Guest Poster

Get More Followers by Spending Less Time on Twitter

by Mark McGuinness of Wishful Thinking and co-founder of Lateral Action. Follow him at @markmcguinness

mountain-bluebird(image credit: tomsaint11)

Stop and think for a moment about the people you follow on Twitter the moment you see them.

These are the ones you have no hesitation in following — you’re delighted to find them on Twitter and look forward to receiving their Tweets.

Chances are they fall into two categories:

  1. You know them outside of Twitter.
  2. They’re doing something interesting outside of Twitter.

So if you really want to get more followers, you should do two things:

  1. Get to know people outside of Twitter.
  2. Do something interesting outside of Twitter.

It might seem counterintuitive, but if you look at things like this, one of the best ways to boost your follower count is to log out of Twitter and do something more exciting.

Remarkable People Don’t Spend All Day on Twitter…

The most popular people on Twitter tend to be those who are doing remarkable things elsewhere (e.g. Barack Obama, Stephen Fry, Tony Hsieh). The more interesting your background, the more people will follow you.

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Darren Rowse
@problogger

How to Stop Twitter Becoming a Waste of Time

twitter-waste-of-time.jpg“Twitter is a Waste of Time” – it is a criticism that has been leveled at Twitter many times over and while I’m one of Twitters biggest fans I’m also in agreement that Twitter can be a compete waste of time. I’ve wasted time on Twitter and I’ve seen many others do it. In fact recently when I asked my followers about the topic I found that most people could relate to the idea of wasting time on Twitter.

So how do you stop yourself from letting Twitter become a waste of time?

Below are a few of my own tips on the topic – interspersed with a few tips and comments from my own followers on Twitter.

1. Know Why You’re Using Twitter

If you don’t know why you’re using Twitter it is highly likely that you’ll either not use it beyond your first day or two or you’ll use it in such an unfocused way that you’ll end up wasting time with the medium.

Set aside a few minutes to think about your goals and objectives for using Twitter. You don’t need to over think it but identifying what you want to achieve helps you to be much more effective as a Twitter User.

@timbursch – “Have a purpose for being here and tweeting. Don’t follow too many rabbit trails.”

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