If you work online for at least part of your income, whether it’s through affiliate marketing, list building, promoting your own product, or building a following for a brand, a large, active following on Twitter is essential.
It takes time to build a high-quality follower base on Twitter. You need to seek people who actively tweet within your niche and follow them. Twitter etiquette then requires the person you follow to follow you back – then everyone is happy. If you want to build your following in weeks instead of months, however, this is a poor approach.
It is not hard to find people who will sell you Twitter followers. Several online freelance sites have people who can quickly deliver followers in large numbers for a few dollars. But gaining followers like that brings several problems.
First, are there real people behind these accounts? If you hope to market to your followers or generate interest in a product, it does no good to send tweets to a shell account.
Secondly, if they are real, do they care about what you are saying? Random followers may make your numbers look impressive, but there is little point in buying a lot of followers who couldn’t care less about your tweets.
Thirdly, Twitter looks askance at accounts that are highly unbalanced. A “normal” Twitter user builds followers organically, over time, by following people they are truly interested in and receiving followers the same way. Therefore, most “normal” Twitter accounts have a list of followers and followed that is roughly balanced. When you get a thousand or more followers delivered in 24 hours without an equivalent number of follows, your account is clearly indicating you are trying to “game” Twitter.
There is a much better approach that allows you to quickly and efficiently build a large, balanced and targeted follower base.
It hinges on an online tool called Tweepi.com. Once you have a Tweepi account and have linked it to your Twitter account, Tweepi allows you to mass-follow the followers of anyone else on Twitter.
Confusing? Let me give you an example: You are trying to establish yourself online in the women’s health and beauty niche. You have a new Twitter account, have followed a few leaders in that niche and have a few followers in return. Set up an account on Tweepi. You can pay for an account, but I do this on the free account and it works well.
Identify the top movers in your niche. If you don’t know who they are, do an Internet search for something like: “Top health and beauty gurus.” Cross check with another term such as “Women’s health and beauty industry leaders.” You can search for the top bloggers, the top affiliates and so on.
Once you have identified five or six “movers,” find their Twitter handles. Search the name of each person or business on your list along with the term “Tweet” or “Twitter.” You’re bound to see their handle in many of the returns. It will look like: @PersonsTwitterHandle.
Now, in your Tweepi dashboard, click on the “follow followers” button. Once you put the person’s or business’ Twitter handle in the box, you will see pages and pages of followers.
Here’s the value in this: The reason people are following this leader in your niche is most likely because they are interested in what that person or retailer is saying and offering. If you are saying and offering something similar, they will be interested in you as well.
Currently, the free account on Tweepi allows you to select up to 40 followers per page and follow them with one click. You can check the box next to the top person on the list and shift-check the box next to the bottom person, and all the 38 in between will fill in as well. Then click “Follow” and zap, you’re immediately following 40 of your target’s followers. Go to the next page and do the same. Repeat as much as you like.
Tweepi will eventually prevent you from using its service due to your account’s imbalance between follows and followers. That’s no problem, however. You will fix that in the next step. Meanwhile, you have just followed hundreds of real people who are interested in your niche.
The fun starts as you watch the reciprocal followers come in over the next 24 hours. Twitter etiquette demands those you followed will follow you back. Not all, but many, will do so. Once the follower stream begins to slow up, it’s time to unfollow.
Go back into your Tweepi account and click the “Flush” button for a list of all the people you followed who are not following you. Using the same process as before, select 40 people page by page and click the “Unfollow” button. Doing this brings your account into better balance. After you’ve unfollowed a certain number of people, you will be able to pick up where you left off: following more of your target person’s or business’ followers.
If you practice this routine every day, you will have a constant stream of high quality followers adding themselves to your account. Literally, you can easily have a thousand or more in a week. When you have a large group of real, targeted, high-quality followers, you can depend on a great response to your tweets.
