Twitter is gaining more momentum each day and everyone wants in.  The problem is, people are starting to use Twitter but give up after a short while due to lack of followers/conversing.  Here are some of the ways I have built my followers over the past couple years.  Yes, building twitter followers takes some time, but it’s worth it in the end.

1) Twitter is a big community.

You have to retweet what others say (that you obviously like and want your followers to see) and you have to reply to people who mention you.  It also helps if you mention people out of the blue and just build them up with something nice to say about them.

2) People care about the small things.

If you spend all your time just tweeting ‘quotes’ or ’scriptures’ or ‘jokes’ … people sometimes have a deaf ear, but if you become more personable and tweet about your daily life (i.e: “Going camping with the family and can’t wait to spend some quality time with them”).

3) Don’t follow too many people all at once.

If you decide to follow someone, they will get an email.  Lets say when they open up that email, it says YOUR NAME, they skim your profile, then see that you follow 1000 people and only have 100 followers, they will most likely think that you are just mass following random people and don’t really care about them specifically.  The best way to build followers slowly but surely is every time you find someone worth following, you tweet why you are going to follow them or mention them somehow, then obviously follow through and click that follow button.

4) Use #HASHTAGS!!

Hashtags are an easy way to get someone to notice what you are doing.  Hashtags can be used in a couple of ways.  The main use is when someone wants to track what the tweet is about.  For example, if I were going to tweet about something in American Idol it would go something like this:

“I can’t believe they voted of PIA! What is wrong with this world? #americanidol #ai”

What this does is anyone who is searching for american idol [on twitter] will see your tweet in that stream and if they agree with you or see that you have that in common with them, they may follow you.  The other use of hashtags is more for fun – but making a point like so:

“My wife made the best apple pie #mywiferocks” or   “I just love when people cut me off on the highway and I go into the ditch #sarcasm”

5) Recommend people for Follow Fridays.

Follow Fridays is something that people put out on Fridays… (duh).  Ha, and well they use the hashtag #ff or #followfriday and recommend people that they think their followers should also follow.  http://techdows.com/2009/09/what-is-follow-friday.html

6) Make sure you have a BIO

If you don’t have a bio, then how will I know who you are or what you do. Also, a little wit goes a long way here.

7) Refrain from always posting your tweets in the form of a question.

It can be good once in a while… but people who form all their tweets in a form of a question come off desperate.

This is a sure fire way to get a good follower base that you can connect with on a daily basis.