Twitter is a very powerful tool, if you have followers. The RIGHT followers.

Build your Twitter followers the RIGHT way for the most impact

You may remember from my December post, “Twitter ‘pimps’ are a waste of marketers’ time,” I strongly discourage services that promise to build your followers. You wind up following a bunch of spammers who don’t care about you or your tweets.

Instead, I believe in putting in the time and effort to build a targeted following that results in a mutually-beneficial relationship.

How?

Here are some strategies I use to build my clients’ followers:

Give your followers some love – Respond to your followers tweets, even if they aren’t directed toward you. If a blogger tweets his newest blog entry and you like it, retweet it and tell him you liked the post:

Great post – very insightful! RT @Follower  Check out my new blog post, “This is a great post” http://bloglink.com

Like the childhood song, follower love is something if you give it away, you end up having more. Mention @Follower once and he will notice you; mention @Follower multiple times and he will remember you. Mention @Follower enough times and he will go out of his way to help you.

Follow the cool kid’s followers -  In every industry, there is at least a handful of “gurus.” In copywriting, for example, Bob Bly, Steve Slaunwhite and Michael Stelzner are the first to come to mind. These may not be household names, but in copywriting land, they certainly are. Find these individuals in your industry and start following some of their followers. Since you tweet similar subject matter, they are likely to be interested.

Find people tweeting about you or your industry  – I like applications such as TweetDeck and Hootsuite (both free) because they allow you to keep columns with continuously-updated search results for keywords of interest. For example, I look at tweets that include “social media” and “copywriting.” Make sure to also follow hashtags (ex: #socialmedia) as these are tweets that the Twitter user WANTS to be seen by many.

Use directories  – Use directories such as Twellow and WeFollow. Firstly, list yourself in these directories so you can be found. Then, conduct searches to find your target followers.

For example, a university book store could search for Twitter users who mention their school’s name in their profile. It can be somewhat time-consuming, but each follower is much more valuable than just a number.

Numbers are important, but impact is more important. With a little bit of patience and determination, you will succeed. The key is to have goals, a strategy and a plan for your social media presence.

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