A Sure-Fire Way To Increase Your Followers On Twitter

You know the saying, “Looks aren’t everything”, right? Or, “You can’t judge a book by its cover.” Even though I subscribe to that school of thought, I think it’s safe to say that we still do judge things and people by how they look to some degree. Otherwise, all products would be top sellers. That’s impossible. All bloggers would be the top in their field. Again, impossible; not everybody can be number one. It just doesn’t work that way, that’s why bloggers use marketing to represent themselves in a way that attracts followers.

While good content is definitely a component to increasing your audience, I’m going to focus on an equally important factor, looks, or in marketing terms: branding.

A brief side note: I was a late adopter to Twitter. Admittedly, it just didn’t appeal to me because I first thought it was silly. Why would anyone care if you’re shopping or going to bed (something people still tweet about). But it wasn’t until David Cooley asked me earlier this year why I hadn’t joined that I realized the people who tweeted about “going to bed” were a small slice of the Twittersphere and were distracting me from the real power Twitter offered its members.

So back to how you can increase the number of people following you on Twitter by making changes to your profile.

Of the two Twitter profiles below, which one do you think you’d be more likely to follow?

I’m going to go out on a limb and say the one on the right.

Admittedly, Darren Rowse of ProBlogger.net has a lot going for him by his name alone, but there’s no arguing the fact that to get to that level of success is due in part to the way he has branded himself.

I mentioned yesterday in my post the importance of personalizing your WordPress theme. The same holds true with anything you use online that represents who you are — things like a Twitter profile.

Benefits to personalizing profiles:

• It builds your brand. Whether you think you have a brand or not, you are building one by your presence alone, so why not take control of it?
• It increases exposure to other sites/services you’re associated with. Every little bit helps.
• It tells the reader that you’ve got “it” together.
• People gravitate toward people who exude confidence in their abilities. This makes YOU a leader in your own special way.

Unfortunately, Twitter doesn’t have the flexibility built right in to show things like other social networks you belong to or sites you author. Fortunately, the way to personalize your Twitter profile is easy. It has to do with changing your background.

First, you have to create an image to place in your background. You can use this template to get started. It’s only a flat image meant to be used as something you can trace over. Once you’re done, you can remove the template and export/save your creation.

Once you’ve completed the image, login to your profile and click on “Settings” in the upper right corner:

Next, go to the “Design” tab:

Now, check the radio button to “Use my custom style below” and upload the image you just made:

If things don’t look just right, then go back to your image and make the tweaks you need and re-upload.

Things to be avoid:

• Don’t put too much stuff in the left portion of the image. Some of the content could be cut-off depending on the resolution of the viewer’s monitor.
• Don’t use a small font. Think balance between content and the space you have to work with.
• Don’t ignore your most important sites or services you use. You may have lots of places you want to advertise, but only focus on the ones that are most important to you.
• Avoid busy patterns or wild colors on your background unless you are certain that’s the way you want to portray yourself.
• Don’t forget to choose a complimentary color scheme for the Twitter elements like link color and sidebar color.
• Don’t think this is all you have to do to obtain followers. You STILL have to provide quality content.

To be fair, plenty of other Twitter-ers who don’t modify their profile to this degree enjoy the benefits of a large following anyway. I’m only suggesting this as a way of having one less barrier between someone following you or passing you by.

If you want to be a leader, you have to think and act like one. That’s why people like Darren Rowse (site | twitter), Maria Reyes-McDavies (site | twitter), Big Ben Patton (site | twitter) and many others are harnessing the power that branding gives them. The number of followers I have pales in comparison to these guys, but now that I’ve rebranded my profile, I anticipate that number will increase over time provided I also use Twitter wisely (that’s for a future post). And don’t forget the added benefit of increasing your traffic to the other sites you add to your background image.

If you’re not already following me on Twitter, please do so by going here now.

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