5 Easy Steps to Get More Followers on Twitter
Here are five easy steps you can do right now to get more followers on Twitter. No time for chit chat, let’s get right down to it:
1. Follow OTHER people on Twitter.
The best way to get more followers is to follow more people yourself. This works because chances are if you follow others, they will also choose to follow you. It also works because your chances of being retweeted go up – the more you are retweeted, the higher the chance that others will find you and your tweets of interest, and so will follow you.
Now, if you really want to make this work for you, you want to follow the right people. Depending on your business or activity, this can be people in your geographical location, your industry or those who tweet about the same topic as you do.
How to find and follow people in your geographical location
If you are a local business or personality, you might want to follow other Tweeters who live in your city or geographical area. This is good for retail businesses or services, bands, radio stations, film festivals, organizations and clubs, groups etc. – anyone whose business is mainly local.
Here are some tools you can use to find Tweeters in your ‘hood:
- Twellow.com/twellowhood
Click on the map to find your country, then province, state or region until you get to the city you want to target. Twellowhood will then show you a list of all the people who tweet from that location. You can now scroll through the list and choose who you want to follow, then make some time for the dull work of pressing the “follow” button next to them. I did this this morning while listening to podcasts and recorded tutorials. - Use Twitter advanced search.
Click on the link above to take you to Twitter.com’s advanced search. When on the page, scroll down to where it says “Places.” Add the city you are targeting, the distance from it you consider reasonable, and click “search” at the bottom of the page. You will be provided with a list of all the twitterers in that area. Now what you do is roll-over the Twitter user-name and click on “follow.” Make sure you are logged in with the right Twitter account if you have more than one account.
How to find people in your Industry or Topic
- Once again use the Twitter advanced search. This time scroll to where it says “Words.” Enter your industry, or topic, like marketing or voice-overs. You can get very specific using the fields they provide, for example use ” This exact phrase” for multiple word strings like “video production.” You can even excluding certain words, for example when looking up Newfoundland you might want to exclude the word -beiber or you’ll get lots and lots of kids people trying to bring Justin Bieber back to Newfoundland in your results (Please, Justin, if you hear this Come BACK!)
- Use Blastfollow to find people who used a certain hashtag and follow them immediately.
How to find people in your Industry AND your location
You can once again use Twitter advanced search to search through the content of the tweets but you may get better results if you want to search only the Bios and Names of Twitter users. The best tool for this is Google’s advanced searched. This extra cool tip comes from Guy Kawasaki’s presentation on how to be a power Twitter User and are simplified below.
- If you want to search through the bios of Twitter users, use this formula in Google search but make sure to change the word voiceover to the service you are interested in :
intext:”bio * voiceover” site:twitter.com
Google will now search only through the twitter.com site and the results page will only show those who put voiceover in their Twitter bio. Very handy. - If you want to search through Twitter user names you can use this formula.
intitle:”voiceovers* on twitter” site:twitter.com
Google will now search through the users who put voice over in their Twitter user name, like twitter.com/voiceoveractors or in their actual displayed name that appears in the right hand top sidebar (that name is editable! See below Tip 2.)
Last but not least, you can follow everyone who follows you. This can be done manually, or you can automate this with tools like: SocialToo, SocialOomph.com/ that have autofollow commands.
2. Make sure YOU and are easy to find on Twitter
By using the reverse-process of the tips above you can make sure others can find you or your service more easily:
- If you are a local service provider try and put your industry or town in your name e.g Twitter.com/voiceoveractors or e.g Twitter.com/realestateNL
- Change your displayed name – this is the name that appears in the right sidebar at the top before it shows your website and bio. You can change this to include your key offering or keyword. E.g John Smith Voiceovers. To edit your displayed name choose Setting from the menu top right of your page and then choose Profile.
- Make sure your bio has your keywords or phrases that one can find you with in it. Use a keyword searching tool to find phrases that people actually use when searching. Google’s keyword tool is good for that. Remember if you are a band or author that putting your genre in your bio is a good idea.
3. Start being helpful and offering advice
Don’t waste people’s time. Do be helpful and someone worth following:
- Start by tweeting good content: tips, tricks, anything you deem useful.
- Tweet regularly. Try setting a schedule, like tweeting every day during an afternoon break or just before bed.
