Follow Me Already!

I just hung up with a frustrated colleague.  I had invited her to follow one of my new Twitter accounts and she quickly called by phone (I know, I know – that’s sooo 2008!) to say, “I’ve been using Twitter for two months and I’m providing quality content.  I only have 24 followers.  You just opened that account and you already have that many.  How can I get more followers?!?!?”

Before we go any further, let me digress and mention that using Twitter is NOT all about how many followers you can collect.  It is about the relationships that you build.  One deep, solid relationship might develop into one lead: 15,000 uninterested followers will remain bystanders.

That said, watching your number of followers is appealing.  After all, it’s an easy metric to track.  So, if you’re looking to build your number of followers, the big secret is that you must introduce yourself (aka. Follow someone else.).  That’s it – the big secret.

Of course, that does lead to the question “to whom do I introduce myself?”  A couple of key ideas include:

• Start simple: follow your friends, family, group or club members, people who you meet at networking meetings, etc.
• Search for people who are searching for you.  For example, if you’re a photographer in Massachusetts, run a search on that.  Those people will be excellent leads.
• Locate your competition.  Follow the people who are following them.
• Locate accounts in your area or industry who have many followers.  Follow their followers.
• Use Twitter directories to find accounts of interest.  Two useful ones are http://wefollow.com/ and http://geofollow.com/.

It’s called “social” media for a reason: people want to get to know one another and enjoy each other’s company.  There’s no magic to it – just people getting to know one another on a slightly grander scale.  So, go ahead and introduce yourself to others.  In no time, you too will have many followers!

– Rachel