Why would you want to get more Twitter followers? What purpose does it serve? And what steps should you take to increase your Twitter followers? These are questions often asked by normal users, brands and business owners who not only see Twitter as a means of social interaction but an effective marketing platform.

You’re interested in increasing your Twitter followers. You want more people reading your updates. It’s not difficult to build a prominent profile but I think it’s important to start with the right understanding. This is the first thing you need to know: It’s not really about how you tweet, what you say or who you talk to but who you are.

There have been several articles on the topic of growing your Twitter presence: many of them focus on teaching you how to use Twitter by providing value in order to increase your Twitter following. While good points were made, I want to offer my perspective on this topic.

Take a look at this list of Twitter users with the most followers and you’ll see that almost everyone on it is famous or well known for reasons other than Twitter. For example, you’ll notice that the top 10 users are mainly all people who own popular websites/businesses and brands or have established a reputation through their involvement in different activities.

Run your eyes down the list further and you’ll notice the same thing: these Twitter users built their large audience through their already established popularity. They didn’t start from the ground up: it’s likely that they started with a decent amount of followers and will continue accumulate them passively through the strength of their reputation or personal brand.

Many people have built their following because they are well known away from Twitter, not because they were inherently entertaining or helpful as a Twitter user. In other words, they grew large follower base because they cleverly integrated their brand or what it is they do, with their Twitter profile. They used their websites or platforms to promote their Twitter profile

This doesn’t mean that you can’t develop a strong Twitter following if you are not famous for something online or offline. It can be done but in my opinion, building a Twitter following has little to do with how you use Twitter. I don’t believe that in order to get a sizeable audience, you need obsesses about specific tweeting etiquette.

I’ve never written any articles on how to use Twitter because I don’t think there’s an ‘optimal’ or best way to use Twitter, nor am I interested in regulating another person’s lifestream. Even if you’re purely using Twitter as a broadcast tool to increase your online influence, how or what you tweet is not really the thing you should be focusing on.

So let’s talk about what I think will help you to get more Twitter followers.

Maximize Visibility: Treat Your Twitter Profile Like Any Other Website

Image Credit: Tweet via QuickSilver

The first step is to understand that your Twitter profile is like any other website. You should treat it no differently from your own blog or a free opt-in newsletter. This means that if you want to increase your Twitter subscriber base, you just need to do one thing again and again: Drive web traffic to your profile. The more targeted the traffic, the better.

This sounds obvious but many people overlook this fundamental principle and focus instead on less relevant details like Twitter usage times/frequency. I’m sure that causing controversy or learning to tweet a certain way might get some extra exposure to your profile but in my opinion, the benefits are minimal. How, when and what you tweet is not crucial.

When you want to catch as many fish as possible, use a large net and spread it as far as you can. The guideline to remember when building your profile is just one: keep working on sending visitors to your profile. People can only follow you when they know you exist.

With this in mind, you can play around with a myriad number of marketing strategies, just like how you would promote a website. Think in terms of incentives. Why would someone want to follow me on Twitter? How will he or she benefit from it? Assuming that someone doesn’t know who I am, what would motivate him or her to subscribe to my Twitter profile?

Here are just some examples of traffic-driving strategies (there are many more):

1. Create a tool/application and promote your profile alongside it.
2. Buy a banner ad to target tech-savvy audiences, link it to your profile.
3. Use Twitter as a tool for tech/customer support.
4. Organize a contest through your Twitter profile
5. Include links to your profile in email/forum signatures.
6. Evangelize Twitter on your blog/other blogs and include a link to your profile.
7. Connect your blog and other social media profiles to your Twitter page.
8. Learn to pitch Twitter influencers with articles relevant to their interest
9. Explicitly ask another user to recommend your profile or exchange recommendations.

Apart from these strategies, there’s also another sure-fire way to increase your Twitter followers and this simply involves the act of following other users. Lets look at this in detail.

Mass Following Twitter Users: The Favorite Methodology of ‘Spammers’

Twitter is similar to many other social networks in numerous aspects, particularly when it comes to friending behaviors. Like Myspace, its possible to befriend a massive amount of users, some of whom will add you back as a friend. Continually adding Twitter users as friends allows you to increase the amount of followers you have.

This is a strategy that has worked remarkably well for early adopters when the Twitter was still a relatively new phenomenon. For example, I know a marketer who followed over ten thousand users and got thousands of followers in return. He then cut down the amount of people he followed and changed his username to make the account look legitimate.

Nowadays, the Twitter community has grown more aware of these ’spammers’ and many tools like the Twitter Blacklist and Twerpscan have been developed to help Twitter users weed out people who try to follow many users in order to build an large audience. Still, a portion of Twitter users (perhaps the new ones) tend to add anyone who befriends them.

Take for instance, Osen Komura. A fake profile set up by another Twitter user in February 2008 as a social experiment. The Osen account followed 41,798 Twitter users in one month and 7,847 users added him as a friend, a 17%+ follow-back rate.

And Osen is not only the only profile out there with thousands of followers all derived through mass user following. The question is: Should you consider using the same strategy?

Apart from the risk of being labeled a Twitter spammer and increasing the noise on your Twitter stream, this method still works. However, know that following so many users inevitably reduces your ability to keep track of individual users since they are drowned out by other updates, unless you conscientiously keep track of your Twitter stream or use RSS. But keep in mind that this is not essential. Here are some good reasons why you really don’t need to mass follow twitter users.