- If you run out of things to say, Tweet other people’s content. Things to tweet are useful articles, reviews, ebooks, videos, sites, white papers that you have enjoyed.
- ReTweet other tweets posted by the people you follow. Use RT plus the original poster’s login at the start of your tweet to give them credit (should look like : RT @ireneduma plus the original tweet.)
- Search your genre or area of expertise on http://search.twitter.com/ Then answer people who are looking for something or asking for help. To answer them make sure you use their twitter login name preceeded by an @ sign. E.g. use @ireneduma if you want me to see your tweet. Make sure you follow these people too.
- Search your keywords or area of interest then retweet the best posts to your followers. You will often receive a public thank you that exposes your twitter handle to new audiences.
- Get involved with memes. Memes are current trends and can be found on Twitter here tweetmeme.com,
- Use hashtags in your posts to be included in the memes. Read my article What are #hashtags to learn more about hashags and how to use them.
- Post pictures with twitpic.com
4. Ask people to ReTweet you
When your followers ReTweet your posts it promotes your @username. This will makes it more likely that other Tweeters will follow you because 1) they found the post was useful and 2) it came with word-of-mouth marketing: their friend is following you so you must be worth it.
- You can put Pls ReTweet this in your post. Don’t use this every time, but it’s good for timely tweets and/or non-profit do-good deeds.
- Add a tweetmeme retweet button to your website. It also comes as a plugin for your web site built with WordPress – get the tweetmeme plugin here. That’s what I am using on my blog – you can see it at the top of this post, flush right.
- Retweeting is easy if you use tools like Tweetdeck or Hootsuite.
5. Ask people to follow you.
And make it easy for them to do so.
- Put your link to your twitter page on your website, Facebook page, email signature, forum signatures, business card, bottom of every blog post
- Get Twitter badges or widgets to place on your website:
http://twittercounter.com/pages/twitterwidget
- and always ask people to follow you.
Like this – if you liked this, please follow me on Twitter.com/ireneduma
and retweet it by clicking on the button at the top of the page.
Thanks!
EAVB_YGNLAAHLQR
2 comments
Canada’s Prime Minister to use YouTube
Prime Minister Stephen Harper is turning to social media and will live stream responses to his throne speech on the TalkCanada YouTube channel.
“Social media is changing the way Canadians interact with politicians,” the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement Wednesday. “It allows Canadians to have unfiltered and immediate access to information. Livestreaming complements our government’s current use of social media…Canadians, especially younger Canadians, are no longer getting their news from just television, radio and print media. They are turning to new media in increasing numbers.”
So the question remains, should you be using YouTube? If you are a filmmaker, comedian, band, author – I think yes! Put your trailers, demos, videos of live readings or gigs up there. Subscribe to your friend’s channels and to other channels in your field. Embed the videos onto our blog, and have some fun.
The original article is in The Star
No commentsA Tribute to Writer Paul Quarrington
Paul Quarrington photo by Irene Duma
Canadian screenwriter, novelist and musician Paul Quarrington passed away from lung cancer peacefully on Thursday at his home. Paul was a friend and colleague – I had the pleasure of working with him on several BookShorts projects, as well as working for him building his web sites and blogs. He was a talented and funny guy, and extremely productive even to the last day, working on 2 CDs, a book and documentary on music, as well as numerous TV and film projects. We’ll miss you Paul.
Here is a nice tribute to Paul Quarrington written in today’s Toronto Star.
I’m also including 5 Questions that Paul answered for me for Karen Walton’s ink canada group for screenwriters on Facebook. Paul answered these just before he was diagnosed (May 2009. ) The answers are a nice cap-off to the article above, explaining the whys and hows of writing and storytelling.
5Qs Paul Quarrington – über writer.
The facts in brief.
Paul Quarrington wrote everything, and he wrote everything well. He’s written screenplays that have won Genies, novels that have won awards such as the Giller, Governor General’s Award, Canada Reads and the Stephen Leacock Medal for comedy and a song that was a #1 hit single.
As a story editor for feature films and television he was much in demand, his latest gig winning the CFPTA Indie Award for Best Comedy Series.
Paul is also a filmmaker and graduate of the Canadian Film Centre’s director program. His short film Pavane which is based on his novel The Ravine, has been a popular winner at numerous festivals. He also adapted the novel into a both a screenplay for a feature film and TV series.
