One of the best ways for a small business to increase its brand awareness and reach is to have a strong social media presence, particularly on Twitter. A single “tweet” can instantly become a national headline, and you need followers to make sure your tweets are seen.

How to Grow Your Twitter Followers

1. Make it simple to find and follow your Twitter account. Make your Twitter account easily visible on your website. If you have a blog, leverage its social networking tools so others can easily tweet about your posts.
2. Follow industry-specific Twitter users. Most Twitter users follow their own Twitter followers. Seek out the Twitter accounts of industry influencers and competitors (so their clients discover you) and engage these users.
3. Get involved in social media communities. Several websites allow you post information about your business’ blog and/or social networking accounts. After you’re in a site’s directory, its users can look you up by industry or interest and follow you.
4. Write guest posts for other blogs and add your Twitter handle at the end of the piece. Offer expert advice by writing posts for other blogs so you can build trust, gain new followers and extend your reach.
5. ParticipateT in and host Twitter parties and Twitter chats. Such events will expose your business to new Twitter followers and enhance your branding.
6. Post quality tweets that are worthy of re-tweets. Twitter followers want to read about relevant news and solutions that you can offer. If the post is valuable, readers will share it with their own followers.
7. Schedule your tweets. When it’s hard to tweet everyday or at a certain time, use an application that will post tweets for you.
8. Use hashtags. Hashtags (#) area a way for Twitter to categorize tweets, and search engines use them for keyword searches. Use a hashtag before relevant keywords or key phrases.
9. Analyze your content. See which posts have the most re-tweets and which led visitors to your website so you can optimize your tweets to gain new customers and Twitter followers.
10. Engage the readers. Twitter isn’t your private diary. Use it to start discussions with readers, address specific followers (using “@[twitter handle]”) and get into conversations.

When using Twitter, focus on your influence more than your follower count. Buy organically growing your Twitter followers, you gain recognition from individuals who appreciate your messages. As a small business, it’s more important to have 100 followers who know who you are than have 900 who are clueless.