How to get more followers on Twitter

I can already feel the pain from the amount of time I'm going to have to devote to removing spam comments from this post. But so many people have asked me for ideas about how to boost their followers, I felt I really HAD to write it. So all of you, you owe me a large glass of Merlot. Yes, each and every one of you! I'll need it to keep me hydrated while  weeding out the spammy comments.

The problem with being a comper on Twitter is that you need to follow the promoters running the competitions. But that means you will soon find you can't follow anybody else. Twitter allows you to follow 2,000 people or 10% more than follow you, whichever is the higher figure. You can soon find your head bumping against that 2,000 ceiling.

When you reach a point where you are not allowed to follow any more people, the first thing to do is see how many you can reasonably unfollow. I  gave lots of tips about this in my article "Getting round Twitter's following limit"  As well as Twit Cleaner, mentioned in that article and  still my favourite, a newer service called Manage Flitter will also help you to identify who to unfollow.

But if the pruning is all complete, you have streamlined your life with lists and  you STILL can't follow any more people, your only option is to get more followers. At this point you may be tempted by the "Get more followers" ads you see, or even have tweeted to you. DON'T DO IT! The followers you will get if you join one of these schemes will be bot accounts, created solely for the purpose of boosting follower numbers. They can  be suspended or deleted by Twitter at any time, or worse still used for sending you copious amounts of spam, advertising other dubious services. And if your account has large numbers of fake followers, you may find Twitter flags it up as a poor quality account, which in turn means your tweets won't show up in Twitter search, reducing your chance of winning competitions.

So how DO you get more followers?

First of all, make yourself human. People want to know who they are talking to, so make sure your name shows on your Twitter account, fill in your bio - a few words will do, but make them something about YOU - and have a recognisable avatar. Your own face is ideal, but if you are shy, a pet or a photo of the thing you currently most want to win  will help to personalise your profile.

Next, talk to people. Don't use your Twitter account just for entering competitions - chat to other compers or to anyone else you notice on Twitter. If you see a conversation between other people, it's fine to join in. Twitter etiquette doesn't demand that you keep quiet until it's your turn to speak. If you engage somebody in conversation and they like what you say, they are likely to follow you.

However don't get drawn into arguments. In arguments, people take sides, and if people perceive you to be on the "wrong" side they won't follow you.

Say interesting things. Not necessarily directly to anyone, just as general tweets. If there's a trending topic or hashtag, make an insightful and/or witty comment about it. people may pick up on it and follow you. You'd be surprised what interests people. My follower count jumps every time I mention my "ear worms" - the tunes that get stuck in my head. (In case  you were wondering, right now it's the old Morecambe and Wise theme song "Bring me Sunshine")

A really great way for a  comper to boost their followers is to run a competition. You don't need to fork out for a big prize - how about that unopened  DVD that you won last week but don't really fancy watching? Or if you don't have an unused and unwanted prize to hand, what about a £10 Amazon gift voucher? Make following you a condition of the competition, and ask a few compers with lots of followers to give your competition a shout out, and watch your follower numbers soar! I'm always happy to help out with a retweet if you tweet to me.

Now here's a really sneaky way to boost your follower count. A real nuisance on Twitter is the number of spam tweets you receive, and we all have different ways of dealing with them (those of you who follow me and have seen my current way might be chuckling now). The majority of the spammers who tweet you or follow you are bots, fake accounts set up just for that purpose. However if you look at their profiles, you will almost certainly see that they have some followers. A typical spam-bot may be following 1,999 people and yet have 15 or 20 followers. Who on earth would want to follow a spam bot? Well, some people have set up their accounts to automatically follow back everyone who follows them. The people following the spam bots must have systems like that - so if you work your way through the spa bot's list of followers and follow them all, there's a strong chance that most of them will follow you back! Then all you need to do is unfollow them which they probably won't notice and you have your extra followers. It's one of the ways spammers work - why not get your own back by making it work for you too?

Finally, once you've got those new followers, you want to keep them. Have a look at this great April Fool prank article about how to get more Twitter followers  and check your own behaviour on Twitter to make sure you don't do any of the things on the list!