If I had a dollar for every time I went somewhere and heard “increase Twitter followers” in a question I’d be living large with the VC “fat cats” on Sand Hill Road. My take on how to increase Twitter Followers:

1. Recognize Twitter has it’s in-place social mores and is very transparent – people do take notice of your activities in this often times tight nit community.
2. Broadcast and curate high quality content - it’s all about what and how you say things.
3. Engage with people and pay it forward by helping others – you’ll generate tremendous ROI.
4. Don’t use slang as it cheapens your brand.
5. Integrate Twitter account across social web: LinkedIn, Blog, FriendFeeed, Web Site – increase Twitter followers by being everywhere your market lives socially.
6. Identify 3-5 competitors, Follow them and see what they are doing right and wrong and remember it’s a quid pro quo world, they will do the same.
7. Use Twitter to broadcast your core content: Blog, Videos, Articles, White Papers.
8. Recognize Twitters in-place social mores: RT, FollowFriday, Mentions, Introductions – this is the lingua franca of Twitter.
9. Be very patient. An increase of Twitter Followers won’t and shouldn’t happen overnight – you want to grow organically. Dip a toe into the water early on and lurk to understand what’s going on.
10. Connect your account to Peer Index and Klout – they are only tools and early on won’t mean much.
11. Slowly move into brand promotion and gently make people aware of your products and services.
12. Complete your bio and change every 2-3 weeks to drive branding and incremental search results.
13. Use Keywords and Hashtags to heighten your content and drive real time search results – 20B searches per month via Twitter represent a strong upside for your brand.
14. Use Twitter for Competitive Analysis by searching on key attributes (keywords/phrases) that relate to your market and/or competitors.
15. Tweet when your target market is awake – if US centric optimum is 9-5 ES. If global rock on a 24/7 schedule.
16. Don’t use an intern to drive this bus (no offense meant to same) – your creating brand awareness on a huge stage and you want some knowledgeable hands on the tiller to increase Twitter Followers.
17. Tweetadder and Social Oomph are great 3rd party apps - Tweetdeck and Hootsuite are defacto account management apps.
18. Curate your Followers if you want a targeted community; if not then Follow all back.
19. Be open to JV and partnerships via this very dynamic community – you can build high quality relationships on Twitter, although takes a while to get established.
20. Don’t do a lot of ego posting: “in Los Altos at the….” “I’m the mayor of Bogota” “I had a 20 year old Pinot…..” – most could care less.
21. Your ReTweets should be 10-15 to 1 of your own Tweets to engender yourself to this community.
22. Increase Twitter Followers by being a resource for information so that others perceive you as being a thought leader.

Increase Twitter Followers: (exec summary) Be real, engage/pay it forward, be authentic and add some sizzle to your Twitter personality!