He recently completed Cigar Box Banjo, a reflection on music and mortality that comes out this spring, and was busy participating in the documentary based on the book. A lifelong musician, Paul recently completed 2 CDs: a solo album as well as a CD with his band the Porkbelly Futures.
We’ll miss you Paul.
The questions.
1. how do you do it all? TV, screenplays, novels, comedy, fiction, faction, songs.
well, if the question is how do i do such disparate things, my response is to claim that they are not all that different at all. it’s all story-telling, say i, and in terms of creativity, it all seems to me like scratching the same itch. if the question is how do i find time to do it all, the answer is that i don’t. i try to use my time wisely — but fail continually — and there is usually something that is being ignored, left outside, scratching at the door and mewling horribly.
2. why do you do it all?
i think i do it to ward off boredom. also, novel-writing is always a solitary activity, and much song-writing is as well. television and film tend to be collaborative, they get me out of the house so that i can whoop it up a little.
3. In an interview about “The Ravine” – you say “It’s about this writer who squanders his talents in television.” Is that what you really think? Let’s piss some inkies off.
television is the greatest entertainment and story-telling medium that ever has been. it’s power and scope is extraordinary. i often imagine charles dickens learning about it. “okay, so i get an hour each week, right, and it gets watched by several million people… i’m there!” having said that, it is often under-utilized. its narrative powers remain untested except by the very rare genius like dennis potter. even the best television shows — “the sopranos,” “six feet under,” whatever you like — are still just television shows, they adhere to the same basic template as everything else. it’s like we as artists have this sports car, but we’ve only taken it out on the 400 series highways and we haven’t exceeded the speed limit.
4. What else do you think? (Write something here that makes you sound great.)
i think many other things, and i have very few answers that make me sound great. but here is something else: i also have, as a hobby, magic. i refer to myself as an “extremely amateur magician.” but it, too, is story-telling. indeed, any good card trick has to adhere to all the accepted narrative structure — objective, obstacles, resolution. I have a good trick that illustrates this.
5. Tips for the newbie writers.
there’s only good tip for newbie writers: be better than everybody else. if you can’t do that, be better than almost everybody else and try not to say bad things about those that are better than you.
More tributes and articles about Paul Quarrington are on his web site. Please stop by and feel free to leave a few words.
http://www.paulquarrington.org
2 commentsBest Press Kit Examples
Here’s a great article and video by Nic Baisley – a movie reviewer from The Film Snobbery, with some great tips on how to construct your film’s Press Kit.
Movie reviewers are going to be a big tarket audience for you to reach, to help you get the word out. Here The Film Snob reviews a press kit sent to him, and informs us how it helped to get his attention, how it started forming positive opinions about the film, and how there was plenty of info for him to create his review with.
http://filmsnobbery.com/2009/09/08/tutorial-proper-press-kits-part-1-screeners/
Can’t wait for part 2.
No commentsHow Does the Internet See You?
Persona by Aaron Zinman is a cool little Flash application/art piece (he calls it an installation, but I can’t use that word without scowling.) Just type in a name, and the engine will scour the Internet looking for it, then display it with any description that it found for that name.
Wonderful fun for the self-absorbed.
Check out how the internet sees you.
2 commentsBest WordPress Themes For Bands
Here are what I think are the best WordPress themes for bands, musicians, rock groups, chamber orchestras or anyone eles involved with music that needs a web site. To see some of these WordPress themes in action or why I think WordPress makes excellent sense for musicians, check out my article where I rave about WordPress Blogs For Bands.
StudioPress Church Don’t be fooled by the name, the Church theme is a very cool theme and makes a great band web site. Designed by StudioPress, formerly called Revolution Themes, Brian Gardner and his team continue to make clean WordPress premium themes with beautiful code and great Search Engine Optimization (SEO.) Because this is Brian’s full-time business, he is very committed, offers support via a members-only forum, and makes sure the themes are constantly upgraded to ensure compatibility with all WordPress updates.
You’ll need the Viva Thumbs plugin to make adding the home page thumbnails easy. This will save hours of time, otherwise you have to fiddle with Photoshop resizing, and custom fields, which just make it that much harder to do. And remember, if its too much, you won’t do it.)
