Constantly tweet about what you’re doing

Nobody will follow you if your Twitter stream is lying static so make sure you constantly update it, every 15 minutes if possible.
If you’re not doing anything interesting, talk about the food you’re eating, what you’re watching on TV or who you’re talking to and meeting e.g. “Eating sushi with @myfriend while watching Family Guy”.

4. Auto DM new followers to welcome them

You want your new followers to feel welcome so setup an auto welcome message via DM to say “Thanks for following me”. This is also the perfect time to list your sites that you want them to visit.

5. Link to your MySpace, Facebook or Bebo page

Twitter is a social networking site so when listing your website it’s a good idea to link to another social networking site that you’re on so friends can connect with you on that site also. Enter your MySpace, Facebook or Bebo site here, not your website or blog.

6. Ask people to Digg, Retweet, Bookmark, Float etc.

This is the true value of Twitter. You can use it to gain significant advantages like asking people to digg your posts. If you have 500 followers and you ask them all to help you digg a post, you’ll more than likely get at least 400 diggs and be featured on the Digg homepage.

7. Ask people to follow you

Milestones are important on Twitter. There’s a big difference between someone who only has 99 followers and someone who has 101 followers. You want and need to hit these follower milestones.
If you’re at 90 followers, tweet “nearly at 100 followers” and before you know it you’ll reach the 100 mark because your friends will retweet it. Likewise when nearing 1,000, 2,000 etc.

8. Use all 140 characters

Don’t waste your tweets. There are 140 characters up for grabs so make sure you use as many as possible. The more information provided for your friends the better.

9. Don’t give away your secrets

If you find a good link that helps you achieve something extraordinary in your field, it would be silly to share it on Twitter. Don’t forget, your friends on Twitter are also your competitors so don’t be giving your secrets away.

10. Don’t reply to nobodies

You want people to think that you’re really big and popular so only @reply to people who are famous or have thousands of followers. This will make you look like a Twitter big gun and people will feel the need to follow you.

How can you get more Twitter followers quickly and thousands of more twitter followers everyday and increase your Twitter influence. There are several ways to do this…

Image from quickonlinetips flickr channel

How to Get More Twitter Followers

1. Get Verified -  This is the easiest way if you are a celebrity or a well known personality in your niche -  apply to get verified and once the word spreads it is indeed the real you (and not some fake Twitter account resembling your profile), people will flock to follow every word you say. E.g. most Bollywood celebrities on Twitter are verified and when Dalai Lama got a verified account just a month back,  he gathered nearly 200,000 Twitter followers!

2. Twitter Follower Exchange -  If you follow 1000 Twitter users today, how many do you think will follow back – 60%, maybe 40%, or maybe even lesser at 20% you say. If you agree to that, it means if you start to follow 1000 new people, at least 200 will follow you back -  and if you keep on doing that on a consistent basis you can have thousands of Twitter followers for free! I was surprised when Obama followed me back on Twitter, but later realized there are many Twitter autofollow tools out there which can do this automatically. And of course just there are Twitter Follow back lists which you can tap effectively.
3. Get Suggested - Earlier if you can managed to get on the Twitter suggested users list by hook or crook, you would never have to look for twitter followers ever again. You will gain twitter followers at the rate of thousands per day! Now how to get into the Twitter Suggested is a well kept secret.  Over time now the suggested list is  more user targeted and less influential than before, but you know how Britney Spears gained 200,000 followers in 1  month!
4. Become Charitable – Would you follow me if I tweeted I will donate $1 to Red Cross for every new Twitter follower gained over the next week? Probably you thought it was a gimmick and would not trust me to actually donate the money. But if a tech guru or respected organization put forth the deal, you would not mind following one more person -  and this would lead to a huge jump easily. Tim Ferris did this and got 5000 followers in 3 days!
5. Share Exclusive Deals – This one is useful for corporates who want to reveal secret coupon codes, promo codes or exclusive discounts – only on Twitter. If I told you $200 off Dell coupons were available on an official Dell Twitter channel  @DellHomeOffers -  I am sure you would follow it to get the amazing deal. Its useful information.

