Wanna get multiple followers and reap huge rewards from Twitter?

Then use Twitter. (@sidfilmz )

After one casual Fri. night at the bars, I skated home to rip a bowl and hop on the web for a quick session of YouTube, FaceBook, Twitter, and porn.  Well, this particular evening turned out different than others, because I never got to the porn.  This time, I went to Twitter first, and by this point, I'd been Tweeting for about 2-3 months, off & on.  I'd amassed a good 50+ followers (enough to start making some scrilla $$ off Twitter Ads, baby!), but not anything to really brag about yet.  And I my main goal wasn't to plug my Twitter feed full of ads, as opposed to many of those marketing shemps out there. I wanted to keep my incoming feed as well as my outgoing feed clean and concise.

I especially didn't want to turn people off that wanted to follow my wit and wisdoms and occasional web tricks and/or quests for help by filling my own twitter feed w/ ads.  I only planned on advertising w/ links to stuff I'd actually want to check out for myself.  Needless to say, I posted few ad links, and was still conscious of the fact that the more followers I had, the higher was the likelihood that I'd actually get enough clicks on some of these ads to make some straight up mad scrilla $$. 

This is all it takes, gentlemen.

So this night, I started browsing my followers and followees pages and began re-tweeting shit and @replying my twigga's, but only when it felt worth it.  I already had to un-follow a few folks who just tweeted too damn much they overpowerd my home feed.  For every tweet that mattered, 12,000 or so were lame as hell. So I was selective with mine and probably tweeted about 6 messages in 1/2 hour to 45 minutes (a new record). In this time, I also added about 3 or 4 new follows.  2 of these follows in particular were from link-throughs to new users who were just interesting enough I had to @ or RT them and follow at the same time. 

In this same amount of time, 1/2 hour to 45 minutes, I received 23 new followers!  Just for being active in the community and being seen by other twittizens who happened to be keen to what I was in on.  Seriously.  I sent a couple of tweets, and then went to write an email.  As my mailbox loaded, there were 5 new messages of new twitter followers.  So, I never wrote my email, still haven't, because I thought, "Damn, where did these guys come from?"  I clicked through and checked 'em out.  Well, 4 were marketing twitheads, and 1 was a good web designer.  I like good web designers, because I wish I was one. I'm a cool web designer, because I don't suck, and I'm great to work with, but for the most part, I know how to make a website work, but the actual design is my weak point.  I'll hack a template any day rather than try to create an Andy Warhol web design out of thin air.  If you don't have your own design already, I hope you like things simple.  But I digress.

So, I've got 5 new sidfilmz twit junkies, and 1 of them is worth following back.  I know this person is worth following, because one of her tweets was so good, I RT'd it w/ an @, so that she got hyped in a public feed.  After sending that tweet, I browsed a couple of this person's twitter pals, and a few of my own and ended up dropping a couple more tweets, then went back to send that email I meant to get out.  Well, before I could open a window to type my email, I got notice of 5 more new Twitter followers.  Hells yeah!  Again, 4 were straight marketing punks, although 1 of them had an interesting link about 2 or 3 pages into his feed, but not interesting enough to follow.

I don't mind marketing on your Twitter, I mean that's one reason I'm stoked to get more followers, because I may drop a few ad tweets and collect some mad scrilla $$, baby!  Plus I'm all about hyping new websites for clients to get stronger feedback.  But I'm not gonna overdue it w/ ads and promotion.  If every tweet a person has is exactly the perfect length for a tweet w/ a hyperlink at the end - and every single one has a hyperlink at the end - screw them.  They are too conceded, and not "community active." But thanks for the follow! 

Odds are, if 8 out of 10 new followers are marketers, then I don't care 8 out of 10 times I might post an ad tweet. And aside from personal and sidfilmz.com promotionals, I still don't ad tweet more that 2 out of every 20 or so tweets.  That's plenty for me.  I'm from the school of quality clicks, not quantity.  So I only want to hype an ad click that someone is interested in that may have also influenced a cool CSS style trick that I would've never thought of if not following them.  And likely, I'm gonna hype that follower/followee more often than I'm gonna advertise to them, otherwise I wouldn't have followed 'em in the first place. 

And here's what I'm getting at.  If you want to capitalize on Twitter, use Twitter. That's all there is to it. There really is no secret, no matter how many marketers will tell you there is.  Those marketers only have the insight as far as seeing how someone else got awesome exposure, and trying to make a method out of it.  The method is simple: if you have anything relevant to say about anything, then link to people and say it.  That's all.  If you are active, you will search for people on Twitter that are in to your sort of thing, and start following the good ones.  I look for web designers, web app and script library authors, Oregon politics, underground music, indy film, and the cannabis de-criminalization movement.  Once I started following a few people in these categories, I could scan my home feed and see really how often their tweets were relevant and enlightening.  A new JQuery plugin? Whattup @jquery !  That tweet alone could net me 3-5 new follows easily.  A "Whattup" to just a regular buddy, maybe not as likely.  A "Whattup" to @algore or @dickcheney may net even more.   

But the likelihood of getting any followers from an @tweet has all to do with how involved you already are with that and similar topics.  With a good enough tweet, someone may click on your name to check you out. If nothing else you've ever said bears any relation to the tweet that led them to you, sorry homeboy, you lose.  But, if it's a topic you've twittered in the past, chances are this potential follower may actually give a shit about what you've got to say in the future and therefore will reward you with a follow.

So maybe you aren't going to get 2000 followers a day, but you'll start to get quality followers.  Followers who actually care what you're tweeting about and will more likely click on a link that you provide, either out of curiosity or to help you out. And isn't that what you really want?  Each time I went from Twitter to email, I had new followers.  Once I took a break from Twitter, the following straggled off, but even while writing this article, I posted a quick RT w/ @ and got 3 new followers. The only way to fail at Twitter is to ignore it.  If you're in it, you'll win it. Just play the game.