1. Follow Twitter Users En Masse
Continuously adding Twitter users as followers will allow you to significantly increase the amount of overall followers you attain in return. In essence, if you follow 1000 new people, you are likely to gain about 200 new followers. And if you do that consistently, you can have thousands of Twitter followers in a relatively short period time. The more people you follow, the further your influence may begin to reach. However, keep in mind that this practice of mass following could put you as risk of being labeled a Twitter spammer. Additionally, following many users makes it more challenging to keep track of specific individuals. You should ultimately cut down on the amount of people you follow to make your Twitter account more legitimate.

2. Follow Twitterers Who Will Follow You Back
Following other Twitter users should not seem like a crap shoot, eternally wondering whether they will follow you in return. Be certain to follow those who share your primary field of interest. Additionally, a portion of the Twitter population will follow anyone that follows them. When looking at someone’s profile page, check the numbers in the right hand corner. If the number they follow is about the same as the number following them, then you have successfully located the realm of users that will follow anyone who follows them.

3. Follow Active and Popular Twitterers, Then Mimic Them
Identify topics of interest and find active users tweeting on similar subjects. Follow those users, and more than likely some of them will return the favor. Then, review and analyze the tweets by top Twitterers, including the content and characteristics of their tweets, to see what makes them so likeable. Comparing your product with that of more popular users, and Iearning what makes their tweets interesting, fun, or enjoyable to others, will lead to quick improvements in your personal tweeting style.

4. Make Your Tweets Useful, Interesting, or Funny
Grab the attention of the Twitter universe the old fashioned way, and please spare people the debate about whether or not you should take a nap this afternoon. Giving others the opportunity to map out your daily itinerary will not earn you many new fans, or followers. Wasting even a nanosecond of someone’s precious time could be the impetus to you being permanently stricken from the followed list. You must tweet substantive information in order for people to take you the least bit seriously. Then, tweet often to get your profile noticed. You can even provide links to interesting, controversial, or topical alerts and information. Being humorous will also help people get a sense of what kind of fun-loving, good-natured person you are, and funny statements will make others eager to follow you. However, keep your target audience in mind when posting; provide them with content you expect they will enjoy reading. You may also encourage participation and discussion by posting questions and the like, it will have the added effect of getting your name viewed by more and more people in a variety of different locations on Twitter.

5. Include Pictures or Videos In Your Tweets
A great way to garner more attention is to put fun photographs or videos within your Twitter posts. Adding more personalized media will help other users get to know you better, and perhaps even make you more seem interesting.

6. Utilize Retweeting To Your Benefit
Pick out the most worthwhile, interesting, funny, or informative tweets from other users. Not only will this succeed in grabbing the attention of the person being retweeted, but it also means that any users affiliated with the original tweetor browsing their Twitter pages will see a “retweeted” notification mentioning your name; which creates a second chance to gain new followers. Also try to tweet things that you think others may want to retweet themselves. If something is interesting, unique, motivating, newsworthy, or entertaining, others may be compelled to simply retweet your thoughts. Do not be afraid to ask your followers to retweet your tweets for you, as this is another great way to obtain more followers.

7. Create An Interesting Profile
Make a great impression on your followers and potential followers by developing a unique, interesting, and attention-grabbing profile. Upload an appealing picture of yourself, and write a brief, but memorable biography. This vital information will help you to further connect with your followers. The profile is an often overlooked facet of Twitter, but you cannot underestimate the impact it may have, and it could actually make others interested in what you have going on. Moreover, consider adding a custom background to your Twitter home page; it will stand out against the millions of other monotonous and generic Twitter profiles.

8. Use Hashtags As Often As Possible
Hashtags are a way to get more exposure, and to have your posts added to pages grouped by topic. These are groups are signified by their “hashtag.” Hashtags are a community-driven convention for adding additional context to your tweets. Hashtags are created by simply placing a hash symbol in front of a particular word (e.g. #Fox). These hashtags are then utilized by users with a common area of interest. You can track popular hashtags and hot topics by browsing TwitterGroups or TweetChat. Once you discover the popular hashtags applicable to your purpose, you can create tweets based on those topics. Hashtags provide you with the hope that interested users will subsequently check you out and follow you.