6. Attract Twitter users – If a wore a cool Twitter T-shirt boldly displaying my Twitter ID – would you follow me? You might not, but they would surely remember you if you wear Twitter stockings to your friends party. Find unique Twitter marketing ideas for your Twitter ID and attract Twitter followers
7. Get on Popular Lists -  If you somehow got your name listed in  the Times 50 most popular Twitter celebrities, don’t be surprised to get a few thousand twitter followers overnight. There are many popular Twitter lists out there in different niches, try to get on them and become famous.
8. Offer Gifts – If I say I will give one $200 Amazon gift certificate to a random new Twitter follower who joins me over the  next week – how many new new Twitter followers will fall for that?  I am sure a few thousand will come easily. As I said you would not mind following one more person. Of course you have to be genuine and give out the gift too. And people forget to unsubscribe!
9. Buy Twitter Followers - This is the easiest way out if you don’t want to do anything. Money can buy everything and even Twitter followers are up for sale. Many Twitter marketing services will sell you Twitter followers for a reasonable price. If you are willing to spend money, you can ger 100,000 followers for $3500 easily and even lower if you look around. Then you can imagine your Twitter influence and brag about it. [Check if this is allowed by Twitter terms of service]

10. Buy Twitter accounts – Here is a way some people use to make money online. If you are starting a new profile, simply buy a Twitter account with thousands of followers. Some people sell their Twitter accounts when they grab a few thousand followers, and if you keep doing this repeatedly, a good income is expected. [But remember this might violate Twitter terms of service]. Still what makes this real easy is that Twitter allows you to easily change the profile username in one click, so you don’t have to stick with the seller account name, and no one ever knows.
You say give me one reason to have more followers? If you have a 100,000 Twitter followers, advertisers will target you and you can easily make a living online by sponsored tweets like Kim Kardashian earns $10,000 per tweet! I am sure these Twitter tips will help you gain Twitter followers easily. Read more Twitter articles and follow us on Twitter to keep getting such tips.

Twitter permits you to do many issues like discover jobs, market your self, make friends online and unfold the information about your or your new business. But an important pat of Twitter is its a hundred and forty character tweet that determined how many Twitter followers you get.

Everybody desires to make friends online with the utmost number of followers. Some new web sites present Twitter advertising service like those that literally purchase you Twitter followers (help you discover friends online). That might sound easy and tempting, but you might truly need to earn you personal Twitter followers with your smart and witty tweets.

Here are some methods that are efficient and provide help to to get extra followers.

Matters are of great significance in relation to tweets. You just have 140 characters to catch consideration, captivate one other Twitter person and guarantee they revisit your home profile page. That means the tweet have to be one that is both in present information and everyone’s busy running a blog about or it needs to be pleasing, funny and grab your attention and stick in your thoughts for a really long time. A tweet that encourages a comment, the opinion of the Twitter follower is the one that gets you extra followers.

One other positive trick to get more followers to your profile web page is to select these followers who’re going to be revisiting and following you. It isn’t difficult to search out them as a result of they have the same interest and are price tweeting. Tweet on the matters that curiosity them for a start. Study why they have adopted that exact tweet. Observe them and some are sure to comply with you back.
To get the knack of writing such tweets, go to tweets that are popular and have gained large Twitter followers. Observe what is unique concerning the tweet. Is it the language that’s snappy and crisp? Is the tweet on a subject that may be a current subject? Observe writing such tweets on comparable subjects. Remember those Twitter followers who have followed that specific tweet shall be keen on different tweets of the identical subject. Attempt tweeting your individual on a related subject and wait to observe in the event that they follow. Some will definitely follow.

One of the crucial proactive methods to get extra followers and make friends online is by joining in on conversations and discussions with Twitter customers who have similar curiosity like you. Comment and give your views and perspectives. Make them lucid and crisp. Even if they are a bit controversial, it would do to provoke a response. On the finish of the day its how you get more followers and that is the best way to go.

Listed here are some tricks that are effective and enable you to how to get more twitter followers thus make extra friends online. One other positive trick on how to get more twitter followers to your profile web page is to pick these twitter followers who are going to be revisiting and following you.

People who are surfing for more information about the sphere of one way links, then please visit the web page that was mentioned in this passage.

 follow me

The first thing people say when realizing just how many friends I’m reading on Twitter is, “How do you read it all?” The shortest answer? I don’t read it ALL. I use Twitter a little differently than you might be using it. Let me explain a bit more what I do with Twitter. This is how *I* use it. You can do it your own way. But I thought I’d share.
Twitter is The Matrix
Or rather, it’s a directed communication stream. I’ve observed that people use it in the following ways:

• Actual personal status. (I’m hungry. My dog ran away.)
• Pointers to interesting links.
• Marketing for personal blog traffic.
• Group Instant Messaging.
• Question and Answer.
• Group Appreciation of a Shared Experience.
• Live micro-blogging.

