4 Ways to Increase Your Twitter Following the Right Way

Ben Sarma {@bensarma} is the man in the photo to the right. Not Shirley Blackburn. Not Shanie Duff. Ben Sarma. But for some reason, Ben’s photo appears on the profiles of at least five Twitter accounts following presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

In the latest of communications faux pas committed by the Romney campaign, 140elect.com’s Zach Green noticed two sizable jumps in Romney’s Twitter following. And when I say sizable, I mean the account gained more than 140,000 followers in just three days when it normally gets about 3,000-4,000 new followers a day.

Though the campaign’s Digital Director Zac Moffatt insists that claims they purchased followers is untrue, the situation still appears fishy and dishonest.

Even if the campaign did buy Twitter followers, they wouldn’t be the first. There are even a host of services out there that feed this need for a boost in Twitter followings.

So why are we so obsessed with the amount of followers we have? Perhaps it makes us look more interesting, or like our company has more clients and connections, or like our brand is more popular than it really is.

We really should be focusing less on the number of followers and more on the quality of these followers. Your goal should be getting people to follow you who will most likely consume your content and later move to your website for content, information and/or for a purchase.

How do you find these followers? Start with the following:

People with interesting or related content—What kinds of content make you click links on Twitter? What blogs do you enjoy reading? Who generates this content? Find and follow these people on Twitter. Also, check out who else follows them. Most likely, these are people who’d enjoy your content as well—that is if it’s interesting and/or related.

People you admire—Who are the superstars in your industry? Who are the thought leaders? Follow these people.  Share and reply to their tweets.

People you meet in real life—When you’re attending network events, check to see if any interesting people you met are active on Twitter.

People you hear speak—If you sat and listened to these people talk for at least 30 minutes and didn’t fall asleep or get distracted, then you’re definitely interested in what they have to say. Follow them on Twitter and digest their content in smaller bites.

When you follow these people, they’ll most likely follow you back—especially if you interact with them enough. Also, continue to create content yourself and share it in the Twitter space. As this content is shared, you should see an uptick in your following. Remember, building community takes time and there are no quick fixes.

The sad part about the #MoreFakeMitt situation is that the campaign’s Twitter account already had 800,000 followers. It would’ve made more sense to segment this group by demographics and engage and share content that would get them talking and thinking about Romney and his platform.