How to get people to follow you on Twitter

Whether you are a social tweeter or a developing social media maven, in order to get the most out of your Twitter account you are going to have to do one important thing: develop a following.

I was a Twitter hold out; I can admit. I felt the same way about Facebook. I did not one yet one more thing in my life that required any amount of my very precious time to manage. I relented on the Facebook thing a few months ago because of an adult literacy agency I am involved with and shortly after I received a message from Helium with a chart that showed how posting your links to each affected the traffic to your content. When I saw the significant difference between the like and share activity on fb and the tweet activity on Twitter I was sold.

It's taken me a bit of time to learn the ropes at Twitter.  You can tweet all day, but if no one is reading your updates then what good are they? In order for your tweets to mean something you have to have followers.  Why? Because followers also potentially retweet your updates to their followers.

Many people seek out Tweeters and follow them hoping that reciprocity will come into play and the other person will follow them in return.  That's a nice idea but what if you decide to follow Jane because she tweets about popular music and when she visits you all she sees is updates about what your poodle is doing today?

I recently received a message I had a new follower and when I navigated to his page he had actually posted an update that he was following a lot of people and it would nice if someone followed him back. How's that for a cyber tantrum? This person obviously did not understand that if he were sharing something that others could find to be of value he wouldn't have to pout about his number of followers.

There are a few sure ways to get people to follow you and the most reliable ways is to follow your tweets with the pound sign, #, and a relevant keyword. The more keywords the more chances someone's interest will be peaked and they will want to follow your tweets.

There is a text limit of 140 characters per tweet, so in order to get the most bang from your tweet you will need to shorten your url. You can do this easily online at any number of places, but if you do it with a site like socialoomph.com you will be able to schedule the exact time your tweets update.  This means you can tweet while you're watching TV, cooking dinner, studying for finals, working on your next article or pleasantly dreaming the night away.

The advantage of scheduling tweets overnight is that a huge portion of the rest of the web connected world is wide awake.  What is one of the first things people do in the morning? Check their email, of course! Let's not even get into those tweetaholics who receive updates on their phones. All of these people who are going about various aspects of their day while you are getting your zz's are potential new followers and you need to be tweeting during the hours they are checking mail and surfing the web.

Another way to get followers is to tweet inspirational quotes. Who doesn't like a good feel good message to set the day off on the right track? Remember we are living in the self-help feel good age where people are constantly searching for inspiration. Tweet happy thoughts and you'll likely get loads of followers just for being positive.

This is getting long so I'll leave you with one more thought on getting followers: retweet, retweet and retweet. Do you know some people actually create lists of Twitter users who are retweeters? Even if you have not chosen to follow someone who is following you it's good form to drop in on their profile from time to time and retweet one of their updates. After all, they have followers who can become your followers.

Last but not least, if you want to be seen as a valuable tweetwer, tweet often. You can send twelve updates an hour and with sites like socialoomph.com that allow you to schedule your tweets you can plan ahead for the entire month!