[Part  2 of my Domaining on Twitter series.  Part 1 is located here.]

If you are new to Twitter, you may be tempted to follow everyone in sight trying to build your list of followers quickly.  In this post, I’ll give 5 tips to increase your chances of being followed and some advice to avoid being penalized for excessive following.

Don’t look like a newbie or a spammer

The first thing you want to do is to take a few minutes to customize your Twitter profile.  Why? Because that’s what people see when deciding whether to follow you back.   Spammers are notorious for not taking the time to change the default brown icon (called a brownie) and for not including a web site URL.   As a result,  many Twitter users ignore these types of follow requests and some use Twitter’s ‘block’ command to report them as spam.

1. Take a minute to upload a photo of yourself,  or logo or graphic that describes your business.   Even if you don’t have anything great, just uploading something will set you apart.   Don’t skip this step, even if you have to upload a stock photo – you can always change it later.

2. Enter the URL of your web site. If you have a company site great.  A  personal blog is good too.   Or you could enter the URL of your LinkedIn profile if you have one.  Don’t have any of those? Many people just glance at the URL and don’t take the time to visit the site, so even a ‘coming soon’ page may be worth listing.  Tip: Only the first 17 characters of your URL are displayed in your profile, so skip the ‘www.’ (e.g. http://YourSite.com) to save space.

3. Post something in your bio field. This should be a well-crafted description designed to get people interested in following you.  It can be detailed and professional or short and casual.  If you want to connect with domainers, you can improve your follow rate by including the word ‘domain’ or ‘domaining.’

4. Post at least 5 Tweets. Nobody wants to follow someone who doesn’t use Twitter.    Being new is ok, not posting anything isn’t.   Not sure where to start?  How about an initial tweet about how you are new to Twitter.  Follow it up later  with a description of what you just did (e.g.  followed 10 of my favorite domainer bloggers).  Then post a URL or two that you found interesting – maybe something you read on Domaining.com.   Almost anything is ok, but don’t post affiliate links or spammy stuff.

Congratulations.  You just set yourself apart from thousands of spammers and one time Twitterers.  Now your follow requests stand a chance of being followed…

5. What your following / follower ratio says about you…

The next thing people look at when deciding to follow you is your following/follower ratio or Twitter ratio.    I typically come across four types of users…

Followers – Typically following 1-100 users with nobody following them.  Probably spend minimal time on Twitter, just using it as a one way source of information.

Normal users – Well balanced ratio.  Either 1 to 1 or following as many as 20% more than are following them.   Probably more active and likely to engage in two way discussion.

Power users / Internet celebs – They follow a reasonable number of people, but are followed by thousands.   These people are generally well known, and include high powered bloggers, well known businesses and even celebrities.   Examples include SEO guru Aaron Wall (232/5,722), marketer Andy Beal (187/7,858) and blogger Brian Clark (497/17,665).  Some Twitter users view this kind of ratio as a status symbol (see What is your Twitter Ratio and Twitter Grader)

Aggressive followers / spammers.   More likely to be concerned with pumping up their number of followers, often regardless of quality.   Often following many more times the number of people than are following them (e.g. following 1000 people with only 200 followers).  I often ignore requests from these types of users or am at least more skeptical of their requests.  There is even a service called Twitter Twerp Scan which helps find and unfollow these types of followers.

Important:  It is possible to be banned by Twitter for excessive following.  What’s excessive? They don’t say, but their spam policy says that it looks at the number of users who have blocked you (relative to those following you) to determine spam.  Twitter caps follow rates at 20% for users who reach 2000 followers, so this may be a good guideline to use as you build more followers.

I sometimes see people following 5 times their number of followers, but I don’t personally feel comfortable doing it.   When I first had less than a hundred followers, I tried to keep my ratio under 2 to 1.  Now with more than 500 followers,  I try to keep my ratio under 20% and I hand review each requester’s profile and their recent posts.

Conclusion

Now that your profile looks respectable and you know how your follow ratio effects the way you are viewed,  have fun exploring Twitter and expanding your network.  Take your time , try to make your Tweets interesting and don’t get too carried away with that follow button!

p.s. If you found this post helpful, please consider helping spread the word by clicking on the following button to automatically retweet this post on Twitter.

Related Links:

5 Ways to Find Fellow Domainers on Twitter

Why most domainers don’t get Twitter at first…