Search for Me
I try to make sure if someone’s addressing me, I answer them. I use Twittersearch and search on “Brogan” to see who’s talking about me, so I can answer any questions. I try to reply to as many as possible, but it depends on what mode I’m in. If I’m on the laptop, I answer lots. If I’m on the crackberry, not as much.
Dip Into the Stream
I find Twitter is my #1 recommender of links. I read other people’s stuff and then follow their links all the time. This gets me to more places faster, I feel, than what comes from my RSS reading. So sometimes, I just take a dip in Twitter to see what people are talking about. Think of it as personalized StumbleUpon from trusted sources.
This includes just having the occasional @ conversation with someone. Nice to prove we’re all humans, right?
Presence and Attention
I use Twitter most often to answer the question: “What’s got your attention?” Sometimes, that’s my blog posts. Other times, that’s something I found on a blog, or via a friend. That’s how I’ve chosen to interpret my 140 characters.
Question and Answer
I use Twitter OFTEN to ask questions. It could be “What’s a good service to combine many RSS feeds into one?” or it could be “Should I go see Transformers or Spider Man 3?” In all cases, I get good opinions and advice. I often answer people’s questions there, should I have an answer, and more often than that, I direct one friend to another’s aide.
Helping Others
There’s a VAST wealth of opportunity to help people via Twitter. It can be something stupid like hooking someone up with an invite to a software trial. It might be finding someone a job, or pointing someone to articles they can use for a blog post. In the language of Mr. Steve Gillmor, there are plenty of opportunities to enact a “gesture.”
Venting
Sometimes, I use Twitter to bitch and moan. It’s not my favorite use, but I find that it’s so IMMEDIATE. And so that’s truthfully another way I use it.
My Theory on Friends
I say yes to every friend request barring a few exceptions: I no longer say yes to languages I can’t read. I don’t say yes to fictional characters. I don’t say yes to people with 5,000 friends and 38 followers. I don’t say yes to auto-services that update every time there’s a blog post. Other than that, I add whoever wants to count me as a friend. I find I no longer seek out friends. Occasionally, someone will @ with someone else, and I might add that person to get both sides. But otherwise, I don’t really add many folks. I just appreciate who stops by.
Other than that, if you’re a human, you’re in.
How I DON’T use Twitter
I don’t just read and read and read. I have over 1200 friends. I skim. I surf. I occasionally drill down. But I don’t just read the stream wide-out and full bore. I can’t. It’s no longer set up to accomplish this for me.
Twitter Is
It’s a big vast sea of data, and that data ties to humans. The humans are doing a better job of keeping up a living web than any other service out there. It’s the new gate-basher that gives me access to the minds of brilliant leaders, thoughtful community types, and passionate creators. And I continue to appreciate the service more than any other technology in 2007.
How do YOU Use Twitter?
I’d love your thoughts.

 follow me

A recurring question I get from Twitter users shortly after I follow them back is, “How can you follow xx,000 people?” (the number on November 11th is 16,928, with 19528 following me.)
It’s not easy. Twitter, for most people, is the chance to engage with like-minded people, or geographically similar people, or otherwise to align your interests along certain lines. Most people have a hundred, or a few hundred. Some folks feel the crush of too many tweets at around 300-1000 followers. Still others don’t follow back that many people, but consent to having several people read their tweets.
Update: People often ask me how much time I spend on Twitter a day. That assumes I ever turn it off. It’s a flow. It’s like asking you how much time you spend on the phone or in your inbox. I process tweets and stay active with tweets throughout the day. I comment during meetings. I comment at red lights. I think about things late at night and when I wake up. Answer: all day.
At volume, it’s a bit different. It’s a lot like showing up to a very busy, very loud cocktail party, but also a business meeting, plus a focus group, plus several other social situations. Twitter, unfiltered, is like someone with mind reading powers walking down 38th Street in Manhattan. It’s not especially easy to manage, and it’s very different how things work at this pace. Looking at unfiltered Twitter at this volume just doesn’t cut it.
Further, goals at this volume are different. I can’t exactly answer every reply message. I can’t dig into every passing story or fun conversation. I can’t be part of all the action. It just doesn’t span. So, I have a few goals: be helpful, be informative, be human, and be as responsive as I can in the time allotted.

