What I am going to outline for you is Twitter Building 101. Most of it you probably know, the process of it you probably don’t. It’s not a scam, but it is a game. You like games right? Gaming? All I can say is don’t hate the playa, hate the game.

What I’m about to show you will change your life. It’s not illegal, it’s not BLACK HAT, it’s not fun or even very interesting. There are people in India who will do it for you very inexpensively. There are Twitter-Bot networks that will sell you 10,000 twitter followers for $100. But that’s not really what we are talking about here.

RULE #1: You have to have followers to wield influence.
• Corollary: Not all followers are the same.

RULE #2: You can gain followers by following others. (This is called the follow-back theory: I follow you, you follow me back. It can sometimes be referred to as “Team-Follow-Back” meaning the person with that in their bio or in their tweets, will follow you back if you follow them. Does anyone remember FFA websites?)
• Corollary: Following spammy Tweeters might drive your numbers up, but your “influence” will not rise accordingly.
Axiom: Spammy tweeters, pornsters, MLM tweeters, Tweet Dealers, and Coupon Magnets will all start a cascade of follows to your account. It’s like a spam waterfall. The scammers are sharing information about you that looks like this: “We found another sucker who followed our PAMELA_AND account. Alert all other spammers we have acquired a TARGET.”

RULE #3: You can find other REAL TWEETERS and INFLUENCERS by spending a little time exploring your categories of interest, or “influence” when you become an influencer yourself.
• Corollary: Following and following back is a process. It takes time. Don’t be impatient. Don’t get discouraged. The real people don’t always work from the “team follow back” playbook. But over time, if you yourself begin providing quality information into your Tweetstream, the audience on Twitter will notice you. The influencers always follow other influencers. It’s how we work the network, it’s how we communicate, it’s how we build our network of influence.

Okay so let’s get down the SIX STEP PROCESS for building your Twitter influence.

1. Find and Follow Influencers. (I started my SXSW Intensive Follow Yesterday)

And my Follower count has tracked nicely. (Since these are mainly SXSW attendees there is a high likelihood that they are NOT spammers and that they will be interested in my #socialmedia and #marketing tweets.

2. Find and Follow pockets of like-minded Tweeters.

3. Provide consistent content in your tweets. Pick your subject matter and stay focused. Funny LOL cats are fine once in a while, but people actively follow me because I tweet about social media, social media marketing, and online business strategies.

4. Hit your following limit every day.

If you are aggressively working to build your following, you must push Twitter to the wall. Initially, there is a 2000 follow limit. After that, you will be able to follow others in some Twitter-Knows ratio of Followers to Following. When you hit your limit you will get a nasty message from Twitter.com saying, You May Not Follow Any More People at This Time. We call that Twitter Jail.

5. Unfollow methodically using a tool. Keep the Tweeps you like, discard the uninteresting ones.

The tool ManageFlitter can help you unfollow large groups of people at a time. What you want to do, however, is sort the influencers OUT of your UNFOLLOW LIST. While I have not paid for ManageFlitter yet, I am considering it. A PRO version allows you to White List certain followers to keep from unfollowing them accidentally.

6. Rinse and Repeat.

I would welcome other ideas for making this process easier or more effective. The endless amount of Click: Follow, Click: Follow, Click: Follow is tiresome. And it is gamey. But if you’re going to play the game you have to learn the rules and use them to your advantage. I hope you agree. And if you don’t, let me know about that too. I’m always listening.