TwitNine

Twitter is a very receptive environment for forging connections with new friends and contacts, so amassing a list of followers is relatively simple. Typically, you gain followers in the natural course of using Twitter, but here are a few guidelines to follow:

Be real: Being genuine goes a long way, and you’re likely to gain followers
without even trying.

Be interesting: You don’t have to fascinate with every tweet you type, but do try to tweet about things more relevant to the world at large than what you just ate for lunch or the heinous traffic on your morning commute. Talk about your interests, instead. Talk about what’s in the news. Or talk about what you think should be in the news.

Be involved: The more “into” a topic you are, the more people will respond to your enthusiasm. Say that you’re really into classic cars —don’t talk just about your own fascination with them, but try to help other people on Twitter who might have questions on the subject. Get
into heated conversations and debates, too. Without being too authoritative, position yourself as someone who has some valuable information on your chosen issue to see an increase in your number of followers.

If you’re lucky enough that @Oprah posts a tweet with your @username in it — usually after you @Oprah her, and she notices and responds — you’re going to be barraged by new followers who’ve seen your username in connection with that famous person’s. But the most popular Twitter users have hundreds of thousands of followers and hundreds of people @replying to them, so don’t count on a response from a famous twitterer as a way to get your foot in the door when it comes to Twitter influence.

Some Twitter users try to lure followers by offering contests, giveaways, or other incentives to reach certain pseudo-milestones, such as number of tweets or number of followers. This approach is a little bit cheesy and can look like you’re desperate for new followers. In our opinion, you can have a better time on Twitter if you just allow your network to grow organically.

Regardless of how you get people to follow you, make sure to keep your Twitter interactions genuine. What you post on Twitter and contribute to the conversation, along with your ability to listen, determines your authority more than any follower count ever could.