If you’re reading this blog post, then you probably aren’t known well enough to get followers without you making it happen. People aren’t going to search you out. You have to follow them and hope they follow you back. If you don’t, you’ll get random follows on occasion, but do you want to get a follower here and there, or do you want to see RESULTS? If you want to get followers more quickly, find someone who is recognized as an expert in what you’re talking about, find their twitter page, and follow everyone who follows them. Those people are likely to follow someone else who posts similar content (aka YOU).

1. Follow People

Twitter is meant for interaction between people. It’s not JUST a place to advertise your website, and really, that’s not what it was created for. Socialize with people, follow people you like, and have fun while using Twitter as a tool for website traffic. People will see you as a genuine person with a unique personality and will probably be more likely to follow you back than if you just posted links all the time. Also, try following people who follow someone important in your niche (such as Phil Mickelson for a golf niche). They often follow back.

2. Link to Your Profile

This seems pretty obvious, but if you want to get people to follow you, you have to get some traffic to your profile page. Link to it from your website, your Facebook, your forum signatures, and wherever else you think is appropriate. The more traffic you have, the more twitterers that could potentially follow you.

3. Post Relevant Content

People who follow you are interested in your niche. Post content that’s relevant to what your site is about, and you’ll probably get people interested in what your site is about to follow you.

4. Don’t be a Link-o-phobe

Don’t be afraid to link to someone else’s article that you think is cool, if it’s related to the niche of your website. Your followers may like the article and be more likely to open links from you. Followers that open every link you post are great, by the way. Not that I speak from experience or anything.

5. Act Appropriately

When I say “Act Appropriately”, I don’t mean follow the Twitter rules (although it helps to not get banned). If you want to get more followers to joke around with, joke around. If you want to get more followers that are interested in reading things related to your niche (i.e. your website), post things releated to your niche.

6. Don’t Be Annoying

I have unfollowed people numerous times for simply getting on my nerves. One guy kept posting things like “I’M UNFOLLOWING EVERYONE WHO USES THE #MOONFRUIT HASHTAG!”. That went on for about a day before I unfollowed him. Sometimes I unfollow when people post about 100 things at a time, or when they have a computer program automatically tweet for them once about every 30 seconds. Think of what you would consider annoying, then don’t do it. Don’t be annoying for my sake and for the sake of your follower count.

7. Post About How to Get More Followers

What Twitter user DOESN’T want to get new followers? Right about now you might be asking “Oh, is that why you wrote this article?” It might help with getting me more followers (and if it does, I’ll be happy), but I’ve discovered some of these methods recently and want to share them with you. You don’t have to write an article though, just retweeting a link someone else posts on occasion will probably help. Why don’t you try retweeting the link to this article?

8. Post Pictures

People like to retweet pictures to their followers. Just make sure the pictures you’re tweeting/retweeting are interesting or funny.

9. Be Funny

Retweet a joke occasionally, particularly if it relates to something going on. One I recently retweeted was “bp is siphoning oil into a tanker on the surface. thank goodness nothing ever goes wrong with oil tankers”. People searching for the oil spill (still flowing as I type) might find the joke, think I’m funny, and hit “follow”.

10. Follow Me

If you’re following the first nine steps, follow me. Send me a direct message saying that you read this post, and I’ll be sure to follow you back. Feel free to message me about what you’ve tried. We’re all in this together.