My Four Goals

Be Helpful – Being helpful is how I’ve built my reputation and personal brand. I am known for being a guy who shares as much as I can of myself, and I give as much as I have capacity to give. By the way, at almost 20,000 people, that means that if only 1% of folks ask me for something on any given day, that’s 200 people. So, I try to help as many folks as I can, but that also means disappointing people from time to time.
Be Informative – I love sharing links to things that are interesting. I’m frequently emailed and DMd links that people want me to share. I look at everything before I send it out. I’m not a posting service. I’m not a robot. I’m a human. If the information is interesting to me, then I share it. I share as many Amber Alerts as I can, because I want to spread that effect as much as I can. I also share lots of links to various social causes. But I also run into trouble doing that all day, because it could be a full time job on its own.
Be Human – When I say be human, I mean that I’m a person, not a company. I run a company, but I’m a person. Thus, I get cranky, or I tell jokes, or I run at the mouth sometimes. Whatever. It’s part of the tapestry, not a flaw. If you’re not treating Twitter like a personal communications device that also happens to be a business tool (or some mix of the two), you’re missing what makes this fun and vital.
Be Responsive – When I say be responsive, I try to answer as many people as I can in a given day. I get about four angry unfollows a week from people who were mad that I didn’t respond back to their tweet, or their request. Most DM me an angry last message and unfollow. Others spew it out into the main channel. Either way, I can’t do much to help. I answer as many people as I can. If you leave, sorry.
Here’s how I handle most of this, technically:

Primary Application: TweetDeck

I use TweetDeck when on my laptop. It gives me windows for search, to see Direct Messages, plus a general flow along the left hand side. It seems to be the app I see at most of the conferences. Other folks use Twhirl and like it. Note: both of these applications require Adobe Air.

Mobile Device: Twittelator Pro

I just switched to Twittelator Pro for the iPhone, after a suggestion by Justin Rasmussen. Before that, I was using Twitterific Pro, as recommended by Nick Saber, and it worked mostly okay. What Twittelator pro does better is that it handles direct messages, has some location-based information in it, and does a few other things like report trending topics natively. It has four different color schemes, if that kind of thing matters. (I set mine to dark).
What I think will appeal to me (haven’t tested it fully) is the “nearby” feature. Another Twitter app or two have similar features, but I agree with Justin that it’s pretty useful.
I do a great deal of twittering while in meetings, while between jobs, while out and about. I tweet at events. Having a mobile app helps with that a great deal. Being tethered to the desk takes 2/3 of the fun out of Twitter.

Search: The Most Important Element

I use search all the time. I’ve got searches and searches and searches. Sometimes, there are as many as four tabs open. And the more I learn how to use Twitter Search, the more I learn that search is how it will endear itself to the general public.
If you leave this blog post with nothing else, learn that search is what matters. Search by location. Search by topic. Search by filtering out links. Search and learn how to interact with people in that way.

Am I Using It Right?

Twitter’s the new phone. It’s not meant to be a broadcasting tool, as such. It’s supposed to be a one-to-many, but at a slightly more conversational level.
I don’t recommend twitter at volume for most folks. I understand that there are some benefits. I realize that it’s different when I ask a question versus when other people ask a question, or when I direct people to check out a certain link versus the average user.
But that just happened that way. I’ve done nothing to actively grow my following. I’m just me. I just follow those four rules above.
You’re probably using it right.

We really can’t deny the fact that businesses are testing out Twitter as part of their steps into the social media landscape. You can say it’s a stupid application, that no business gets done there, but there are too many of us (including me) that can disagree and point out business value. I’m not going to address the naysayers much with this. Instead, I’m going to offer 50 thoughts for people looking to use Twitter for business. And by “business,” I mean anything from a solo act to a huge enterprise customer.
Your mileage may vary, and that’s okay. Further, you might have some really great ideas to add. That’s why we have lively conversations here at [chrisbrogan.com] in the comments section. Jump right in!
Oh, and please feel free to reblog this wherever. Just be kind and link back to the original article.

50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business

First Steps

1. Build an account and immediate start using Twitter Search to listen for your name, your competitor’s names, words that relate to your space. (Listening always comes first.)
2. Add a picture. ( Shel reminds us of this.) We want to see you.
3. Talk to people about THEIR interests, too. I know this doesn’t sell more widgets, but it shows us you’re human.
4. Point out interesting things in your space, not just about you.
5. Share links to neat things in your community. ( @wholefoods does this well).
6. Don’t get stuck in the apology loop. Be helpful instead. ( @jetblue gives travel tips.)
7. Be wary of always pimping your stuff. Your fans will love it. Others will tune out.
8. Promote your employees’ outside-of-work stories. ( @TheHomeDepot does it well.)
9. Throw in a few humans, like RichardAtDELL, LionelAtDELL, etc.
10. Talk about non-business, too, like @aaronstrout and @jimstorer.

