I got called in to substitute teach another social media class this week at BCIT. One of their assignments is to amass a certain amount of followers on several different social networks. I thought I’d compile a list of some ways that you can gain Twitter followers for them, and then I thought I’d share it with you lovely folks at home too.

1. Always Give Value. The number one thing that will amass you followers is if people think you are worth following. And people will think you are worth following if you tweet something that is valuable. This could be links, it could be entertainment, it could be useful or provoking conversations, but please, please, please, do NOT tweet about the ham sandwich you had for lunch (unless you are a food critic).
2. Fully complete your profile and bio. I am a pretty hardcore Twitterer, and I won’t follow anyone that doesn’t have a proper profile picture. If you are an egg, I will not follow you. I also very seldom follow back people that haven’t bothered to fill out their bio, because I want assurance that the person is a real, living, breathing person, and not a spambot. And additionally, that we have some things in common, and that I’ll get some value from them. Make sure that your bio is a mix of both personal and professional, because you never know what people will connect with you on.
3. Create a custom Twitter Background. It makes you look more professional and legitimate.
4. Put your Twitter handle in your outgoing email signature. And hyperlink it.
5. Create a “Follow Me on Twitter” badge for your website or blog. Sure, you could use a widget to import your Twitter RSS feed into the sidebar of your blog, but that just means that people can see what you are tweeting, and they may not be able to find your username to follow you from that method. Make it stupid easy. Twitter walks you through the process of doing that here, but I find the results to be underwhelming. This video I made shows you a different method with a bit more “pop.”
6. Include your Twitter feed’s URL on your Facebook Info page. If you have a business page on Facebook, add an app like Tweets to Pages that imports your Twitter feed to a separate page (because I don’t recommend auto-posting your tweets to your Facebook page) and also allows people to Follow you on Twitter from your Facebook page.
7. Install Tweet Meme on your blog. This allows anyone who reads one of your posts to tweet it out to their followers. There’s a good chance some of those people will start following you if they like what you have to say.
8. Participate in Follow Friday. Every Friday, heaps of Tweeps endorse other Tweeps by tweeting their twitter handle along with the hashtag #FF. It’s basically like referring or endorsing another twitterer whose tweets you find really valuable. Often what happens is, if you #FF someone, they will #FF you back.

You can follow me on Twitter @RebeccaColeman