How to pick up genuine followers in Twitter

There are several ways to get people to follow you on Twitter...

• Start following everybody you come across. Most will follow you back
• Set your account to automatically follow anybody that follows you
• Use an automated third party tool to follow anybody that posts one of your chosen key words

The problem with all these techniques is they result in machines following machines. No human interaction is required, any marketing potential is lost. Next time you come across somebody who has 10,000 followers, and who is following around 10,000 people in return, feel free to be less than overwhelmed.

I use a different technique to pick up visitors. It's a lot slower than the automated techniques described above, but it results in a better class of follower. Done right, this technique delivers 25-50 new followers per day. Automated tools and churn mean half of these are actual genuine followers that will stay the course.

NOTE: If you have plenty of time on your hands, you can pick up more followers than I am.

Here's my technique...

• Work out who your target market is (i.e. who do you want to follow you)
• Figure out what that market is interested in
• Use a search engine to find 20 pieces of content (e.g. articles, tools, downloads, ebooks, photos, video) per day that relate to that content (in my case I create my own content, and I recycle it from time-to-time)
• Use TweetLater to schedule Tweets to go out during the day
• Each Tweet contains a link to a specific piece of content, along with key words that refer to the content and that are likely to be searched on by your target market
  

People in your target market will search for tweets that contain key words they're interested in. If your tweet has just gone out, they'll find it. And many will start following you. The more followers you get, the more people will want to follow you (human nature).

Don't follow any body back. This is important. Most automated machine-based following systems will unfollow you if you don't return the follow.

I set up my content well in advance. I like to have at least a weeks worth of tweets ready to go out. This means I can take time out if I want to (e.g. if I'm very busy, or go on holiday).

I recycle tweets from time-to-time, especially when it links to content I've created.

Keep this Twitter account focussed on the target market. If you want a more general Twitter site, get a special account for your focussed page. That way, you won't need to follow any body.