Ideas About WHAT to Tweet

11. Instead of answering the question, “What are you doing?”, answer the question, “What has your attention?”
12. Have more than one twitterer at the company. People can quit. People take vacations. It’s nice to have a variety.
13. When promoting a blog post, ask a question or explain what’s coming next, instead of just dumping a link.
14. Ask questions. Twitter is GREAT for getting opinions.
15. Follow interesting people. If you find someone who tweets interesting things, see who she follows, and follow her.
16. Tweet about other people’s stuff. Again, doesn’t directly impact your business, but makes us feel like you’re not “that guy.”
17. When you DO talk about your stuff, make it useful. Give advice, blog posts, pictures, etc.
18. Share the human side of your company. If you’re bothering to tweet, it means you believe social media has value for human connections. Point us to pictures and other human things.
19. Don’t toot your own horn too much. (Man, I can’t believe I’m saying this. I do it all the time. – Side note: I’ve gotta stop tooting my own horn).
20. Or, if you do, try to balance it out by promoting the heck out of others, too.

Some Sanity For You

21. You don’t have to read every tweet.
22. You don’t have to reply to every @ tweet directed to you (try to reply to some, but don’t feel guilty).
23. Use direct messages for 1-to-1 conversations if you feel there’s no value to Twitter at large to hear the conversation ( got this from @pistachio).
24. Use services like Twitter Search to make sure you see if someone’s talking about you. Try to participate where it makes sense.
25. 3rd party clients like Tweetdeck and Twhirl make it a lot easier to manage Twitter.
26. If you tweet all day while your coworkers are busy, you’re going to hear about it.
27. If you’re representing clients and billing hours, and tweeting all the time, you might hear about it.
28. Learn quickly to use the URL shortening tools like TinyURL and all the variants. It helps tidy up your tweets.
29. If someone says you’re using twitter wrong, forget it. It’s an opt out society. They can unfollow if they don’t like how you use it.
30. Commenting on others’ tweets, and retweeting what others have posted is a great way to build community.

The Negatives People Will Throw At You

31. Twitter takes up time.
32. Twitter takes you away from other productive work.
33. Without a strategy, it’s just typing.
34. There are other ways to do this.
35. As Frank hears often, Twitter doesn’t replace customer service (Frank is @comcastcares and is a superhero for what he’s started.)
36. Twitter is buggy and not enterprise-ready.
37. Twitter is just for technonerds.
38. Twitter’s only a few million people. (only)
39. Twitter doesn’t replace direct email marketing.
40. Twitter opens the company up to more criticism and griping.

Some Positives to Throw Back

41. Twitter helps one organize great, instant meetups (tweetups).
42. Twitter works swell as an opinion poll.
43. Twitter can help direct people’s attention to good things.
44. Twitter at events helps people build an instant “backchannel.”
45. Twitter breaks news faster than other sources, often (especially if the news impacts online denizens).
46. Twitter gives businesses a glimpse at what status messaging can do for an organization. Remember presence in the 1990s?
47. Twitter brings great minds together, and gives you daily opportunities to learn (if you look for it, and/or if you follow the right folks).
48. Twitter gives your critics a forum, but that means you can study them.
49. Twitter helps with business development, if your prospects are online (mine are).
50. Twitter can augment customer service. (but see above)

What else would you add? How are you using Twitter for your business?
By the way, Jeremiah Owyang has a great post on this, too.

The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.http://www.chrisbrogan.com/how-i-use-twitter-at-volume/

Yes, that’s right! YOU can have hundreds and hundreds of new Twitter followers starting today, and it won’t cost you ONE CENT. That’s right. Free! You can have all the glory and benefits of more Twitter Followers (and followers=power, right?) without having to pay someone else, and without having to surrender your login and password to a third party source (who will then just spam all your existing followers with links to their site anyway). Are you ready?
Just be ready to follow these steps!
Get out your pen, your paper, and shut off the cell phone. You DO NOT want to be interrupted while I tell YOU (and don’t share this with your friends) how to get more Twitter followers TODAY!

Get More Twitter Followers TODAY

1. Find great stories from other people and share them with a link (and/or attribution). Do this 3 times or more a day!
2. Share useful information that others can use, too! example: “I’ve discovered that Blip.fm is very useful for sharing my musical interests.” (Bonus points if you provide the URL).
3. Participate in online events that use #hashtags, because others in the event will find you and appreciate you, too!
4. Respond to OTHER PEOPLE using the @reply method. This is advanced, so here’s an example: “@glendawh – Is it true you were out all night last night singing karaoke?”
5. Use Twitter Search (http://search.twitter.com) to find people talking about the things YOU talk about, and follow them!
6. Add your Twitter URL to your signature line in your email! (Easy to do!)
7. Don’t overtweet (more than 20 a day is a bit spooky to most people).
8. Don’t talk about your food (unless you’re me!)
9. Don’t use Twitter like IM (use direct messages for that)
10. Don’t tweet all about you: tweet all about them.
11. And never, ever, ever invite your friends to be part of your Ninja dojo (unless you’re @cspenn), your mafia family (unless you’re @jgottinotdead), or to participate in a “what type of piercing am I?” quiz.

