• People rarely reply to auto-DMs: Twitter is about networking with real people and not robots, autoresponses are kind of impersonal.
• “Check me out!”: This is what I usually receive to my Direct Messages inbox, I find no reason why people send it, if I’m following you, it’s because I already checked you out and you’re follow worthy. What’s the point of the auto-DM then ?
• Be a little bit serious: I receive this message sometimes “We’re going to be a good friends” Obviously they have no idea who they’re talking to, I immediately unfollow them.
• There are alternatives: If you’re sending the auto-DM to build relationships, or spark conversation, there are better ways to.
• Who’s gonna be the next follower? : If you’re using Twitter for two – or more types of chat (i.e personal and business chat), you don’t know why exactly the follower is following you, your message needs to appeal to everyone.
• Spamming: It’s always considered as spam when you include a link to your website, people will definitely unfollow you, Twitter is not a direct mail marketing model.
• BarackObama: The president of the United States isn’t using it. (Right, I’m joking )

What do you think? Is sending an auto-DM a good practice? Yes, No and why ?

Thank you for you attention
- Oussama

It’s not that easy, it requires patience and hard work, and it takes time! Below I’m listing some points which I hope they will help you.

• Good Page Design: With millions of other Twitter accounts out there, focus some effort to make yours stand out. The design is really important to create a good first impression, pick good colors and background image.

• Add Personality to Your Page: People would rather follow people not logos, so a nice photo of you would be good

• Connect with Celebrities: Communicate with other people who have thousands of followers. You can attract some of their followers attention. (Do not spam them)

• Update Frequently: There is nothing that turns people off your page faster than seeing it’s not being updated. Obviously they will not follow you because there is no point to.

• Add the Link of Your Page to Your Signature on Forums/emails: Hotmail made tons of money by promoting their products in their users emails’ signature. Learn a lesson from them and put a link to your Twitter Page (Same on forums).

• Ask your Blog Readers To Follow You: Put the link in your blog sidebar or homepage. Send a newsletter to your subscribers, let them know about your Twitter Page.

• Get Involved in Projects: From time to time some Twitter users will invite you to participate in a project or a contest of theirs. Get involved in that and it might gain you some loyal followers.

Good luck
- Oussama

So if you’re really interested in getting more followers, you should:
1. Do remarkable things elsewhere (Outsite of Twitter).
2. Get to know people outsite of Twitter.

From experience, people pay attention to someone who’s popping from time to time with valuable links and informative thoughts though. It means that you won’t get people’s attention if you spend all day on Twitter posting and sharing stuff every minute, it’s spammy some how. Sign into Twitter regularly, to connect with other people and share with them things that might be attractive (Know what to pick up).

In my opinion, you should not focus most of your effort on Twitter. The results of a poll started by Darren Rowse about blog readers vs Twitter followers show that most of you agree with me as 84% of people prefer more blog readers than Twitter followers.

However, you still have to be interesting on Twitter in order to KEEP your followers. People followed you for some reason doesn’t mean they will not unfollow you if you bored them! Being interesting and helpful on Twitter as you are elsewhere (Your blog) makes other people pay attention to your tweets and makes them more likely to read your other content.

In conclusion if you would like to:

GET followers: Do interesting things outside of Twitter.
Keep followers: Be interesting on Twitter.

Also do not forget to redirect people to your Twitter page by including your Twitter URL on:
• Your blogs and/or websites.
• Your forum signatures and email footerS.
• Your social media profiles.

Actually, I was one of these people who voted for blog readers for some reasons I’ll list below:

• Promotion on Twitter do not work.
As it’s a social network I believe that if you try to redirect Twitter users to your blog you will not succeed, because if you keep advertising your website on Twitter you’re some how annoying your followers as social networks were meant to be used as an information and a fun chat service for friends to share what they are doing or what on their mind, not spamming products and services every minutes.

• Less potential of earning money.
Even if you have a million followers, I think there is less potential of earning money – compared to a blog. You can only put some ads on your Twitter Page which means you’re disturbing your followers, or do some marketing stuff which lots of people didn’t succeed in it.

• Blog readers = Lots of potential.
With feed subscribers, there’s a much higher chance they actually are interested in your content and will be back to read future posts.

The point from all this, is to not focus all your effort on generating traffic or followers to your Twitter profile but to your blog.

Thanks for your attention
- Oussama

• Follow For a Good Reason:
“Follow me, I follow you back” – “Follow me and win a free domaine name” … These are crap. You won’t feel Twitter as Twitter if you follow someone expecting him to pay you back somehow. The reasons you should be following others are either you’re interested in connecting with him or you’re interested in his content and looking for more..

• Be Active:
Communicate with your followers and the people you follow. Make them feel you’re on Twitter, share with them your experience and be generous.

• Be Smart and Intelligent:
Do not annoy your followers or the people you follow with stupid posts that make no sense. Be smart and know what to share.

• Talk from Experience:
Do what works for you, do not talk about something you know nothing about to keep yourself away from being stupid.

• Do not Sell Yourself:
Do not bother yourself and the others by posting and spamming your account with ads which earns you few cents. Post something you feel it’s worth to share.

• Do not Promote your Website a lot:
If you do, people would think that you’re on Twitter only for promoting your website, and this might force them to not follow you, because you don’t have much to say. However, you can still promote your website from time to time but with caution.

• Do not spam others by sending them tons of direct messages each day. This is such a bad thing. (Might get you banned from Twitter though)

Thanks for your attention
- Oussama