Recently a lot of people have been asking me how they can improve their twitter follower count and become more of a community player in the twitter scene. Sadly the there is no perfect answer as some guides i’ve read make you believe, But there are some simple steps you can take to curve and prevent follower loss.

Firstly let me tell you that twitter followers are a fickle bunch, there are some people out there who just want a high follower count and they may try to follow you and the moment you follow they back they unfollow you. As bad as that is there are steps to combat that and i will cover them a bit later in this guide.

What Not to Do With Twitter (Or, if you want to keep followers never do this)

  • Twitter has earnt the reputation of having a userbase that “tweets” about everything from waking up to well…bowel movements. Always try to remember that people do care what your doing but you really need to make sure its interesting.

An example of a good tweet would be:

Just ordered my iMac :D It should be arriving before the 23rd

Which engages your audience and normally leads to responces asking about the specs.

An example of a bad tweet would be:

Leaving Taco Bell Now….i’ll tweet again when im in the carpark

No one cares about that fact you went from taco bell to the carpark, except your mother….and she’s not going to be reading your tweets.

  • Apart from tweeting too much (which is the biggest mistake you can make) the other mistake people seem to make is follower whoring, which basically breaks down to seeking out every single person on twitter you can find to try and raise your twitter follower account. which is fine if you take an interest in what they say, but if you unfollow them the moment they follow you its just bad karma.

Which brings me onto one of my favorite sites for dealing with rogue unfollowers…

There is a site out there called Twitter Karma, and i advise everyone to use its “show only followers” and “bulk unfollow” features. So Basically here is what i do every month..in dot points (so its easy to follow)

  1. Login to Twitter Karma
  2. Click show “only following” (which will display people that your only following, that aren’t following you back)
  3. Go through the list ticking the boxes of people who don’t follow you back (i follow people like arjbarker and adam savage and don’t expect to get followed back so don’t just unfollow everyone who isn’t following you)
  4. click the “bulk unfollow” button
  5. Sit back and feel a little less worried. :)

Another service i use is called “auto follow” which strikes fear into a lot of people as they feel it is an impersonal way to manage your followers but i feel its ok as long as you police it.

Since so many people hate services like this i won’t list any recommended services, but if your interested google is your friend. But i am happy to offer a do’s and don’t on autofollow services

  • NEVER setup an an automatic direct message to every new follower, if anything is going to kill off your follower count that is…i get about 15 of those stupid things everyday and i hate them with a passion (and i know im not alone)
  • You don’t have to welcome every single new follower you get, the best way of telling someone how happy you are is interacting with them on their tweets (which i will cover shortly)
  • About every month after i’ve run the bulk unfollow service i select “people who only follow me” and i make sure that i follow all of those people who the system may have missed so how.

if you follow those steps and remember that no matter what you do, your always going to have more people that your following than are following you your going to be fine

My final point well help you gain followers

Engage and know your audience

There are a few simple steps that help you do this

  • DO seek out people with a similar interest (if you like dj’ing and stuff…seek out people who like that..twitter search is your friend)
  • The Best way to get followers is to ask people and interact, taking the dj example again you might ask (ahhahah pioneer gear is shithouse, i’ve got some fantastic american dj stuff….which is a poor example as i know its the other way around)
  • From that previous point the @ is your friend… ask questions about gear even just laugh along with some of the strange stuff that you see on twitter

The real simple key to twitter is tweeting interesting stuff and knowing how to engage an audience, apart from that you really need to work out your own niche and work to it.

Also take note of your follower stats to see whats working Twittercounter is the best application i’ve found for that.

Thank you for reading all that, and remember @hughesie or leave me a comment on this post