9. Sync Your Tweets With Your Blog or Website
The more exposure you have for your tweets, the greater the chances become that people will choose to follow you. If you have a blog, you may consider using a plug-in that will allow you to display your tweets on the page itself. Or, you can pull your tweets into your blog, creating new tweets on blog posts from within WordPress. Amongst your many other options, there are plug-ins you can utilize to turn any mention of the word “Twitter” within your blog or website into a link to your actual Twitter account.

10. Communicate With Your Followers
Just because you are interacting in a fairly impersonal way, you cannot forget to utilize the best of your communication skills. Reward your followers by communicating with them. Reply to interesting people, get into discussions, and make good points. Find topics of interest and join in conversations with other Twitter users. This will help make you a more well-known Twitterer. Be natural and casual when tweeting, passing on information that might be useful to your followers. This should in turn noticeably strengthen your followers count. Twitter users generally do not like it if you are blatantly using them to simply promote yourself. You need to show them that you are monitoring them as well, and prove it by engaging in conversation. Ultimately, it shows others that you are open to communication and to meeting new people.

About Dana Bashor
Dana Bashor has absolutely no formal writing credentials whatsoever, but that doesn’t stop her from writing on topics that catch her attention like Planet Antares and social media. Dana Bashor loves to write and contribute to the World Wide Web. Catch up with Dana Bashor on her blog or connect with Dana Bashor on her Twitter page.

It was great in the beginning but as it becomes over-saturated with users I’m seeing more and more non-sense Tweets…

For all the Twitter newbies out there, there are just things you should not Tweet about:

1 – You don’t have to tweet about every single second of your boring life.

2 – Most users don’t really care if your dog got hit by a car and lost one of its legs.

3 – Don’t ask what you should eat for breakfast, lunch or dinner.

4 – Leave your depression state of mind out of Twitter.

5 – Don’t ask what you should wear today.

6 – Don’t Twitpic yourself asking if you look OK today.

7 – Don’t send out a link to your favorite porn site.

8 – No more Rick-rolling please…it’s gotten quite old!

9 – Avoid 1, 2, or 3 word Tweets, we have no idea what you mean.

10 – Stop bitchin’ about how slow Twitter has been.

11 – I get it, you’re coffee was too strong, no need to Tweet about it.

Follow me at www.twitter.com/JONxBLAZE.

1 – Contact The Blogger
I would get in touch with a blogger to let them know how much I enjoyed their article. Some bloggers will not leave an email address or contact form on their site, at that point I would simply leave them a thank you comment.

2 – Link Love
Whenever I STUMBLE on a blog that is just full of great articles, I would link to that site and add them to my blogroll.

3 – The Stumble Upon Effect
Stumble Upon is a great service and it is a wonderful article promotion tool. I always make sure I give a thumbs up on blogs that I enjoy reading.

4 – Submit and Vote
Everybody knows that Social Media is a great source for generating traffic to a site. If the article you are reading is really, really good, chances are it’s already been submitted to sites like Digg, Mixx, Reddit, Propeller, Yahoo Buzz, etc. If that’s the case, then go ahead and vote the article up.

5 – Give Out Some Change
This is probably everyone’s favorite since it involves money. Make a courteous donation to the blogger. I have received donations on this blog in the past and let me tell you, it is a great feeling! I went out and bought a bag of Cheetos.

6 – Add Cents???
This is actually my favorite one, whenever I see an ad, I make sure I give it a click if I feel like the blog has given me something I can walk away with. And don’t just click on the ads for the sake of clicking, take time to read what the ad is offering, you might just find something that is of interest to you. Just don’t overdo the clicks or the blogger will be penalized for click fraud. [ I am in no way advocating the clicking of any ads ]

So next time you read and enjoyed a random blog post, you’ll know what to do.

1) Lack of communication and disregard for the Digg community

2) Unexplained and unacknowledged banning of top users

3) Lack of transparency — Digg only shows you the stories that people have dugg, but not the ones that are buried.

4) The auto-bury list – For months, dozens of sites have been on an auto-bury list, often with no explanation whatsoever.