Yesterday I wrote about some of the benefits of using Twitter as a tool to improve your blog. I’ve seen tangible benefits of getting into Twitter over the last month – but it hasn’t been as simple as signing up for a Twitter account and then documenting every area of my life.
update: Check out my new Blog TwiTip for more Twitter Tips.
What follows is a compilation of the lessons I’m learning about how to use Twitter – some Twitter Tips for Bloggers if you like. Keep in mind that I’m very new to the medium and have made as many mistakes as anyone so far.
As mentioned yesterday – I’m a newbie to this medium so any of your own tips that you can add to these will be greatly appreciated.

Tips for Bloggers on How to Use Twitter

Define the Outcomes that You Want to Achieve

When I first started Twittering I gave little thought to my reasons for doing so. My Tweeting was unfocused and scattered – and so was the impact that it had. Before you write another ‘Tweet’ to your Twitter account ask yourself what you want to achieve from Twitter?

• Do you want to build your profile and perceived expertise in a niche or industry?
• Do you want to drive traffic to your blogs?
• Do you want to use it to network with others in your niche?
• Is it a branding exercise?
• Do you want to show your readers a more personal side of yourself?
• Is it more of a social exercise?

There are many things that Twitter can offer a blogger (check out my last post for more) – but one lesson I’ve already learned is that Twitter is a more effective tool if you know why you’re using it and focus in on just one (or a few) objectives rather than all of the above).
Suggestion: if your Twitter goals are wide – why not start multiple Twitter accounts – one for each objective. For example you could have a social one for your friends, one for each blog that you have to drive traffic and another to build profile.
Homework – grab a pen and paper or open up a text document and come up with your top 2-3 goals and objectives for Twitter.

Stay Disciplined with Your Objectives

Once you have your Twitter objectives set you need to work towards them. It’s like any goal or resolution that you make – you’ll only achieve what you set out to achieve if your actions match your objectives. This doesn’t mean that you can’t occassionally Tweet things in a way that is outside of your objectives (I mix mine up a bit) but it does mean that the majority of your tweets probably need to stay on track.
Homework – take the list of objectives that you’ve come up with and put them somewhere that you’ll see them regularly. Each time you twitter ask yourself – ‘is this Tweet getting me closer to these objectives?’

Be Original and Useful

This tip will sound familiar to those who’ve been reading ProBlogger for a while because it’s ProBlogger’s rule #1 when it comes to building a successful blog – build a blog that is unique and useful. If you build a blog like this people will keep coming back for more. The same is true for Twitter (in fact most of these tips can be applied to Twitter or blogging).
There are many thousands of people using Twitter – and there’s a lot of conversation buzzing around the Twittersphere. The problem is that it’s hard to stand out from the crowd and get noticed. Providing your followers with something original and useful is one way to do this. The benefits of doing so is that you’ll get people ‘replying’ to you – which catches the attention of those who follow them and can find you new followers.
Ultimately it’s about adding value to the conversations that are happening on Twitter. When you become someone who goes beyond adding to the noise of the Twittersphere you’ll become someone that people seek out and want to interact with.
Homework: Ask yourself a second question before you Tweet – ‘is this original and useful to my followers?’ If the answer is yes – publish it. If it’s not – either take a few extra moments to improve your Tweet or consider dropping it.

Learn that Every Tweet Counts

This is another thing that I speak about when it comes to blogging that also applies to Twitter. Every time you publish something on your Twitter account (or Blog) you can potentially improve or hurt your reputation, brand and profile. This is an important lesson to learn – particularly for Twitter where it’s so easy to post something out of anger, in a drunken moment or that could hurt your reputation in some way. Sure posting in this way can add ‘spice’ to your Twittering – but it can also hurt your reputation.