Tubular by StudioPressThis theme was actually developed for use as a Videoblog, but I think it’s a great theme for bands too. It’s eyecatching and simple, so doesn’t appear overwhelming. Just put your latest video, or a video of your band performing at a gig, or rehearsing in the top spot. Want repeat visitors? Change your video often, and invite fans to submit thier videos of your band in concert. Throw a contest and tell them that you will feature their video on the home page – that will get them spreading the word. Do this once a month and you will have many happy fans!
The image on the left is actually a screenshot from a WordPress blog site I just finished for a comedy hockey video series called Ripper Hockey. It is a very mild customization of the Tubular theme; we changed the header area, making it taller and wider, put a tagline in the top right created in text so that Google would know what the site is about, and moved the RSS subscribe links. Hopefully this will give you an ideal of how just a few mild customizations to a well-built theme will give you a completely personalized look.
WordPress RemixRemix is simple, clean and comes with la choice of 10 different home page layouts and 20 different single page layouts, which make customization super easy. Try style 4 or 5 , which feature images and are a bit less corporate looking. I like the featured text areas which also are great places for you to publicize upcoming gigs or special events.
This premium theme has some extra functions that are useful for band web sites like integrated Photo Galleries and Events pages, so it makes it super easy for your band to keep your fans informed with the content that they keep coming back to see.
You can use the theme as is, or change the colours via an easy theme options page.
Tribal MusicBy Gorilla Themes will get you a cool site with built in music player from Mixpod so that you can stream your music.
This theme will need some graphic work to swap your own logo and background into the design, but once you do that, you will have a super cool site which places your music upmost and centre.
By Woothemes. This WordPress theme is actually for a photography blog, but will work great for a band web site who have lots of pictures.
Don’t have lots of pictures yet? Ask your fans to send them. They’d be uber proud to see their pictures on your site.
Use one of the photo sidebars for your GigPress or Gig calendar plugin.
In order to make this theme your own, just change that background image and go wild.
Ideas: Match your background to your current CD cover.
Want fans to keep coming back?
Change your background every week to match your posters.
Tell your fans to collect the series of backgrounds, or allow to download as wallpaer.
Do a contest and get your fans to design you a background.
Do a contest and feature a super fan every month on your background.
See how fun it can be?
Why do I think these make the Best WordPress Themes For Bands? Let me tell you:
- these are image heavy – people want to see pics of you when they come to your band site. They also want to see NEW pics of you when they come, so keep on adding pics. That’s why WordPress is cool. It is easy to update. Update your band’s web site often, and your fans will come by more often. And they will love you more.
- the sites are easy to customize – for the StudioPresss themes, just switch the background for a totally new look. Switch is so that it matches your most recent CD (you’ll actually need to also change the CSS for some of the themes, so they display an image vs a colour only, but it’s not that difficult – most web developers can help you with that.)
- StudioPress sites have great Search Engine Optimization capabilities. That means Google love.
- Sign up to our mailing list right up top. That is numero uno. Get your fans’ email addresses so you can send them news. They want it. They want to hear from you. They want to hear from you often.
- they’re more than a blog, allowing you to control your home page so it looks more like a traditional web site.
Have I missed any? What do you think are the best WordPress Themes For Bands?
And help me out. I am currently designing a WordPress theme for band sites. What other functions do you think would be cool for WordPress themes to have for band sites?
13 commentsFree Stock Video Footage
Looking for Free Stock Video Footage? Here are a few sources you might like to try.
Here’s a new site site that is offering Free Stock Video Footage with no catch. You can use the footage for personal use or commercial use – there is no stipulation. stockfootageforfree.com
Istockphoto also offers free videos every month that you can use. Make sure to check the details to see if you need to buy an extended license. Free Video of the Month Archive.
Archive.org has creative commons licensed video as well as video in the public domain. Here is a list of videos tagged with free stock footage.
Video in the public domain is becoming easier to find on the net. Here is a list of 9 public domain video sources put together by WebTVWire.com
Bingobango has gone through the internet archives and put together a few autumn clips available here, some Halloween clips, a nature assortment here.
What’s your favourite source of free stock video?
Tags: Free Stock Video Footage , Free Stock Footage
3 commentsMore Twitter Tools and Tips
Here are some more Twitter tools and tips to help you get tweeting.
I use Tweetdeck.com to organize all my Twitters.
