New users of Twitter have been confused by the rise of celebrities on Twitter. I say confused because the new users think the secret to success is being followed by more people than they follow.

That is true if you are Ashton Kutcher. It’s not true if you are a mom and pop retail business.

Why? Because Ashton Kutcher has name recognition. People follow him because they know his name and because the media told everyone to follow him.

I suspect that if you are reading this blog, you don’t have that kind of name recognition. If I’m wrong, please let me know in the comments, so I too can gain recognition by one degree of separation from a celebrity!

Ahem. I digress. Anyway, if you aren’t famous (yet), you need to attract a following the other direction, by following a lot of people. Rule of thumb is that 30-50% of the people you follow will follow you back. That’s why all the “get more followers fast” services do work.

The problem is that those services don’t get you followers who want to build a relationship with you. You can do something similar and get a good following by targeting people to follow.

Who should you target?

1. Everyone you know. These people are almost guaranteed to follow you back. And they will be likely to interact and promote you.

2. Followers of your competitors. They are already interested in what you do or they wouldn’t be following someone in your industry. Follow them and provide good content so they follow you back and keep following you. Who knows? Do it better than your competition, and they may keep following you and unfollow them. Not a bad deal, eh?

3. Your competition. They may not follow you back, but that’s okay. Knowing what they are up to can give you ideas and let you know what you need to do to beat them at the social media game.

4. People you meet while networking. You may not know them very well now, but you can build a relationship with them on Twitter and then you will know them well.

A good starting ratio is 3:1 where you are following 3 times the number of people you want following you. Make your initial goal reasonable. Aim for 100 followers, so you need to follow 300 quickly. Over time, your numbers will grow as you meet new people and produce quality content that your followers promote. And your ratio will drop closer to the 1:1 ratio which is manageable for most small business owners.

I know what you’re going to ask next. How do I keep up with all those followers so I can promote and engage with them?

That’s the topic for tomorrow’s post: Twitter Lists are your friends.

Tags: Relationship building, reputation, social media

This entry was posted on Monday, April 12th, 2010 at 10:55 am and is filed under social media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.