Growing Your Twitter Following Part Deux

Unfollow: Diligently. If you follow someone and they won't follow back, kick them out. A Twitter account that follows more than they have following appears unimportant, and will find it more difficult to pick up new followers. Web sites like Just Unfollow are a great help in managing your following.

Let me, however, throw out this caveat. There are scores of people I follow because I want to hear what they say—book publishers, science fiction news sites, and game sites, to name a few of the significant others in my Twitter life. If the benefits you gain, outweighs the lack of a followback, follow away.

Be Good: Nothing turns me off more than a Twitter account rife with vulgarity and curse words. I

mean I get it. Sort of. Some folks think that cursing makes them sound edgy. It doesn't. It makes you sound like you're 14. If your goal is to amass 14-year old followers, have at it, but if your goal is to draw in potential readers, or board gamers, lay off the four-letter words.

Mine Where the Gold Lies: Here is the number one way to grow your following. Simply find someone that does what you do. For example, if you write military science fiction, latch on to a famous military science fiction author. Cruise over to his or her Twitter account, click on their Followers and scroll down the list clicking Follow. A percentage of those you follow will follow back.

Keep in mind that if they have a lot of followers this will be a multi-day, if not multi-week endeavor. You don't want potential followers to check out your account only to find that you follow many more people than you have followers. As mentioned previously, that tends to scare people off.

There you have it. There is no magic recipe for growing a Twitter following. It takes work, a desire to help other people, and patience. But if you are willing to put in the time, the reward is worth it.