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:

• 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.

• Broadcast and curate high quality content – it’s all about what and how you say things.

• Engage with people and pay it forward by helping others – you’ll generate tremendous ROI.

• Don’t use slang as it cheapens your brand.

• Integrate Twitter account across social web: LinkedIn, Blog, FriendFeeed, Web Site – increase Twitter followers by being everywhere your market lives socially.

• 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.

• Use Twitter to broadcast your core content: Blog, Videos, Articles, White Papers.

• Recognize Twitters in-place social mores: RT, FollowFriday, Mentions, Introductions – this is the lingua franca of Twitter.

• 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.

• Connect your account to Peer Index and Klout – they are only tools and early on won’t mean much.

• Slowly move into brand promotion and gently make people aware of your products and services.

• Complete your bio and change every 2-3 weeks to drive branding and incremental search results.

• 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.

• Use Twitter for Competitive Analysis by searching on key attributes (keywords/phrases) that relate to your market and/or competitors.

• Tweet when your target market is awake – if US centric optimum is 9-5 ES. If global rock on a 24/7 schedule.

• 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.

• Tweetadder and Social Oomph are great 3rd party apps – Tweetdeck and Hootsuite are defacto account management apps.

• Curate your Followers if you want a targeted community; if not then Follow all back.

• 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.

• 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.

• Your ReTweets should be 10-15 to 1 of your own Tweets to engender yourself to this community.

• 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!