11 November 2011
Tips and tools on how to grow your Twitter following to any size you want.

This is a question many new Twitter users struggle with. They see all these big accounts with 20, 50 or even 100K followers and wonder how did they ever get there?

Today we will give you some tips and tools on how to grow your following steadily and we’ll also make sure that you stay within the Twitter guidelines to avoid account suspension. There are certain practices that are not allowed and the last thing you want is to get your account suspended after you worked hard to get a decent following.

Quality or quantity?

This is the first thing you have to ask yourself. Do you want a small group of followers where you can easily keep track of the timeline and interact with everybody or do you want to grow as big as possible and utilize Twitter lists to keep up with the tweets you care about?
If you have a Twitter account for personal use the first option will probably work best for you. If you have any commercial aspirations and would like to promote your brand or business to the world market your goal will be to reach as many potential clients as possible. Growing your Twitter following is an easy and low cost method to promote your business or brand worldwide.

Tools of the trade

These are a few tools we use to manage our account. There are many more tools out there but today we will stick to the tools that work for us.

Friend or Follow
Simply enter your user name and it will show you who isn’t following back, who is a fan and mutual followings.
If you connect with Twitter it will also give you the option to follow or unfollow users.

Manageflitter
Similar to friendorfollow but more advanced and it can filter your account for a variety of stats such as users without a profile image or users that are quiet or tweet a lot. There is a pro upgrade available but the basic mode has all the features an average user will need.

Social Oomph
When your account starts to grow exponentially it becomes hard to keep track of all your new followers. If you want set up a welcome message for all your new followers this is the tool to use. You can set up an auto DM and welcome new followers. DO NOT add a link to that message because that’s what everybody is doing and will only tick people off. Come up with something creative and original within the 140 character limit.
There are also features that will allow you to auto tweet status updates but that is NOT done as you should keep it real on Twitter, more about this at the end of this blog post.

Twiends
Fun and addictive would be the best way to describe this tool! You can actually use this to grow your stats on Twitter, Facebook, Website and YouTube. You can earn credits for connecting with other Twiends users and use those credits to let others connect with you. Sort of like a marketplace. You can even tweak your setting to get higher quality followers and there is an option to buy credits if you don’t have the time to earn credits manually.

Twellow
If you want to find followers in a specific geographical area or category this is the tool for you. It lets you search for users per city or from a directory of categories. This is great if you have a local business and you want to connect with all the Twitter users in your city for example. You can also follow and unfollow within this tool.

Now how do I get followers?

All the above tools will help you to manage the new followers as your account starts to grow. Obtaining new followers can be done in many ways.

Follow users from follow back lists. Many users have created lists consisting of people that returned the follow so there is a good chance those users will follow you as well if you start to follow them.
Just Google: "follow back list twitter".

Use the Twellow tool to find users in your niche or city and connect with them.

Add Twitter links to your website, blog and email signature if you use one.

Use the Twiends tool to get new followers.

As your new followers start to roll in it’s time to use the account management tools such friendorfollow and manageflitter. Find out who followed you back and who didn’t. You can also unfollow people that didn’t return the follow if you wish but DO NOT mass unfollow people or unfollow those who did return the follow. These are bad practices that could get your account suspended. We’re not celebrities that have 500K followers and only follow 10 users back. Your account should have a healthy follower ratio.
Remember that you can only follow 10% more than your follower count when you pass the 2000 follower mark. Example: 3000 followers will allow you to follow 3300 users.

Keeping it real

This is what it’s all about. It’s alright to try and get a large following but don’t do any of the following:

Don’t spam your product link over and over again.

Don’t use auto tweet tools expect for a meaningful auto DM perhaps.

Don’t mass follow and unfollow since this could get your account suspended.

Don’t unfollow those who return the follow just to make yourself look more popular.

If you stick to these guidelines and use the above tools you can easily grow your following to any size you want.