I started using Twitter some time in April, but only in July really started using it heavily (see my previous post on explaining Twitter. Since then I have seen countless tweets promoting tools that increase the number of your followers. I don’t know whether they work since I haven’t tried them, but I believe they do (with the general idea: if you follow X number of people, at least a third will return the follow. Do this enough times and you’ll gain a lot of followers). How else can you explain users with 10,000 followers and no tweets?
An additional point to consider: I tend to question the quality of the followers you get using them – often quality doesn’t go well with quantity, particularly if things are automated. If you don’t look at your followers – at all – how do you know who they really are? For all you know they could be bots. This is true for me, too, but at least I try to evaluate the account with my own eyes and don’t rely on software.
I’ve used twollow myself (an online tool which adds followers based on criteria) for 2-3 days, but didn’t feel any effect, and I mean any. I’m guessing it’s particularly useful for people who don’t use Twitter at all, and just want to gain followers on auto pilot (without having to log in at all). I know at least one guy who gained 3,000 followers this way over a span of several months.
In July 30th I had 191 followers. Today, August 22nd, 12:30pm (the day is still young) I have 1391 followers. How did I do that? It’s been roughly 3 weeks in which I gained exactly 1200 followers. Moreover, I was completely out of commission for about 4 days during this time (3 days I was at a conference, read my blog for more details, and one day I spent moving to a new apartment without any internet connection).
In the Twitter universe 1391 is not really considered a lot of followers. But still, I did it without any help of tools and on my own, and – in my opinion – in a relatively short amount of time. And I expect the rate of followers to only keep increasing (at least that’s what I’ve been noticing so far – I believe the more followers you have, the larger the target audience you reach, and your overall network grows).
So how did I do that? My answer is simple and is one word: interaction.
During this time, I interacted with people, asked questions, sent responses, sent the occasional article I found amusing or educational, retweeted the occasional message I found interesting. Yes, I did it quite intensively. But it worked, you have to agree with that, no? Even better than hard, cold numbers: I made friends during this time, people I now correspond with on a daily basis.
Twitter is all about interaction. Interact with people, offer value in your tweets, make friends – and you’ll get plenty of followers. Although some tools & methods may work faster (maybe even much faster), I think this is the better way, both in the short and in the long term.
An image is worth a thousand words: check my followers chart above (though to be honest, I don’t think it captures the trajectory correctly – I only “updated” it today, so it treats “yesterday” as July 30th. Still it proves my point. As you can see I got 7 followers since I updated my follower counter).
I’m sorry if you were expecting some sort of technological solution in this post. I’m sure some tools offer way better results than I have obtained. But I truly believe this is the better way. It certainly is more fun 🙂
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