Getting Twitter Followers: What Works and What Doesn’t
This post is the first of a series reviewing the multitude of products and services that promise to get you thousands of Twitter followers.
If you’ve used any of these services and want to share your experience please send me an e-mail or leave a comment HERE
Next post in the series:
I must admit I first joined Twitter looking to publicize my posts. As a beginner in the blogging world, I was struggling to generate traffic. Experts will tell you that as time passes your audience will slowly build up, but I was impatient, and Twitter seemed the perfect vehicle to attract readers: I just had to broadcast the title of my post and those who found the topic interesting would click on the link.
After a couple of months on Twitter, I had become a devotee of the site for very different reasons. I had found several personal-finance bloggers whose posts I now read assiduously -such as @MoneyEnergy or @fiscalgeek. I was also talking regularly with people whose interests had nothing to do with my blog: new moms, college students, photographers. And I was enjoying every minute of it.
Having met just one of these people would have made my Twitter adventure worthwhile. But while I still wanted to drive traffic to my blog, I had less than 400 followers -hardly enough to get more than a couple of visits whenever I announced a new blog post.
I decided at that point to do something about it, and started researching the best way to add followers to my account. In the process I discovered several things:
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Most of the programs promising to bring in hundreds of followers are completely ineffective or downright scams -they just want to get your email address and have no intention of actually getting anybody to follow you.
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There’s a big difference between bringing in untargeted followers -which are relatively easy to get, but may not be at all interested in what you have to say- and targeted ones.
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As appealing as having thousands of followers seemed to me in the beginning, sometimes I doubt it’s really worth it. At some point it becomes difficult to keep conversations -you feel overwhelmed, in the middle of a crowd where everybody tries to talk on top of each other.
This post is an introduction to a series where I want to review the services I’ve used to increase the number of followers in my account. If you’ve ever used any of them -whether you still have those followers or have resorted to unfollowing 90% of them, as I’ve seen some people do when trying to keep up becomes too hard-, your contribution would be very useful to other readers looking to increase their Twitter following. Please consider writing a comment to this post or e-mailing me directly to share your experience.
And remember to come back tomorrow to read the first review.
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Have you tried to get more people to follow you on Twitter?
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Do you think trying to get thousands of followers is silly, and would rather stick to the few select ones you currently have?
PLEASE SHARE YOUR OPINION HERE
On the road to $1M 
August 26, 2009 at 11:41 am
Twitter can be good for publicizing posts, but I find that’s not the primary benefit. For me, I’ve found it more valuable for keeping up in my field and with other blogging colleagues as well as learning from others; new ideas; news, etc. – I take it for granted now, but there was a time a month or so into Twitter when I was really struck by what an amazing resource it can be. And I haven’t hopped on any social media bandwagon: I don’t like Facebook anywhere near as much, for example.
My advice for those new to Twitter or who haven’t used Twitter yet is – definitely check it out – if you don’t see any value there at first, don’t worry about it. Think about how it could be aligned with your own goals and what you’re trying to achieve. Twitter is best when you become part of a network of other motivated people working on their own creative projects. It’s a great way to expand any of your networks. And use multiple Twitter accounts if you need to (I don’t, currently) if you want to focus on specific purposes.
August 27, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Thanks for the kind words, I see you have a thousand plus followers now, how’s that working out for you?
September 19, 2009 at 4:48 pm
I am still a beginner with Twitter, but have already started to see in bringing in a lot of traffic to my blogs and websites.
As far as uses of Twitter, for me the best ways to use it have been to announce blog posts, and to find people interested or talking about, specific things.
The two techniques that I have found effective are:
1. Getting followers through friends who have a far greater twitter following. This has meant a lot to me as far as getting followers.
2. Tuning into the conversation. I use http://search.twitter.com/ to find the conversations that are relevant to me, and follow along from there.
September 19, 2009 at 4:56 pm
@Vernon Thanks for you comment! The technique you highlight -finding relevant conversations and then following people who are talking about the same things- is the same I mention on the second post in this series about getting Twitter followers -you even provide the link to Twitter search, thank you!!-
I also find this technique to be the best one to get targeted followers, and try to use often.