A Twitter Journey: Following and Getting Followers

In my previous post, I talked about getting started with Twitter the right way in setting up an account. Now that you have an account, people can find out about you. However, some people are out there looking for you and others do not know about you yet. If you follow someone, chances are good they may follow you back and tell others about you too. So you need to find potential followers using various methods inside and outside the Twitter environment. Depending on how fast you want to build a follower list, set aside a small amount of time each day (approximately 30 minutes) or a specific day each week (for 1-2 hours) to search for followers. To find followers, you must first become a follower so others know you are out there and will check you out.

Examples:

• For my blog account, I used Twellow which is the Twitter Yellow Pages but is outside of Twitter. Since most Bloggers enjoy reading other blogs, I did a search for blog and begin following others who blogged. The blog now has a huge following on Twitter but all followers did not become regular blog readers. However the blog readership has doubled since going on Twitter and being given to “best of the web”. The readership on the blog and Twitter should increase as I continue to check out the 94,000 bloggers on Twellow.
• For my business services account, I started by looking on Twitter for names of people I thought might be there and followed them. I also used Twellow categories to find people by how they classified themselves and TwellowHood to find people in my geographical area. All Twitter users will appear on Twellow, however you can expand upon your Twitter Profile in Twellow so people searching categories there can read more about you than the limited amount of text Twitter allows.

Twitter says it does not have follow limits, however once you follow 2,000 accounts; you can not follow more until you have 2,000 followers of your own. So if you see that people are not following you back after a certain period of time, you may want to unfollow them by finding them on your following list and clicking on the tool drop-down to the far right of their name. You can only send direct messages (DM) to people who also follow you, therefore if you do not see the option to DM them, then they are not following you back. Then you may unfollow them in order to follow some new people who may become your followers.

You may want to note that if you get a lot of spam from a person or have a follower you don’t want. Twitter allows you to report that person as a spammer from your follower list under the tool drop-down by their account name. This is the fastest way to get Twitter to investigate their account and determine if they should be removed from the system. However, this does not prevent them form sending you more message. The best way to avoid a spamming follower is to find them in your follower list, click on the tool drop-down and choose Block. If someone gets several blocks then Twitter will also investigate them later.

Once your account is set-up and you are using Twitter to gain followers, announce your account on your website and in your email signature line. Below are a few more suggested article links, some with additional resource links in them. Look for my next posts about Twitter conversations and additional tools.

• Find people on Twitter with Listorious People Search!
• 6 Directories to Help with Following on Twitter and to Get Followers (Blog Post)
• 14 Twitter directories to find new friends
• 15 Twitter Directories Compared by Mashable
• 20 Twitter Directories to Find More Friends and Followers
• How To Get More Twitter Followers

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