I search Twitter with search.twitter.com. Search for your subject, your name, your company’s name, your competitors’ names etc. to see what people are talking about. Start talking with them, and building relationships.
You can also search for hashtags on Twemes. Hashtags are a tagging system on Twitter where you put a # in front of any word you like. They are kind of like Technorati tags that way.
Use #hashtags to groupd your tweets on one subject. More info on how to use hashtags here.
Use RT – this means ReTweet – to take someone else’s Twitter post and send it to your followers. To use it just add RT to the top of your tweet, followed by @originalsendername, and their original message.
RT @originalsendername original message
Search Twitter users bios on Tweepsearch. Find people in your industry or genre to befriend.
Share photos on Twitter with Twitpic.
Check out popular videos on Tweetube. Share videos on Twitter with Tweetube.
Why did someone unfollow you? Check out Tweet Effect to find out which of your Twitter updates might be responsible for people following or leaving you.
TweetLater is an excellent tool for Twitter automation. You can automatically follow those that follow you – and send an intro message with it. Some marketing experts say this is the best way to build authority. Others disagree. Your choice. Tweetlater also lets you program your tweets to send at specific times, though I think that’s kinda crummy. You’re not in a dialogue if you’re not there.
Visit the TwiTip (Twitter Tip) blog which is edited by Darren Rowse from ProBlogger Blog Tips. Follow Darren on Twitter.
Vist the Twitter Fan Wiki to look for tips or info, or to add your own.
How To Get more Followers
Kevin Rose just put out his list of how to get more Twitter followers. Kevin would know – he is the founder of Digg and has over 88,000 followers on Twitter making him the second most followed after President Obama.
Want to check your stats or see who else has loads of followers? Top Twitter users posted here on Twitterholic?
Follow me on Twitter – Twitter.com/ireneduma
No commentsWhat are Hashtags?
Have you noticed Twitter tweets going by with words that start with the # sign in them. Like this one? #FBTip
It’s called a hashtag, and is a way for you to organize or add a metatag to your tweets. It groups tweets about the same subject all together.
Are you familiar with Technorati or Flickr tag? Hashtags are the same but instead of adding them to the bottom of your post, you just add them right in your Tweet’s sentence by putting the # sign in front of your word. Any word you want.
Why use a hashtag?
If you add hashtags to your tweets it will be easier to search and find any posts you made on that subject. For example Facebook Marketing guru Mari Smith uses this little word prefaced by a hashtag or pound sign -#FBTip – for all her Facebook tips that she posts to Twitter,
Just do a search on search.twitter.com. You can also search for them on twemes.com, or tweetchat.com.
Start using your own hashtag for your own tips or sets of categories you want instant access to. For example if you are a blues band (are you listening Porkbelly Futures?) you might want to use #bluesmusic whenever you post some news about your band, or CD or other post on topic that would be interesting to other blues music fans.
#bookadvertising would be a good one for Book Trailer Production company Bookshorts.com.
Learn more about Hashtags and how to use them in this video from Facebook Mari.
Get more Free Facebook Tips from Mari.
Become my Twitter Friend on Twitter.com/ireneduma
Have you Created a Facebook Page For Your Business?
Have you heard of Facebook Pages? These are different than Facebook Profiles.
Profiles are for real people only, and you can only have one profile on FB.
Facebook Pages are for businesses, and you can have as many as you want.
Here’s why you should make one pronto if you have a biz…
- Facebook pages are free.
- Facebook has a high page rank so a link back to your web site will help with your Search Engine Placement.
- You can have more than 5000 friends. Facebook groups have a cap.
- You can have a nice large image prominently displayed on your site.
- You can import your feed from your web site. Don’t have an RSS feed? Nows the time to switch over and get a WordPress blog site as a web site. You will have an RSS feed instantly.
- You can have fans, photos, and video
When building your web site, always use your keywords. Remember – your keywords should be based on how people actually search, not just how you think people search. Use keyword tools for that.
To create your facebook page, scroll down to the bottom of any Facebook page and click on advertising. Then click on Pages from the submenu on the top. It’s just to the right of advertising.
Or just click here for Facebook Pages 
Here’s where you can search all the other Facebook Pages.
Tags: facebook pages, facebook marketing, personal branding with Facebook
2 comments