Monitor your Reply Ratio

There are two types of public ‘Tweets’ or posts that you can make on Twitter. The first is a normal Tweet (where you publish something that you’ve been thinking, post a link to a good post you’ve seen, share an idea, ask a question etc). The second is a ‘reply’ to something that someone else has said (an answer to a question, a question of your own, a suggestion etc).
Both types of Tweets are very important to building a successful Twitter experience. Publishing normal Tweets shares something of yourself and adds to the ‘orginal’ factor that I mentioned above. Replies take Twittering to a more personal and conversational level. They are also one way that can spread your profile wider (the more people reply to you the more chance of others seeing, joining the conversation and following you).
The challenge is to keep the ratio of normal Tweets to reply Tweets in balance. I don’t know that there is any one perfect ratio – but I do know that some Twitterers frustrate me by going to the extreme in one way or the other. There are dangers in the extremes:
If you reply too much you run the risk of just blending in to the noise of the Twittersphere. Your tweets can become less useful to your wider community of followers and can end up being confusing. Remember that most of your followers can only see half of the conversations that you’re having.
If you don’t reply enough you could be missing one of the real benefits of Twitter – that of the interaction and conversation that is possible. You can also end up coming across as unapproachable and allusive.
My own approach is to attempt to keep my replies down to a level where my ‘normal’ Tweets are appearing every few Tweets. If I find myself replying too much I attempt to throw in some non reply tweets or take things to direct messaging (see my next point).
Homework – do a little analysis of your ‘reply ratio’. How many replies do you send for every normal Tweet? Is this something that you’re comfortable with? You might even like to ask your followers directly if you reply too much or not enough? Another quick exercise is to look at some of your favorite Twitter users and see what their reply ratio is. I’d be interested to see someone do some analysis on this from top Twitter users.

Learn to Use Direct Messages

If your reply tweet ratio is out of balance in that you ‘reply’ too much a good way to combat the problem is to consider using direct messages. My own approach to this is that I almost always publicly ‘reply’ to something that someone has Tweeted the first time – but if the conversation continues I’ll take the conversation to ‘direct messages’ after the second or third reply unless I think the conversation has something of value to my wider following community.

Ask Questions

One of the most effective types of Tweets that I’ve done is to ask my followers questions.
I highlighted the power of asking questions in yesterday’s post when I asked followers about their RSS subscribing habits (there are now over 50 or so replies).

• Asking a relevant question will draw many followers out of lurk mode and into an active engagement with you.
• Asking questions will draw people to ‘reply’ which (as I’ve already mentioned) will have a viral impact as those answering will show their own followers that they follow you
• Asking questions is great for helping you to learn which can be very useful if you’re researching a blog post
• Asking questions can lead to fruitful discoveries and real relationships with followers

I don’t ask questions with every Tweet – but try to throw one in most days.
Example a quick example of using a question was my recent Twitter Poll on how people use Twitter on the weekend. The question got around 40 responses, started some interesting discussion and over the 30 minutes that it ran for I had an extra 30 followers join up.
Bonus tip: once people have stopped replying to your question report back to your followers what the results were. This keeps the conversation going and gives followers a sense of how their response fits into the overall response.

Don’t be a self centered Twitterer

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been twittering from my feed reader and Tweeting the best links and posts that I find on other people’s blogs.
The tool I use for this is this Firefox add-on (and alternative is this one). In a sense what I’m doing is ‘speedlinking’ to posts about blogging.
What I’ve found in doing this is that I get a lot of replies and direct messages from followers thanking me for these links and asking me questions about them. It seems to be helping my own profile and perceived expertise to be seen to be across what’s going on in my niche.
I think it also helps to balance the Tweets that I’m doing that are more self serving (pointing links to my own posts). My Twittering becomes more about the niche of blogging about blogging and less about me – I think that this is more useful to my followers.
I guess what I’m saying is that if you’re using Twitter to promote yourself or your blog (and this is fine) then it might be worth considering how you can add some variety to your Twittering by also promoting the quality work of others (note: don’t just link to others for the sake of it – keep the quality high and links relevant).
Question: what is your ‘self linking’ to ‘linking to others’ ratio? Could you mix it up a little more?

Be Active

I was asked yesterday how I’ve manged to grow my Twitter followers up to the 1000 mark in just a few weeks. There are numerous reasons (including that I’ve promoted my Twitter account on my blog) – but I do think that the number one reason is that I’ve been quite active and using the medium more and more.
The more you Twitter the more chance you’ll get others find you through others replying to you. I’ve noticed the days that I Tweet more than others are the days I get most followers.
Forgetting to Tweet? – one of my biggest problems in the early days was forgetting to Tweet. It wasn’t a natural part of my daily rhythm. So I decided to remind myself by setting aside a few minutes in the mornings and a few minutes in the evenings to specifically use Twitter. I even set alarms in my calendar to remind me. Since moving to a tool like Twhirl (see below) I find that I’m reminded more regularly and see new Tweets from others come in – this has helped me be more regular on Twitter myself.

