I read recently about a company that sells Facebook friends, Digg votes and Twitter followers. This company is offering the low rate of $87 for 1000 Twitter followers in just seven days. Now you have to ask yourself what is better; 1000 followers who are generally apathetic, or 1000 targeted followers who intently click on your links because they trust you and what you have to share? So why do brands turn to automated tools and spammy companies like the aforementioned? Getting those 1000 targeted fans can be very hard work. Unless you are a well known brand or celebrity, followers are not going to flock to your profile. So I have put together a few tips to help you get those adoring fans: 

• Find People Like You:  What’s the first thing you do when arriving at a party? You look for your friends. Once you are a little more comfortable you start to mingle and naturally gravitate toward people like yourself. It’s no different on Twitter. Once you have your account and you’ve defined who you are in your short bio, you need to find your friends. These are people you already know are on Twitter. Once you have your comfort blanket in place you can start to mingle. Search for other accounts like yours. If you are a travel company, search for other travel profiles or people interested in travel. To do this you can search Twitter directories. My favourite directories are Twellow, WeFollow and Just Tweet It. Don’t mass follow profiles, just follow a few profiles a day that you are interested in and are similar to your profile. Now you are in a conversation.

• Seed Yourself: Submit your profile to Twitter directories. Just like you can use these directories to find interesting profiles to follow, other Tweeple may stumble upon your profile and follow you.  Here is a great post on Twitter directories.

• Friend or Follow: This next point is one of contention between some of the QuirkStars. I believe that you should follow profiles that follow you. Not every profile, but definitely the ones that are obviously interested in you. It’s social courtesy and says that you are interested in engaging. However it is best not to let the number of profiles you follow exceed the number of followers you have. This is most definitely not a rule, merely a helpful tip.

• Do Your Research: Use Twitter Search to find people talking about you or your brand. If it’s positive, follow them and perhaps retweet their comment. If it’s negative, engage with them to find a solution. You might find there is a whole conversation going on about your brand that you are not a part of.

• Be Useful and Relevant: I still like to believe that if you tweet useful and relevant content, you will naturally gain profiles. Measure what content is more popular with your followers. Most URL shorteners will give you click stats that you can use to measure this.

• Engage, Engage, Engage: Our fearless leader here at Quirk, Rob Stokes says; “build friends not followers”. Don’t just put messages out there. If you actively engage in the conversation by retweeting, replying to tweets and sending @messages you are showing your followers and their followers that you are active, real and taking part. Not only will followers start to interact more with you, but your profile will become more visible. Our resident Idea Bounty Captain, Daniel Neville,is very Twitter savvy. He sends @messages to influential Tweetple sharing something he knows they will be interested in. More often than not he gains an important follower. 

• When and How Much? Fred Wilson (who sits on the board of Twitter) has a golden rule: “4 -6 tweets a day, or you will send your followers away”. More than 6 and you will annoy your followers into unsubscribing. Less  than 2 and you will become invisible. If you only want to target local profiles, the best time to tweet is between 9am and 2pm. If you want to target an international audience, research their peak times and schedule tweets in those periods. I use a very handy management tool called Hootsuite, which allows me to schedule tweets in the future, so you don’t have to sit up till midnight to hit the US market. You can literally have tweets scheduled 24 hours a day.

• Promote Yourself: If you have a website or a blog add a link to your Twitter account. Steve Krug's title of his legendary book about Web Usability was “Don’t make me think”. This applies to many aspects of eMarketing. Don’t make users search for you on Twitter. If they are on your website, give them your link. Don’t make them think. If you write for a blog, have a “tweet me” chicklet, making it easy for readers to tweet your post. You can go one step further and link your Twitter account up to your website or blog by using a widget which will pull through your Twitter mentions. Here is a link to Twitter’s widget. 

Link your website up to your Twitter account

As I mentioned, none of these are rules, they are guidelines to help you along your way. I always encourage readers to share their experiences, so if you have found a tactic that has worked particularly well for you then do share the love. And if you like this post, follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/juliawillcox 

Also check out:

• Quirk eMarketing's Twitter Stream
• Twitter Measurement Tools
• A Corporate Crash Course in Twitter