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 your 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. Any one 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.

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.

UPDATE: DAY 2: Here are my results from the build so far. Your results may vary.

Final Update:

You can check my LIVE RESULTS: Twittercounter-jmacofearth

Final results and update are here: 6 Step Twitter Growth Process: Results +753

@jmacofearth (also seen on Google+: jmacofearth)

permalink: http://uber.la/2012/03/twitter-business/

The Twitter Way page is a valuable resource and here are some of the top Twitter posts:

• Essential Twitter Lessons; Play it Safe, Be Real, and Have a Two-Way Conversation
• The 1-2-3 Guide to Getting Real with Twitter
• Zen of the Tweet (My best-of tweets collection)
• TwitterTools (matrix of Twitter apps and Twitter management tools)
• Twitter Broke the ReTweet Awhile Ago, Making Lazy RT-ers of Us; Do It Yourself
• The Art and Science of the ReTweet; or ReTweeting with a Twist
• The Twitter Bubble; Don’t Let Your Followers Fool You Into Feeling Influential
• How to Get Useful Business Information Out of Twitter: Hashtags for Social Media Research

Other posts about kicking ass in social media:

• Let’s Talk About Your Evil Plan(tm) – Yeah, But What Else Are You Doing?
• The Quick Course in Online Marketing: Big Picture (Social Media, Search Engine Marketing, eMail Marketing, Content Marketing)
• New Web Design Standards: Flexible-Width and non-IE Browsers Abound
• 8 Steps Getting Social Media To 5 Goals & 2 Wins the [INFOGRAPHIC]
• ROI ROI ROI and Social Media; We Need to Have This Discussion Again
• Facebook Privacy: the Myth, the Changes, the Confusing Privacy Settings
• Damn, We Should Do An Infographic on That; Charts Trying to Be More and Do More?
• Pinterest and the Power of Social Bookmarking: Tag Yourself (Web Design is Dead)
• Social Media MBA – The Reading List

See all of the Social Media Marketing Videos on the Social U. page.