Yesterday, Internet Marketing Coach Josh Spaulding posted about the 10 Fastest Ways to Lose Credibility as an internet marketer.  I loved item #2.  Here is what Josh had to say:

Today I followed some guy on Twitter and he had an auto DM sent out to new followers promoting a Twitter Ebook about getting “Thousands” of twitter followers. This guy had 300 followers… come on guy, you might as well say “I have no credibility, why are you even following me?”

Hey -- that sounds like it could be me.  After all, I have about 300 followers (392 as of this writing).  So, naturally, I wanted to immediately turn around and write a post called " How To Get Massive Twitter Followers" just for fun.  We'll let Josh weigh in and determine how it impacts my credibility.

Disclaimer: I am not a Twitter Guru and I do not even play one on TV.  No small birds were harmed while researching this post.  Your mileage may vary.  Not valid in Nevada.  Professional driver on closed course.  You get the idea.

A Twitter Viral Marketing Experiment

Now Twitter is a viral system - as you get more followers then you have more chance of getting their followers to follow you as if they reply to you on something then that shows up in their message area for people to see when they are on his/her page.

The first thing I did today in my quest to write about Getting Twitter Followers is that I signed up for this new viral twitter follower experiment called TweeterGetter by Gary McCaffrey.  This is the single most revolutionary piece of Internet Marketing software ever released.  This software is up for the Nobel Software Prize, and will probably win.  Lives have been saved by this code.  In fact, if you sign up under me today, you may actually have seven million followers before you are done reading this post.

OK, that is not true, but this is a cool idea.  Basically, it works like a pyramid scheme.  You follow 6 people on a list and then your name goes to the top of the list, and the next person bumps you to #2, etc, until you fall off.  Pretty clever.

The problem I see with this is that these followers are not all that targeted.  I still think it is cool, and I want you to try it with me.  I'll report my results here in 30 days.  The copy on the signup page claims a possible 15,000 followers.  We'll see.  I'll let you know.

Some Legitimate Tips For Getting Followers

OK -- here are some more legitimate (less spammy) tips for getting Twitter followers.

Now, I told you that I'm no expert, but I really think that building up a hoard of followers is actually easier than you'd think.  Just like in email marketing,  once you have a follower, you then need to make sure you treat them right to make them loyal (a subject that is covered well in the New Age Email Marketing Report.

Laying the foundation

If you have a brand spanking new Twitter account, I recommend you make several  tweets, make them about anything, say hi and introduce yourself, then talk about your day or something, then maybe throw in a couple of cool YouTube videos for people to watch. At this point just make them a bit interesting as they are just fodder to make sure people think you are really posting and not just some spam robot signing up followers, make the posts over about two days as well.

Use Find People

Then go to 'Find people' at the top and 'Suggested users' - there you will find about 20+ users you can follow straight away, and hopefully some of them will automatically follow you back. Once you've followed some of those people then reply to a couple of posts from them, now you have a page with your posts, the replies you made, you are following people and should have some followers yourself - you are now an active part of the community and can go forth and get more followers!

Quick tip - the way people automatically follow you back is to use a service like Tweet Later which allows you (for free) to integrate it with your Twitter account and have a custom thank you message sent to every person who follows you as well as it automatically following them back. Saves a lot of time at first when you just want as many followers as possible!

So you have everything ready now, time to get some people following you! Let's look at the different methods you can employ:

Who Are The People In Your Neighborhood

If you have any friends you think may be on Twitter, or clients etc - then use the 'Find people' function and you can search by name, username, email address etc to find people and start to follow them.

Do Your Keyword Research

If you go to 'search' at the bottom of the screen, then you can search for a keyword related to your niche and it will bring up all the tweets with that keyword in.

That is a goldmine of people to follow! They are talking about the topic you want them to be interested in, so as long as it is not a negative tweet about the niche then start following these people! They might not all follow you back, but then you can use the next technique to try and get them to follow you.

Interaction Is The Key To Satisfaction

If you reply to someone's tweet then you show up in their 'replies' inbox if they are not following you. So this can be used to try and get people who you are following but they are not following you back, to follow you. If you spot a tweet from them you think you can make a friendly and intelligent reply to, maybe help them out with something they are asking etc, then you might make a friend and get a follower!

Do not spam. Remember to always add to the conversation.

Utilizing Your Web Site

Another great way to get targeted followers is to get people who come to your website or blog to add you to Twitter.

The best way is to ask them in a post (or every post, use it as a p.s. under your name!) or you can find various 'Follow me' icons round the net that you can link straight up to your profile so people can click through and see if they want to follow you.

Follow The Gurus

What better way to get targeted followers than to go seeking people in your niche who are the 'celebrities' of your niche, the big companies or names. If they really are at the top of your niche then you can bet that they are on Twitter, and you can bet they have put some effort into getting followers too!

You can click on the number of followers someone has and it will bring up a list of all their followers, then you can go through and start following away!   Some will follow you back.

Run a contest (namecheap.com style)

Do you have a new product or something else you can give away some copies of for free?  Then run a contest! Announce it to your followers a few days before it happens, which also gets put into the public timeline so hopefully you'll gain the attention of new people - who will then follow you.

Use Some Cool Tools

When you go to 'Find people' then you can get some basic suggestions of who to follow there - but lets face it, they are just pushing the most popular people on you, people who'll never actually read your tweets! If you use the sites below then you can get more useful suggestions:

• Twubble - looks at your current followers and suggests other people you may want to follow who have similar friends/interests as you.
• Twitter Grader - grades everyone and if you follow @grader then you can get friend suggestions based on your posts and followers.
• Mr Tweet - again suggests people to follow

Use The Twitter Directories

That's right, sites have been popping up all over the web giving you different features to help with the twitterverse.  Just Tweet It and Twellow are cool examples.  The latter allows you to search through people's bios on Twitter, which Twitter themselves don't give you the ability to do!

Bottom Line -- Be Part Of The Community.

Of couse, the bottom line is that you need to participate and be part of the community.  That is the best way to get Twitter Followers.

Just remember, I am not a Twitter expert, but I'd love to hear what you think in the comments below.

Thanks,
Mark

So tell me what you think? Got an opinion about this topic that you would like to share? Be sure to leave a comment below -- I do my best to respond to each and every comment.

Best regards, P.S. -- If you like this article and would like to be notified about future posts, please take a moment to sign up for my internet marketing newsletter using the form in the right sidebar. This will also give you instant access to my free membership download area.

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