Justin Bieber has nearly 39 million followers on Twitter-eight
million more than the president. But for those of us who aren't
as #blessed as Bieber, researchers have come up with a few tips
to racking up more followers-based on an analysis of over 500
active tweeters and their half million tweets, over a 15-month
period.
First, stop talking about yourself. Timely, informative tweets
are 30 times more effective at snagging new followers than tweets
about your pancakes. Sophisticated language also attracts followers,
even within the short format.
Since Twitter is a web of very weak social ties-often people you've
never met-spare them the bad news about your commute. Negativity
drives potential followers away. Being guilty of "hashtag abuse" is
another no-no-limit the use of hashtags so that they maintain some
value. The researchers presented their findings at the recent
Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, in Paris. [C. J.
Hutto, Sarita Yardi and Eric Gilbert, A Longitudinal Study of Follow
Predictors on Twitter]
Of course, one recent report claims that half of Bieber's followers
are actually fakes, like spambots-and he gets most of his real
followers simply for being famous. To increase your Twitter fan base,
you have to actually be interesting.