Scoble has suggested that it’s beneficial to follow many Twitter users because you get more access to information and it shows that you’re listening and more open to communication or meeting people. Perhaps so, but I would recommend increasing the people you follow on Twitter gradually, while making sure that you’re maintaining conversational interactiveness.

Most Twitter users don’t like it if you’re simply following him/her to broadcast a message and if you don’t monitor them equally in return or engage them in conversation. Unless you’re a popular celebrity of some sort, one-way attention doesn’t work very well for Twitter.

In any case, only viewing Twitter as a broadcast platform to drive traffic to your websites is a limited perspective, especially when your Twitter followers offer a wealth of knowledge, connections and opinions you can use to improve your business and personal skills.

Personally, I prefer building up an online reputation and driving traffic to my Twitter profile. For me, the benefits of Twitter come from using it as a conversational/networking tool, so I’m more concerned with whose updates I’m receiving daily and hence, the people I follow.

All in all, it depends on your goals and how you use Twitter. Feel free to share this article with your Twitter friends. I’ll love to get more feedback on this topic.

And yes…please follow me on Twitter and say hi! I’m always looking to follow new people so don’t hesitate to introduce yourself. I’m pretty friendly and open to new experiences.

SOURCE: http://www.doshdosh.com/how-to-get-more-twitter-followers/

How many co-workers from your work place are on Facebook? MySpace? AIM? Twitter? Are social networks acting as a buffer to real life social interaction at your office? These social networks and many like them have enabled a different type of co-existence in the work place. You can be involved in a person’s “life” depending how much they post notifications or photos about themselves for your viewing pleasure.

How many times have you sent a message via a social network to ask, “What’s for lunch?” when the co-worker your asking is right next to you or really close by? There can be so much interaction with a co-worker on these social networks without actually having to come face-to-face with people for days, weeks or months. This may or may not be a good thing for a relationship in many respects. For example: You’re able to see how their vacation went just by looking at their photos (once they are posted) without ever actually speaking to them in person. According to what you see, it will be left to your assumption. There is also the lack of emitting physical emotions by just words. To slightly assist with the emitting of physical emotions, emoticons and certain symbols have been created.

Can these social networks get you into trouble? There have been many instances where you have read about a co-worker or you have vented about work on these social networks. At this point, it is your own responsibility to partake in the venting or ignore. What if you were scrutinized by a superior at work for a posting on your profile related to the work place? As the social media revolution rises, tracking what an employee does or says has become a lot easier. There have been recorded instances where an employee has been fired from their position due to a venting or complaint about their work place.  Also, there have been recent findings that employers check social networks when your application is received, meaning that if you have indecent pictures, comments or posts you might not even be considered for that position without looking at your credentials.

Some social networking tips for the work place:

• Try not to post in anger. Even if you delete it afterwords, there is a possibility it can be found by a simple Google search.
• Many of the social networks offer privacy settings that allow you to decide who you chose to connect with. So set up filters and even block people you don’t want to connect.
• Be wary of the photos you add and are made viewable to everyone in your social networking circle.
• Try not to associate accounts or profiles with a work e-mail account if you are provided one.

Bottom line is – Watch what you say. Watch what you add. Watch who you connect with.

Everyone is going crazy about the facebook pages! I mean to be honest I never really thought about decorating our facebook fan page  until someone asked for my help to do theirs today. I just feel like it’s best to give minimal information then send them off to the real stuff (which is at your website). That’s my personal opinion, but then today I started to get into decorating our facebook. There are a few really cool applications for fan pages for businesses that I think is useful. Below are some tips and applications I think will be useful to those who are planning to create a fan page or fix theirs up.

1. If you have a blog (if not I highly recommend getting one as soon as possible), connect the RSS feed in through your facebook. This will allow facebook to publish your feed without having to post it yourself. You want to try and get your content to as many places as possible and this is a great way.

• How To Do This: Go to your fan page, click edit page on the left (under your picture), then go to the notes application (should already be there if not go to more applications and add that app to your page). On the right hand side click on ‘Edit Import Settings’, then just add your blog feed!

2. Another cool new feature is that you are now able to connect your facebook and twitter. This will save you time so you only have to post on one social networking site rather then two!

• How To Do This: search for the twitter application in the search bar. On the left hand side click Add To Page. Then go to your settings and sign into twitter and allow the application.

3. Some of these fan pages have additional pages that will allow you to insert HTML. This is useful if you want to add pages about your company, updates on a content, etc. The best application that I have found is fbml. It allows you just add multiple pages and insert whatever content you want.

• How To Do This: Go to the search bar and search for fbml. Then on find static fbml. Once you click on that you will see add to page on the left hand side (under the photo). Then go back to your fan page and go to edit page. Find the static page and click edit. Edit it to how you want it! Something that I found a little tricky was how to add more. What you have to do is go back to one of the Old pages you created with fbml and click add new page on the bottom. You will have to also store all your photos on an outside server (you might want to get a graphic designer & web designer involved)

4. A cool app for videos is Posted Items Pro. This will allow you to embed multiple videos from youtube, yahoo, and google videos onto your facebook page.

• How To Do This: Go to your facebook fan page, click on edit page (under picture), then go to add applications and search for Posted Items Pro

5. It’s important to find a way to get people to go to your facebook fan page. Setting up a contest, survey, giveaway, etc is a good way to get people. You will need to get a big fan base so place your facebook links on  your website.

Now the argument is wither facebook or twitter is better. Honestly they are both two completely different applications and I feel that they both have their own parts. Facebook will be able to give you more information then twitter, however twitter easier to get followers that aren’t part of your group of friends, family, coworkers, etc. So in the end I think they are both important!