Guaranteed ways to grow your twitter following

Over the past two weeks I have finally given into the pressure to use Twitter, its amazing how addictive it is.

So after just a few weeks I have come to a few conclusions about the best ways to Tweet.

1. Get a decent client
Many people use the basic web interface but that makes Tweeting a task like reading and replying to email. I have been using Tweetdeck which runs as a separate application and makes Tweeting quick easy and part of the days background.

2. Follow the people you like and some for promotional reasons
I mainly follow those that I am genuinely interested in but as I found these people by seeing who they followed its always a good idea to follow some influential people so others can find you too.

3. Make new followers welcome
Using a service like Tweetlater you can set up a welcome tweet to people who have started following you.

Try and make this message welcoming and natural sounding and where time allows make the effort to DM them soon afterwards if they tweet something interesting.

4. Tweet regular but not excessively
One of the main things I like about twitter is that you do get a more rounded picture of people from their daily tweets but if the urge to tweet ‘off for a poo’ hits you resist please…

Ohh and if you know whats good for you Follow me!!!!

**Update**
I have just finished coding a new welcome system using the Twitter API where if I am not around and someone follows me they get one of a number of hand crafted welcome messages. As per Mike’s comment below I have swapped these to now be sent as Direct Messages rather than public Tweets, far less annoying that way.

Wanna test it out? Hey Follow me already!