How to win Twitter followers and influence people

People often ask, "How do I gain more Twitter followers?" Ars offers six Twitter etiquette tips to help you gain those followers without having resorting to dirty tactics or annoying habits.

1) Fill out your bio

It doesn't matter if you're not someone "important"—think of a line or two that describes who you are and what you do and stick it in there. Be clear about it, too—get overly mysterious or snarky and you may as well have not written anything, at least from the casual observer's perspective.

"I develop Mac software for [company]," or "I'm a writer for [publication]," or "Professional call center lackey, amateur guitarist" are all decent bios that quickly tell strangers who you are and why they might care about following you.

2) Be yourself

Yes, it's old advice, but that doesn't make it any less true. Twitter users appreciate it when you simply say the things you want to say, the way you want to say them. Don't waste time trying to think of the funniest possible way to say something—people can smell desperation a mile away—and don't try to make yourself sound smarter or wittier than you are. The Twitter community is largely made up of people who just like conversing with others; they want to follow real people, not the shell of the person you might awkwardly be trying to fake.

That said, everything else I'm about to write seems to go against this point. The important part is to find a balance.

3) Engage in @ replies, but don't go overboard on @ replies

Twitter users love to feel like you're noticing what they say and find it compelling enough to engage in a brief back and forth every so often. If you come off as a friendly individual who chit-chats once in a while with followers, more people will feel like you're a welcoming person to follow. This is especially important as you gain more followers; even though it's the Internet, people sometimes feel intimidated and lost in the crowd if they're one of thousands of people following your tweets. Throw them a bone and reply back to them when they @ reply you, or pay attention to things people say and comment on them.

At the same time, don't @ reply to every single person on the face of the earth. If too much of your Twitter stream is made up of @ replies, new people have little motivation to follow you. They're not interested in reading your ongoing personal conversations with all 300 of your best friends; they want to follow you because of the interesting things you have to say about what you're doing.

Think of it this way: when strangers go to your Twitter page and see an entire page of @ replies about obscure stuff that they couldn't understand unless they followed all of those other people, why would they follow you? (Yes, some Twitter clients—and the web client—let you block out @ replies to people you don't already follow, but the majority of Twitter users still make use of the Web client and/or SMS updates.)

4) Come to think of it, don't go overboard on anything

Tweeting about how your dog scared itself with its own fart is funny the first time, not the 62nd time.

5) If you have nothing to say, don't

No one expects you to force yourself to tweet just for the sake of tweeting if nothing is popping into your head naturally. Your followers will thank you for not doing so.

6) Don't give yourself an ulcer when followers leave

There are many reasons why someone might "unfollow" you, and not all of them are related to you @ replying too much or tweeting too much about your baby barfing on you. Sometimes, people realize that you don't talk about the stuff they expected you to talk about, or they thought you were someone else, or they simply feel like they follow too many people and have to start making cuts. (I lost two while writing of this piece, and I haven't even tweeted!) Obviously, you want to make sure you're not irritating too many people off at once, but for the most part, losing a few followers here and there isn't a big deal. Just keep on keepin' on, and you'll gain back those few followers plus a few more in no time.

There are no explicit rules for how to use Twitter, of course, and ultimately, people are going to use it however they see fit; that's the beauty of such a flexible social platform. Still, if you follow these unspoken etiquette rules for being a good Twittizen, you should have no problems gaining followers the old-fashioned way.

sursa