7 Ways to Build Organic Twitter Followers by Since the dawn of the most recent Google update, it's been inevitable that a lot of people are looking to get traffic and website visitors from places like Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest. We have all seen people go to places like fiverr.com to purchase Twitter followers and the like, but have seen few results. Building a Twitter following takes time, patience, and a plan - just like building your rankings on Google. These "purchased Twitter followers" that you can buy are simply garbage, most of them are fake accounts, the rest are people with 10k followers or higher that approve everyone, and are only in it for themselves. The target here is to obtain as many targeted followers as possible, why? Because the more followers you have the more people that will hear your message. If you are selling a product, it is that many more people that will be an audience for your latest pitch. Imagine owning a company with the latest gadget for hair removal and having 300k targeted female followers. Your product costs $29, even at a 1% conversion rate you could bring in $87,000 in revenue. It sounds extreme but it is not. I've seen some people get some really solid traffic from Twitter. I've seen people ruin some ones reputation over Twitter and I've heard stories of people making tens of thousands of dollars from one Tweet. Twitter is a powerful social media platform that is one of the top internet sites for a reason. Many people have doubts about their capabilities, but I know week after week when I check the server logs and see website visits from "twitter.com" - we are on to something. The good thing about Twitter is that you can find like-minded users - so if own a carpet cleaning company for instance, you can engage with other webmasters and seek opportunities like guest posting on their blogs, sharing tips, exchanging links, and even sending out a retweet to their followers for double the effectiveness. There is little to no instant gratification involved with building a Twitter following, this is something that happens over time, and you need to dedicate yourself to this. Start by making twitter.com your homepage when you start your internet browser so you are committed to using Twitter ever time you log in. If you find that too invasive, put a shortcut on your desktop or on your browser toolbar. Another way to begin to train yourself is if you have a smartphone, install the Twitter App and put it on your home screen. In addition to being a great time waster, it is a great way to get some "work done" on Twitter while you are waiting for appointments, on the bus, etc. Without further delay, here are some tips to get you started in your Twitter journey: 1. Log into your account and make sure all of the details are filled out in their entirety. Try to pick a catchy and relevant screen name that will attract people in your demographic. Design a great profile, this is done by choosing a great logo and a cool background. If people stop by and see a default Twitter theme, they usually make the assumption that you do not care about your Twitter profile, and move on. The background is really key – Twitter allows you a lot more flexibility than Facebook with images, i.e. less restrictions on what the images actually are. A nice 200px wide stripe with a tag line, advertisement, or picture is currently what is working well. Putting a great call to action is also a great way to drive traffic to your website or whatever else you are doing. If your Twitter following is not really that techie, you might want to include some tips or instructions built into your page (the background) to show them how to send a tweet, add as follower, etc. With demographics that are less savvy, it is a good idea to make an informative background that will assist them with walking through the Twitter process, this will help improve conversion rates, just like on a website. A few other tips to put into your Twitter background is to:  Insert your phone number  Display other social media addresses (Facebook/Youtube)  Maintain brand consistency between your brand (or your company’s brand) and the Twitter background 2. Locate the other companies, organizations, and people in your business category. Make use of the Twitter search function, Google, Facebook, to track these people down and save them to notepad or something. Once you’ve found all of their Twitter page, the best thing you can do is go into their followers and follow them. Follow as many people as possible. If you want to get extremely targeted, find 30 people per day that mention your industry within their profile, these are the best you can get. Don’t bother to follow the private profiles and don’t follow the people that have an empty profile or an “egg” next to it – which means they do not have their Twitter profile filled out yet. The goal here is to follow people that are actively using Twitter, not people who have not filled out their profiles. Look into people that have a lot of followers and if you can see if they have a lot of activity. The goal is much like real life is to get as many people to link up with you as possible, to not only use to your advantage, but also offer information, and a platform for them to use as well. I don’t know about you, but I’ve gotten several great pieces of news from Twitter in the past. 2 3. Rules you should know about. Yes, there are rules - if you want to stay in this game more than a few weeks and not get a banned account or worse - annoy your fellow followers, follow these simple rules.  In the beginning you can follow up to 2000 people  After that, you can follow 1000 people per day  After a certain point, you cannot follow more than 10% of the people that follow you, this is a good thing. Make sense?  You can get cheezy and say something like "Hey guy's I am trying to build my twitter following, please follow me" but it is not recommended.  After a week or so, start unfollowing the people that are not following you. Kill out all the dead weight. 4. Depending on the niche that you are in, you will see less than half of the people that you followed will follow you back. In my niche, internet marketing we see about 75% sometimes, because we all know the deal. Other industries like entertainment you will see 1% or less. Celebrities don't follow people they only get followers. 5. Begin to build relationships with people. Start to send out Tweets regarding anything that is currently going on. Don't be afraid to be edgy, this is what attracts people. Go against the norm. Don't just repost a news story...BORING! Post your twist on a news story. Post your opinion on the latest Google update, Tweet about what is going on at school. People will go to cnn.com for news, they want to hear your opinion. There are a few ways to automate all of this such as HootSuite. I personally like Hootsuite for a few reasons:     You You You You can can can can link several social media accounts together automate your tweets schedule tweets/posts mass upload from a file 6. To be clear, I think it is a terrible way to "do Twitter" to automate all of your posts. Automating your posts is only good for a few random catchy phrases, it is great for Happy Birthdays and if you manage to pull this off for 200 users or more let me know and you will have my respect. It is also good just for overall organization of accounts. At Elite Strategies, we manage hundreds of social media accounts on a daily basis, and could not do it without a program like this. We have our own internally developed program similar to this, but we recommend this for the average user. 3 7. Link Twitter to your website. Make sure you have all of the widgetry that everyone else does and encourage the use of it. There are die hard Twitter fans and if they know you are a big Tweeter than they will follow you loyally. Link everything together, link your Facebook Page to you Twitter page and vice-versa. Everytime you make a Facebook wall post, it will be tweeted, and vice-versa. Why post to your 1000 followers when you can post to your followers and your 500 Facebook Friends? We've built accounts with over 100k followers in a few months, if you are active every day with Twitter you will be a success. Tips If you absolutely must give into temptation, use a service like Twiends to get your started. Twiends is a "free" service where you can buy seeds (yes I know, total contradiction but I believe you can use it for free somehow.) and add Twitter followers fast. This is a good way to build sort of a reputation to your account in the beginning so you do not look like you are unpopular, etc. Make sure you continue to make Tweets while you are adding followers, it is important for people to see activity on your accounts. This is not a race, build users slowly and you will be rewarded. Warning If you are tempted to use ulta-black hat software such as Tweet Attacks Pro, let us caution you. Software like this uses extremely high server resources, is very annoying to the Twitter community, and ultimately will get your Twitter account banned. There are not shortcuts in life, and none on the internet either. Any success that comes easily will most likely be short lived. Resources: Twitter - www.twitter.com HootSuite - www.hootsuite.com Twiends - www.twiends.com 4