5) Repeated and flagrant disrespect of its top users

I’ve chatted with many Digg users before and there was always a mention of Digg going down the drain if they continue to ban users and sites with no explanation. I guess this latest update is the straw that broke the camel’s back. Here’s an interesting post by one of the Top Diggers “Bukowsky” on what went down:

http://jeff-flowers.com/the-great-digg-revolt-of-2008/

So it looks like there’s a community of submitters who are willing to leave this community to join another. I’ve heard talks of submitting primarily to Propeller, Reddit, or Mixx. In my opinion, the obvious choice would be Mixx.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, Mixx is way better than Digg and it has the potential to overthrow Digg off the top. I firmly believe this situation presents a good oppurtunity for Mixx to prove how note-worthy they are.

On this note, here’s a list of things/ideas Mixx should consider if they don’t want to turn their users against them.

1 – Continue to interact with the community.

2 – Do not ignore emails and or suggestions from your members.

3 – Ask for feedback before you roll out any major updates.

4 – Don’t ban a user and give no explanation as to why they were banned.

5 – Don’t implement the “Shout” feature.

6 – Reward the “Top Mixxers” for submitting great contents.

7 – Encourage new Mixxers to participate and submit more stories.

8 – Just be honest and straight up with your members, don’t be like Kevin Rose, nobody likes a liar.

This so-called Digg revolt is the hottest news on the internet right now, maybe even surpassing Heath Ledger’s untimely death (R.I.P.). Follow the links below to read more about this latest development.

http://www.techipedia.com/2008/kevin-rose-and-jay-adelson-on-digg/

http://mashable.com/2008/01/23/digg-revolt-again/

http://www.brentcsutoras.com/
http://revoltnation.blogspot.com/
http://soshable.com/digg-algorithm-change/
http://babblin5.com/2008/01/23/two-diggs-one-cup/
http://hehe2.net/social-media/digg-the-lulled-revolution/

But is freelance work better than having a 9-5 job? I’ve been fortunate enough to have been able to do both for the last 3 years and although I reap the many benefits of doing freelance work, I’d have to say that having a full time job is still the choice for me. Yes a 9-5 at times can be monotonous, but I also enjoy interacting with other people, I enjoy the thought of going to work not knowing what the day has in store for me.

I guess the best part of having a 9-5 job is knowing you’ll have work to do tomorrow, as opposed to freelance work, where you’ll have 3 projects lined up at the same time and nothing for the next 3 months! I know there are many of you just like me, who are able to balance a full time job and freelance work on your own spare time. What tips might you be able to give to anyone who wants to enjoy the best of both worlds?

Send me your thoughts and I’d like to know which do you prefer.

[poll=4]

Enter Mixx.com. Yet another Digg clone, it’s only about 2 months old, but has the potential to throw Digg off the top. The big difference between Mixx and Digg? Well the members of course! Mixx members are laid back, they will not make fun of you if you misspelled a title heading, they will not call you names, and I have yet to see anybody curse at someone. Mixx is still very new and has a long way to go but the potential is there, I just hope the community doesn’t turn sour the way the Digg community did!

We all know how Diggers hate SEO submissions, and they are quick to bury you if you submit from your own blog. I found this out the hard way when I thought I had a great article on my old blog, I submitted it only to get buried and never saw the light of day. So now I’m going to put Mixx to the test. I will attempt to submit this post and see what kind of reaction I’ll get from the Mixx crowd.

PS – Ignore the Digg button below..do not submit this to Digg!!!

	Four20 One of the most recognized icon on the internet. Brilliant!
	msaleem Can’t go wrong with Black & White.
	digitalgopher MEGATRON <- Enough Said
	zaibatsu Have no idea what this is but it looks cool from first glance.
	supernova17 Web 2.0 style avatar. NICE!!!
	simm0 There’s an evil monkey in my closet! LOL
	mrbabyman Great avatar, although I liked the yellow version better!
	vondrak Biohazard symbol always gets my attention.
	pizzler Really, Four20 should have picked this one.
	bukowsky Really freaky avatar, but still kinda cool to look at.

Now I still see a lot of ghost avatars like the one below, it seems a lot of people overlook the importance of having an avatar. If you’re one of those people, I would suggest putting up any picture that best represents your true image.