When it comes to growing your   followers on Twitter, you have approximately 2 seconds or less to grab someones attention and  positively influence them to click the “follow” button.
Whether it is lead generation, brand awareness, reputation management, search engine optimization or any of the other many benefits you can enjoy with Twitter, one fact remains, you need followers. And the more qualified followers you have, the better your results.
Below are   some proven tools, tactics and ideas to pump up the volume on your Twitter style and successfully build your Twitter following.
Your Twitter account needs to have a good presence in order to attract followers. Â Â Here are five easy-to-do Twitter Style tips that you should absolutely incorporate before you even attempt to find your followers!
- Have a unique avatar, preferably one that is a photo of you. People naturally connect with photos. An option for brands or business accounts is to display a logo in place of a photo. If you opt for a personal photo, it should be a professional close-up. Â Â A default avatar on Twitter screams … “Don’t follow me!”
Bonus tip: Use the same avatar to represent you or your business/brand across the social universe. This will help visually establish your brand…even if your brand is you! - Fill out your bio and link. You have 160 characters to tell everyone who you are and what your interests are! People are more likely to follow you or your business when the bio is filled out. You can be straightforward, clever, show personality or simply list a few descriptive phrases separated by commas.
Bonus tip: infuse your bio with keywords and key phrases…it’s indexed by search engines! This is also the place that gets searched by directories like TweepML and Twellow when pulling words that people search for. - Create a branded background or have someone design it for you! Â Â Sure you can use the default Twitter background…they even give you several choices. However, you’ll attract more followers with a well-branded background. Remember that this background will look different on different size monitors, browsers and screen resolution.
Bonus tip: Use your background to display    link URLs to your other social networks, your web or blog site, and your email and other contact information. These links are not hyperlinked unless you use a program like clickableNow but even then, the links are only clickable to those who also have the software.
Create your Twitter Background: There are many online resources that allow you to create a somewhat unique Twitter background, including: Twitbacks, Twitter-Backgrounds.net, and TwitterBackgrounds.com. Most of these include a customizable paid-for option. - Register your Twitter account(s) with Twitter Directories.   This will make it easier for others to find and follow you on Twitter. We recommend WeFollow and Twellow to start. Twellow bills itself as the Yellow Pages of Twitter Directories.   Twellow is a directory of public  Twitter accounts listed by categories. You can add your account to multiple categories. Mashable compares 15 directories in this article that you may want to include!
Bonus Tip: Use Twellow to search the hundreds of categories and search features to help you find people who matter to you. The more you follow on Twitter, the more will follow you back. You can also create an extended bio on Twellow which provides you with ample room to tell everyone who you are and about your business/brand. - Tweeting- be engaging and provide interesting content. When you tweet, remember to be authentic, interesting, thankful, retweet other information you find helpful. Below is a video containing some great ideas and ways to tweet…specifically for businesses created by Brett Farmiloe.
View more presentations from Brett Farmiloe.
