I find it interesting that so many people really don’t have a clue how to use Twitter for their business.

There are really only three ways to use Twitter, and if you do, you are almost guaranteed to have success.

1. Link your Twitter account to your site

There are several ways you can do this. I’ll explain two.

First. Add a link to your twitter account (somewhere visible on your blog). This is the easiest way to get more followers. Use a Twitter button, badge or icon, or the text follow me on Twitter.

Second. Put your latest tweets on your blog. All your visitors will be able to see your tweets and can follow you by clicking on your account. But if you add your tweets to your blog, you need to be aware that you might take attention away from the content on your blog.

2. Follow others

When you follow people on Twitter, most of who you follow will follow you in return. You need to follow people who you think will buy your product. You don’t want to follow people who have no interest in you or your products.

You need to get targeted followers. You can find people by using Twitter directories, there you’ll find people who are interested in certain topics (the same as you).

You can find people who are selling similar products as you, and start following them and their followers. You know that they’ll most likely be interested in you and your niche.

3. Add value

This is what most people don’t get and it’s the most important part of using Twitter (and especially if you’re using it for your business).

If you’re providing good and valuable information on Twitter, your followers will recommend you and your tweets to other Twitter users. You will end up with more followers, and your tweets will be read by more people.

You need to understand that Twitter is not just an advertising tool, you need to treat it as your email list. Focus on providing free information of high quality. Then, once in a while, you might want to promote your products. If your free information is of high quality, people will trust you and in the end buy your products.

Image: Jennie

Are you still stuck with only a few hundred followers, and are you looking for some creative ways to get people to start reading your tweets? Well, it’s not as hard as you might think.

I remember my first real Twitter experience, that was when I first visited my Twitter profile one year after I last used Twitter. What happened was this; I created an account at Twitter on October 28, 2007. But after playing with it for 5 minutes or so, I stopped, I couldn’t see the point. One year later I visited my profile and discovered that I had more than 1,000 followers.

I didn’t quite believe it. Why did people follow me? I hadn’t used Twitter, I jumped on the bandwagon a little early, that was all.

I discovered early that adding more followers was important when it comes to marketing. The more followers, the more people are reading my tweets, and clicking my links. It’s a lot easier to drive traffic to websites with more followers.

The challenge we’re all facing is how to get more followers. And especially, how do we get more targetted followers, that’s how do we get like-minded people to follow us?

Let me give you 10 ways to get more followers on Twitter.

#1 Follow more people

When you follow people, most of them follow you back. You can follow them one-by-one, or you can use software or scripts to follow a lot of people with a single click.

#2 Be different

If you’re not any different, why should people be following you? Think about it, you can tell the same story or send the same tweets, but do it in a different way.

#3 Participate in Conversations

When you talk to people, ask questions, provide answers, they won’t forget you as easy as if you’re just having a monologue on Twitter. Find conversations by searching Twitter, participate and you’ll get followers.

#4 Drive Traffic To Your Profile

Your Twitter profile is like any website. High quality content and lots of traffic is how you’ll get successful. The more traffic it gets, the more people will follow you. Link to it, send traffic to it, like you do with your website.

#5 You Need A Different Avatar

You can’t use the default avatar, you need a picture of yourself. People follow people. If you’re going to use an avatar of someone or something other than you, make it a really cool one. If people laugh at your avator, they’ll follow you.

#6 Share Share Share

Retweet information that you find valuable, and share information you enjoy. The more you share, the more people will follow you. But only share information you find valuable, don’t share crap. Crap won’t get you anywhere.

#7 Define the Outcome

You need a strategy. How many times a day are you going to tweet, what are you going to tweet about, how many followers are you looking for? If you have defined what your goal with Twitter is, it’s a lot easier to make it. Start your day with four Twitter tasks, add them to your schedule and remove them when they’re done.

#8 Wear Your Twitter Profile

There are many cool Twitter T-shirts. They can be customized, this way you’ll promote your profile just by being yourself. Or, you can add stickers to your car or to your business wall.

#9 Use Direct Messages

I have thought that using direct messages is just a waste of time, but not in all cases. If you’re very personal, or you’re always having one-on-one conversations, you should consider using direct messages more. This way it will be easier for people to follow your timeline and see how much value your sharing.

#10 Ask People To Follow You

The most effective way to get more followers is probably to ask. When you ask, people will retweet, and they’ll follow you. It’s that simple. You can add Twitter banners to your websites, or you can add a link in your blog posts. Please follow me on Twitter.

Do you have any other tips on how to get more followers on Twitter?

Image: Brood Wich

I’m curious. If you were as fortunate as Conan O’Brien with more than 765,000 followers on Twitter and you were going to follow one person, that’s what he’s doing. Who would that one person be?

Would it be a random fan?
Would it be one of your friends?
Would it be a member of your family?
Would it be a person you admire?

