#1 Follow others – nobody will know you exist until you follow them. You can stop following them later if their Tweets are annoying or off-color

#2 Follow back – etiquette says that if someone follows you on Twitter you should follow back. This may not happen with the Twitter Whales of the world like @dooce and @theonion but that is because they can’t and wouldn’t be able to reply to all the direct messages that would be coming to them. (You can only DM somone that is following you back.)

#3 Follow 200-400 people a day until you are following 2000 people – Stop at 200 because Twitter requires a percentage of followers to follow you back. If they don’t Twitter assumes your activity may be suspicious (or spam) and may shut off your account.

#4 Un-Follow people who don’t follow back – unless you are really interested in another persons tweets, you may consider un-following someone that doesn’t follow back until you get about 2000 followers.

#5 Follow people that RT (retweet) – this will guarantee that you have a following that will spread word and market your business if you are twittering for marketing purposes

#6 Follow people that are in your geographic area – especially if your business is about gaining local business you may want to follow other businesses that are local or search Twitter for cities or county’s you service

#7 Follow the followers of a whale – If you know a large business that has a large Twitter following and you would wan the same customers you may want to follow the people that follow them to gain access to their viewers.

#8 Use auto follow software – to make life easier following a lot of Twitterers you may consider using software to help

#9 Use software that DM’s people automatically like social oomph after they follow you

#10 Create a nice DM for all your new followers and include a link that will take them to your website or an article of yours

#11 Use a tool like Tweet Deck or Twhirl to follow what is happening on Twitter.

#12 If someone doesn’t follow you back you can unfollow them. (To see who is following you check to see if you can send them a DM (direct message). You can only DM a follower.

Good luck and have fun in the Twitter Sphere. It’s a new world that will make sense to you real soon.

If you plan on building a followers list quickly here are a few things to consider before you start going crazy with Twitter.

Tip #1  Make your Tweets informative

First of all, when you open your account you will need to Twitter on your account first before you start following. It is good to get about 20 tweets out there to let people know what kind of things you will be twittering about. A good tweet from a newbie is usually retweeting other people that you like or possibly sending out links to popular articles on the web or articles of your own if you will be writing articles and posting on the web.

Tip #2 Make them short

Twitter gives you 140 characters to write a tweet and that’s not much. I will say make sure you write your tweet in 120 characters or less. Remember, people will be reading these on their phones and at work. They don’t have time to try and understand what you are trying to say. You are only writing headlines for a link.

Tip #3 Know your audience

If you are building your follower list be focused. You will want to RT (retweet) articles that focus on your audience. If you sell IT, send out usefull articles and tips that would interest your clients or peers. ANd it never hurts to e intersting and funny.

Tip #4 Remember, this is just SEO

When you are building a list it is like everything else you do for SEO. It’s not rocket science. Take a little and effort to get a good follower list that is focused on your market. It will give you credibility and it will also give your readers a list of valuable followers to follow.

Bottom line, get a list built. Don’t do it too quickly and when you have questions on what to do next consider reading the article on Tips to Get Twollowers.

The hottest thing in social media is, and probably will be for a while, Twitter. It is a really cool tool that doesn’t make much sense to people, so i will try to make sense of it for you. Now take to heart that seeing is believing, so you will probably need to try this to believe it, I did and have seen it work. It’s funny, before you try it you will probably be asking the same 2 things as everyone else that has not tried Twitter for themselves, who cares what I’m thinking and who is watching that matters? And in all honesty, those are 2 great questions. They are the basics of why Twitter works. Let’s address each one at a time and then I will tell you what to do to get more followers.

Tip #1 to learn – If you aren’t doing it you aren’t making money from it.

Who Cares? – The most basic answer is nobody. The better answer is – people that don’t know you and nobody if you never try it. The world is your oyster and Twitter is the the ocean. There are more than 2 million people and companies on Twitter. If it didn’t work the largest companies in the world like the Big 3 wouldn’t be spending money on it. So if you aren’t on it, nobody outside your social sphere of influence will ever know about you or your business.

Tip #2  This world is built off of luck, who you know, and extra effort.

Who’s watching that matters? Same answer… nobody is watching full time, but this isn’t about who has the time to constantly watch tweets on Twitter. It is about being on Twitter at peak times (5 am-9am PST and 5-6pm PST) the start and end of work day and meeting one extra person per day that you wouldn’t have met otherwise.

Twitter is another social world of people where you can access people you don’t know and market to them or just talk to them to learn from their experiences  and you won’t fully understand it until you take the time to experience it. But I think we have all forgotten that a large portion of  Twitter is about learning from others experiences. It is an amazing source of popular articles and the ultimate source for learning about current events – while it is happening. I watched Michael Jackson go from assumed deceased to officially deceased live through Twitter. This isn’t something great to mention, but it is something I won’t forget.

Twitter is a game of luck and increasing your chances. Twitter is being there to respond to them. Twitter is teaching the world at an exponential pace. And Twitter is more about giving back than selling.  Nobody can guarantee that Twitter will work for your company, but just like in Texas Hold-Em, if you never stay in to see the flop you will never have a chance to win a hand.