Promote Your Twitter Feed

The other reason that I’ve been able to grow my followership is that I’ve actively promoted my Twitter profile in numerous places. I’ve added a link to it in the footer of this blog, on my contact page and have posted about it here on ProBlogger numerous times over the last month. I’ve also added it to my facebook profile and have mentioned it to others that I know use Twitter.
It’s like promoting a blog – you want to leverage the profile that you might already had when launching a new project. Don’t spam people with it or force it down their throat but don’t be afraid to promote that you’re Twittering.
Homework – if your Twittering is relevant to your blog – think about where you could add a link to your Twitter profile.

Connect with Others in Your Niche

I want to connect with as many Twitter users as possible – however there are some that I’ve attempted to connect with more than others – simply because they are people who are active in niches that I interact in.
Really this comes back to your objectives – if you want to become known in your niche and build your own profile in it then you need to be interacting with others who are also in that niche. Add yourself as a follower to other key Twitterer users, add value to these people’s conversations, interact with them via direct messaging etc.
Homework – go Twitter Surfing. The best way that I’ve found to add find people who are Twittering in my niches is to simply go surfing. Start with those that follow you and see who else they are following and what they Twitter about. You’ll find that these followers will lead you to others (and so on).

Pick an Avatar and Profile Page that Reinforces Your Brand

Twitter doesn’t allow a lot of customization – but the subtle things that it does allow you to change can have an impact.
Your Avatar is one important factor – it appears next to every Tweet you make as well as on your profile page. If you just allow the default brown avatar to represent you you’re missing a great marketing opportunity. I would recommend using an avatar that reinforces your brand. If you’re brand is YOU then a picture of you would be worth adding. If your brand is your blog – then use a logo of some kind.
Similarly your profile page can be tweaks with an image and colors. I’ve not really done a lot with colors but added a ProBlogger Logo to mine to reinforce that in the mind of those who follow ProBlogger. I’m not completely satisifed with this yet and have it on my to-do list to think through a better way to do this.
Question – what does your avatar and profile page say about you? Does it add to your brand?

Consider Your Personal Tweet Strategy

This is one that I’ve grappled with a bit. In the earlier days of my Twittering I posted more personal Tweets than I currently do. Some followers seemed to like this but others were quite vocal about not liking them. I realized that my objectives for using Twitter were not for it to be a personal space – so I cut back the personal Tweets.
Having said this – I do include some more personal tweets from time to time as I think it can show a different side of you to your followers and add interest. However for me it’s about keeping things in balance.

Find Your Voice

I think it’s important to think about the voice that you Tweet in. One thing that I’ve found followers responding to is by Twittering in a more humorous voice. Telling a funny story or posting the occasional funny link can show a more personal side of you. Other Twitter users seem to get good responses from people when they Tweet in a more gruff and blunt tone. I guess it’s about finding what works for you.
Try Different Twitter Tools
There are a good variety of twitter tools available to help you manage your twittering. One of the things that stopped me getting into Twitter in the early days was that I only used it when I thought to go to my actual Twitter page. On discovering desktop twitter clients my Twittering changed completely. They are like instant messaging tools that notify you of when people make updates and more importantly when replies and direct messages come in. They also make adding a Tweet as easy as typing an instant message.
I use Twhirl as my Twitter client of choice at the moment – but there are many other methods. I’ve also tried and liked:

• Twitterific – another desktop Twitter client (mac)
• Tweetbar – twitter from the sideb ar of Firefox

Another useful tool if you want to promote your Blog’s posts to Twitter is Twitterfeed.
There are many other tools to try and experiment with. Frantic Industries has a good list as does Mashable.
I think the key is to try different tools and find the one that fits with your own rhythm.

Work With the Rhythm of Your Followers

I linked above (in the ‘question’ section) to a poll I did of my followers asking whether they used Twitter more or less on weekends. The results were:

• More: 3
• Less: 21
• Same: 8

This is useful information to know and on many levels makes sense. With this in mind you can time your Tweets to get maximum impact. Obviously the time of day has an impact also. As someone in Australia I notice this quite a bit with a real lull during my afternoons when the US is asleep.
This doesn’t mean that ‘dead’ times are a waste of time – in fact I find Twittering in these times can be good because it’s easier to cut through the noise of busier times.
Take home lesson: experiment with different times and days to see what impact they have.

What Twitter Tips Would You Add?

Like I said in my introduction to this post. I’m early on in my journey with Twitter and still have a lot to learn. I’d love to hear from other bloggers who use Twitter – particularly to hear how you’ve used it to improve your blog in any way.