I changed my mind.

Skip the thought of being Conan O’Brien. You’re back, you are nobody but yourself, and I’m just me. For now.

But you’re still just following one person.

The problem with picking just one person is that this person should be really different. If I was a famous person, I would probably pick one person in order to help. I would pick someone that really needed the attention, someone who could turn the attention to something important. I would choose a person involved with a charity, maybe someone who love animals and work day and night to turn the world into a better place.

I wouldn’t pick one of my friends, because if I did, my other friend would be upset.

I wouldn’t follow one member of my family, because I wouldn’t be interested in reading the tweets.

Since I’m no Conan O’Brien, and it wouldn’t matter to the world who I followed on Twitter, I would follow someone I admire or someone I can learn a lot from.

The answer should probably be Barack Obama. It seems that he is writing his own tweets, and he is doing a very important job. He really is, and it’s interesting to follow every move he makes. But, I can read that somewhere else. I really wanted the person to be him or Dalai Lama, but they have no dialogue on Twitter.

So, it’s got to be different.

The answer is Shaquille O’Neal also known as THE REAL SHAQ. He’s writing his own tweets, he’s funny, he replies, he retweets, he is awesome when it comes to using twitter. I can learn a lot from him, not just when it comes to playing basketball. So, Mr. O’Neal it is.

It’s important to me that the one person to follow is not just using Twitter to tweet news, but that he or she is using Twitter the right way.

What do you think, who would your one person to follow be?

I signed up for Twitter on the 28th of October 2007, but didn’t understand what it was all about or why I should be using it. So, I quit after just a few days. It took more than a year before I visited Twitter again, and decided to try it once more.

I started out sending a few tweets a day, and some days I didn’t tweet at all. I wasn’t looking for people to follow, and I didn’t use Twitter in order to drive traffic at all. I only used Twitter to tell a few friends what I was doing, nothing exciting at all. No one was reading my tweets, and I didn’t use it for communication.

It all changed in June 2009.

I bought TweetAdder back in June 2009, probably as one of the first people.

I received a message about the software, it was fairly cheap, and it looked interesting. Since then, I have been using it a lot, close to every single day.

… and I’m still using it.

Let me tell you why.

Finding people to follow

At first, before I reached more than 12.000 followers, I used TweetAdder on a daily basis to find targeted people to follow. I was looking for people with the same interests as me, in order for me to connect with them and share tweets. This is really easy with TweetAdder. I searched for keywords in people’s tweets, and keywords in their profiles. If the keywords matched my interests, I added them to the list of people to follow.

I could have followed people based on their location as well. That would be more interesting if I was selling something locally, for instance if I was managing a restaurant. Then, I could follow all the people using Twitter in a 20 miles radius.

One click follow

Once I had found and added people with like-minded interests to the TweetAdder database, it was just one click in order to follow them. One click, and I could concentrate on something else. I didn’t have to look at all, I didn’t have to be at the computer. I could do the dishes, watch tv or whatever.

I don’t use TweetAdder as much when it comes to follow new people, that’s because I have more than 12.000 targeted followers, and I am not as concerned about new followers anymore.

One click follow back

When people follow me, I follow them back. I know a lot of people are spending time to look at their profiles and finding out if their worth following. I don’t. I follow all the people who are following me. I use Twitter lists and Twitter search in order to follow the conversations I’m interested in. So, there are no problems at all related to who I’m following.

Once a day, I log in to TweetAdder in order to follow back all the people who have followed me during the past 24 hours. I watch the number of people to follow back, then, just click a button, and that’s it.

One click unfollow

I am one of those guys who’d like to follow people who are following me. I understand that some of the most well-known people don’t follow people like me, although I don’t understand why. I follow a few of them, just to keep track of what they’re doing. But to all the other people, if you’re not following me, I’ll unfollow you.

I unfollow people by using TweetAdder once a day. I log in, watch the number of unfollowers for the past 24 hours, and then, I click on a single button.

Schedule tweets

I live in Norway, most of my followers live in the United States or Asia. This means that when I’m awake, many of the people who are following me are sleeping or doing something else other than tweeting. In order to get people’s attention on Twitter, you need to make your tweets show up in their timelines when they’re looking at it.

Every day, I schedule a few tweets to appear when I’m away from the computer.

Configuration

When I first bought TweetAdder, I didn’t use more than five minutes to configure it. I added my Twitter account and how many people to unfollow each day, how many people to follow each day, and how many people to follow and unfollow in a single click.

I never ever follow more than 200 people each day. If you follow more, I believe that you can get into trouble with the people at Twitter. You could follow thousands of people every single day by using TweetAdder, but by doing so, your account would be suspended in a few days.

Thanks to TweetAdder, I have more than 12.000 targeted followers.