It was in March 2008 that I had joined Twitter. I never knew Twitter will explode the way it did in the 7-8 months that followed, so I was almost inactive until the end of 2008. It was in the middle of March 2009, that I realized what was happening and jumped into the bandwagon. I regret that I was late into it. Nevertheless, I am still satisfied at the fact that I was not left out.

Twitter and twittering is never too late. Even if you are the latest to join the phenomenon, you will still gain from it, such is the power of Twitter. All that you need to do is the right things. Do not waste unnecessary energy and time at Twitter. Rather, follow a proven and established method and you will see the results.

But, what is the proven and established method that I am talking about?

This blog was oriented towards helping people know about Twitter. My objective with this blog was to create awareness about this extremely powerful 140 character tool and in expressing the ways in which it could help you make the most of the Internet.

There are quite a few tools that I spoke to you about, many of which were automated tweeting and following tools. You might have noticed the term “automated” in the above sentence.

Why do we need automation at Twitter?

Twitter is vast. It is about following, getting followed and tweeting and reading tweets. Spending a lot of time at Twitter could prove a disaster to your business or, other online activities. Hence it is important to ensure that you spend minimal time at Twitter, yet get the maximum results. This is basically what Twitter API has helped achieve.

When I started I had a dismal following of about 10-12 followers. I kept trying hard and spent quite a good amount of time trying to get followed but with zero results.

Check out below statistics from Twitter Counter -

I had just a little above 4,000 followers in the month of September, which grew to almost 6,500 followers in the month of November. Unfortunately I am unable to show you the stats prior to this. My follower count grew from a mere 1,300 followers in July to 4,000 in September. One aspect that you need to bear in mind is the fact that these are all targetted followers based on specific keywords focused on a niche that I do business in. Today I earn about $0.63 per follower per month, that too with minimal work and effort.

Wondering how all this was possible?

Automation – is the answer. It is a few tools that automate the entire process of tweeting and acquiring followers that has helped me get this.

Let’s talk a bit about these tools -

Tweetadder – This has been my favorite tool. The things that this tool does is un-imaginable. There is no other tool out there that can even match half of what Tweetadder does. Some of the things that it does is -

• Increase Twitter and Site Traffic to your event, charity, service, business, band, or website.
• Find Like Minded Twitter Followers in Seconds
• Auto Follow up to 1000 Targeted Profiles per Day
• Get up to 500 new twitter followers per day per profile
• Multiple Accounts, Unlimited Twitter Profiles & Chaining
• Automate Twitter Posts, Scheduled Tweets, Stay active without actually being active
• Automate Scheduled Direct Messages
• Auto Unfollow, VIP Safe List
• Best Twitter Search, including Global Location and Multi Language Searches
• Set it and Forget It! Runs Daily, Automatically

What I achieved was just a minimalist use of this tool. Had I used it to the fullest potential, my follower count would have gone out of the roof.

Tweetadder, at the price that it is available at, can recoup your cost in just under a week.

You can order the software from Tweeting Tips here.

Auto Follow Script – This is yet another script that runs quitely on your computer and adds targetted followers to your Twitter account. It is extremely user-friendly and is very easy to use. I often run it and forget it and it keeps adding followers to my account. Two of my twitter profiles that I had started about less than a month back already have more than 3,000 followers in it and I am now monetizing it.

A few features of this script are as follows -

• Unfollowed users are flagged so that you do not re-follow them.
• Ability to unfollow anyone that does not follow you back.
• Auto Follow Twitter Users — Fully Control Twitter following with Max # of follows per day.
• Auto Unfollow — Unfollow users who do not follow back within a set time frame.
• Random Time Delay Settings — You choose what time intervals between follows, unfollows.
• Steal followers from other users.

If you are worried if these activities are unethical and could ban you from Twitter, then trust me you are absolutely wrong. All of these are ethical and within the TOS of Twitter.

You can order Auto Follow Script here.

There could be many other tools that could do these things for you, but I found that these two were the most economical and easiest tools available. If you know about any other tools, do not forget to mention about them in the comments below.

How are you adding new followers to your Twitter account?

Twitter is now the talk of the town. Every internet marketer or, internet surfer has something to say about Twitter. You presence on Twitter is now counted by the number of followers you have on Twitter. But are you able to add enough followers? Is the follower count a status symbol? If yes, then where are you on it?

The easiest way to get followers on Twitter is by asking them to follow you in case they liked your profile and your contribution. This obviously means publicizing you profile. How will you do this?

The answer is “Twitter buttons”. There are a range and variety of Twitter buttons available on the internet, which you can use on your blogs or, websites. If you are running a blog on the WordPress platform, it is very simple. Just copy and paste the code into a text widget for your sidebar. In case you are not on WordPress, then you need to copy and paste the code into the HTML of your webpage, which is also not very difficult. But all that you need to ensure is that your button is at a place where it is visible to your visitors.

Here is a list of such buttons available on the internet -

My Buttons – There are two different buttons that I use on my blogs and which I like very much.

This is a design I like the most and looks sobre and cool. I do not know who was the creator of this design ( in case you know it, do let me know so that I can credit it to them)

Just right-click and save the button in case you wish to use this. Else you may just copy and paste the code below:

(<a href=”http://www.twitter.com/your_twitter_name><img title=”twitter_follow_me” src=”http://www.tweetingtip.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/twitter_follow_me_small.png” alt=”twitter_follow_me” width=”179″ height=”78″ border=”0″ /></a>)

This design is one that I created with a bit of idea from here and there. But I love this design, more so because there a bit of my hard word put into it.

You may use this design as you wish. (A bit of credit to me will be good). You can just save the image and upload it to your server or use the code below:

(<a href=”http://www.twitter.com/your_twitter_name><img title=”twitterfollow” src=”http://www.tweetingtip.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/twitterfollow4a.gif” alt=”twitterfollow” width=”200″ height=”125″ border=”0″ /></a>)

Web Design by mts – They have about 10 different Twitter follow me icons to offer.  Though the website is Non-English, you would not face any difficulty in understanding the download rules.

Twit Buttons – My personal favorite because they have a variety of buttons to offer. It is extremely easy to use the buttons because all you have to do is copy and paste  the html code provided.

My Social Buttons – This is another place where you can find some innovative and beatiful “Twitter follow me” buttons. Though the buttons are only a few, it is different and looks cool.

Randa Clay buttons – This website offers a collection of about 18 buttons which is again very simple and professional. Nice instructions as well.

Siah Designs – Josiah Jost has a list of very good and useful Twitter buttons. There is also an option of personalization for a small fee.

Vincent Abry buttons – It is a collection of 31 Twitter buttons and the collection is very good and different from the normal buttons.

Go ahead, and add one of these buttons on your blog and add followers to your Twitter account.

In the next post we will be discussing the basic rules of following and rejecting.