by Mack Collier

As Twitter just continues to grow in popularity, more people are wanting to know how to expand their Twitter networks, and get more people to follow them.  There are several different ways to do this, depending on how you use Twitter.  Here's some of the things that have worked for me.

First, you have to follow more people to get more followers.  Here's a site with a ton of great tools that can help you find people that share your same interests.

Second, I link to a lot of articles/blogs/studies that I come across.  I spend every morning going through my feed reader, and as I find interesting posts/articles, I share them with my followers on Twitter.  These tweets are then shared by my followers, and that usually results in more people following me.

Finally, the BEST way I have found to gain followers, is to participate in conversations on Twitter.  Several times I have engaged in lengthy conversations on Twitter, and after the conversation ends, I can go back and see that I picked up followers almost as soon as the conversation started, and stopped adding them almost as soon as the conversation winded down.  Often, others will start tweeting something like 'Guys you need to be paying attention to this conversation that @MackCollier and @JenniferLaycock are having on getting more comments on your blog!', which gets me even more followers.

There are plenty of ways that you can grow your followers on Twitter.  But the above methods have worked best for me.

BTW for those of you that are wondering how much traffic Twitter can send to your blog, it probably isn't as much as you'd think.  I currently have about 2,600 followers on Twitter.  When I tweet a link to one of my blog posts, I might send 100 visitors in a 24-hour period to my blog from that tweet.  Which is about 5% of the number of followers I have.  Now if other people that are following me retweet my link, then that number can quickly multiply. 

My point is, from my experience, you get more back from Twitter when you contribute more.  The people that are only there to promote themselves don't seem to get much value from it.  Then again, if they are only on Twitter to extract value from others, why would anyone follow them.

Tomorrow I'll look at how I decide who I follow on Twitter.

What are some of your tips for getting more followers on Twitter?  BTW if you aren't already, you can follow my tweets on Twitter here.

Check out our small business news site.

by Jennifer Laycock

I scan hundreds of feeds and read dozens of articles each day so you don't have to. From focusing on the keys to a good community to cheap ways to catch a customer's eye, find out which articles I dubbed as must-read for the small business crowd today.

• Some things are just meant to go together; peanut butter and chocolate, snow storms and warm fires, sky diving and parachutes. Other things go together sometimes, but do just fine on their own. Still other things can cause disaster if you keep them paired up when they shouldn't be. That's what Andrew Shotland points out in a short and sweet post titled "NoIndex, NoFollow SEO Overkill" over at Local SEO Guide. While these two tags are often paired up, they shouldn't be by default. Check out Andrew's post to see why you might regret mindlessly throwing these tags together.



• In this crazy world of SEM/SEO/SMM and everything else search and social media related, there's a constant buzz about the value of viral. What many fail to realize is the best viral efforts often spring up out of a pre-existing community. It may be an organized community that already exists online, or a loose association of people with a common interest who are tied together via social media tools...either way, community is key. David Armano took a good look at the "Four C's of Community" in a column at Ad Age earlier this month.



• As crazy as it seems, 2008 is already starting to wrap up. That means the team at Yahoo has put together their annual Year in Review. Yodel Anecdotal points out Britney Spears is once again the top search for the year and newcomers like Miley Cyrus and Barak Obama have stormed into the scene.



• LinkedIn is by far one of the best social networking sites around for business professionals. Unfortunately, most of its users aren't taking proper advantage of it. If you signed up for an account ages ago and have done little more than build new connections, you'll want to read an article by Shelia Scarborough in this month's Bulldog Solutions. In it, Shelia talks about making the most of your LinkedIn profile and highlights underused features like Answers, Groups and Recommendations.



• Steve Woodruff is guest blogging at Drew McClellan's The Marketing Minute blog this week and offers up "Five Ways to Gain Notice Without Losing Your Shirt."

Check out our small business news site.