So this is part one of my 2 part “How To Win At Twitter” guide. In this part, I’m talking about the best practices for followers and clearing up a few questions about follower counts and influence. I hope you like it, leave a comment!

Every day, at my office and in my spare time I hear so often… “We need more followers! I need to get more followers! How do I get more followers? Why do I only have 28 followers?”

Sound like something you would say? Well stop. Why are you asking those questions? You’ve been listening to those wives tales again haven’t you?

No. There aren’t that many people on the Internet. Follower number means very little. I would rather have 10 followers that regularly read my tweets, shared my posts and interacted with me, than have 10,000 followers that just ignored me. Twitter becomes a powerful tool for inbound marketing when you have a strong influence. This means you influence people on the web… if you have 10,000 followers that don’t read your tweets or share your content, you’re not influencing them.

The same can be said for the links in your tweets. They are read in the same way: a shared link means people are interested in this content, they want to show their friends and colleagues your content to show them how cool, useful or interesting it is. Off-topic though, more on tweets in the 2nd part of this post.

The important and underlying fact is; Stop worrying about the number of followers you have. I can’t stress that enough. Promote your Twitter via your blog and site, maybe put your handle on marketing collateral and business cards (the same can be said for other platforms like Facebook), write and share good/interesting/cool content and people will share that content. Shared content means more influence, which means more powerful Twitter account AND the followers will arrive with that.

I don’t agree with that at all. Followers cannot be bought (other than maybe a competition but that’s not the same) if you expect to win at Twitter or the Internet. I guess it all boils down to getting good and regular content out really, as with most marketing channels. But I’ll follow up with Tweeting content in part 2 of this post.

What’s been the most successful way you’ve got fans? I’ve love to hear some of your strategies or whether you disagree with me? Leave a comment or Tweet Me!