When Twitter first arrived on the social media scene, I thought to myself, “Who would want to know what I’m doing every 5 minutes?! There’s no way this will last.” Flash forward 5 years, and the true value of “microblogging” has become all too apparent.

Are you looking for a new job? Your potential employers will surely be looking at your past work assignments, successful projects, education, and even your community work. But they’re also looking at your online profile. Imagine how awesome it would be to tell a potential employer about all the people who value your opinion on industry issues so much that they follow you on Twitter!

Now, before you get too excited, let’s dial it back a bit. I’m not saying that you should go out there, collect hundreds of random followers, and then proceed to tell them about how great that latte was this morning, or about your epic Fail on the dancefloor last weekend, occasionally throwing in link to an interesting article. But if you’re seriously trying to use Twitter to increase your business influence, gaining a healthy number of followers can be both rewarding and tricky. As I settled in for my first week at CML as the new Social Media Consultant, one of my colleagues asked, “How do you get more followers on Twitter?” I admit I had to think about that for a minute, but after a bit of brainstorming, here’s what I think:

1. Tweet about interesting stuff. This one might seem kind of obvious, but it’s harder than it sounds. What’s interesting, anyway? Think about timely topics, things that people in the industry are talking about right now.
   
   
2. Make sure your followers know you’re excited – rather than just retweeting a link, add a few words of introduction. Twitter recently introduced a new functionality where you can tweet a picture directly in your tweet – so throw in a picture to add some interest every now and then!
   
   
3. Use hashtags and mentions to reach more people. Add a hashtag (#) in front of any keywords in your tweet so that people searching that keyword will find your tweet. Mention related people’s handles (e.g. @cml_anjuli) so that your tweets show up to people who may follow them (of course, only do this if you know them and they are related to what you’re tweeting about, or if you’re replying to something they posted).
   
   
4. Follow others. Often when you follow someone, they will follow you back. Use caution, though – only follow people when you really are interested in what they have to say! When you gain quite a few followers, companies will start to follow you too.
   
   
5. Put your Twitter handle everywhere. In your email signature, on your business cards, etc. Also, link your Twitter account to your blog or LinkedIn profile. Make sure people know you’re out there.
   
   
6. Tweet often. The more you say, the more likely people are to hear you.
   
   

The most important thing is to experiment and see what works, so go forth and tweet! If you’ve got questions about how to enhance your social media profile and become more influential, email me at a.muttoo@cmlor.com.